Van Horn and Other Friends - Tom

Van Horn and other Friends

Tom was undoubtedly the best football player on our team my senior year.  In fact he was one of the best players ever to play at Van Horn and started on the varsity his sophomore year.  He was fast, strong, quick, had a head for the game and never feared any opponent.

He could have gone to any college or university and excelled there also. 

School was not kind to Tom however and it let him down.  The scouts that came to the games our senior year were very interested in him, but things did not work out for him in that regard and he was drafted soon after graduating from high school.

He was an excellent soldier but hated it none the less.  He became a sergeant during his tour in Viet Nam and like many of his generation was unappreciated when he returned.  Although he and I were about as close a friend as one could be he never commented or if he did he talked very little about his experiences in the war zone.  I never asked anything about his tenure there; I felt I did not have the right to probe, I had spent my fighting years in the National Guard.

He married a girl he had gone to high school with and went on to have a successful marriage and productive life, produced a family, and over all lived the American dream. 

I know very little about Tom’s experiences while being a foot soldier, pounding the ground in the jungles for 30 days at a time on search and destroy missions.  But even though Tom and I are close and there is nothing we would not do for the other there is a wall of separation.  He belongs to a club that I will never gain entry.

If he ever feels bitter about going to Viet Nam he keeps it pretty well hidden but did tell me recently that he thought everyone should have had to serve back then in some capacity.  If they were not physically fit they could have pounded a typewriter, driven a truck in the states, or done something.  He knows that it is not the fault of those who did not serve due to being 4F and holds no grudges against them, but I suspect he gives no quarter to those who went to Canada.

There are just a few people in my life that I am proud to call a friend.  Tom is among them.