Ferguson: A beloved voice from the past — my Dad at age 20.
Published 5:15 am Friday, November 10, 2023
- Clarence Hammer in December 1962
Special to the Morning Telegraph
My Daddy visited me from the past this summer.
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Clarence Hammer was just 61 when he died on June 7, 2009. It’s been almost 15 years, but I can still hear his voice, his laugh. I could never forget his bright, mischievous grin because I frequently see its echo in my children’s faces.
He is always my favorite veteran, although my three brothers who served in the Army and Marines are tied for a close second. Daddy was always my hero, despite the mental illness he struggled with for the rest of his life after serving in Vietnam.
He was not drafted but had voluntarily signed up for the Army after he realized he couldn’t afford the books he would need to attend college. He was always proud of his service, although, especially as his mental illness progressed, he viewed the government with a great deal of mistrust.
He was seriously wounded in Vietnam. I don’t know how he didn’t die, but still, he almost always made his time in the Army sound like a big adventure.
When I was little, he sometimes hoisted me onto his shoulders when my family went walking in our neighborhood. He would run with me while chanting, “I want to be an Airborne Ranger, I want to live a life of danger, head ‘em up, move ‘em out, Airborne.”
This summer, though, I was introduced to a part of Daddy that I never knew — before he went to Vietnam, before he returned home with shrapnel still in his body from the grenade that almost killed him.
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It was truly a gift when I opened my email to find a message from someone I didn’t know. Renée Lawhun is the granddaughter of Frank and Pauline Reynolds, a couple who played a significant role in my Dad’s life.
His childhood was far from ideal. His family struggled.
My Mother and Lawhun have told me that Pauline Reynolds was one of my Dad’s elementary school teachers, probably in second grade or so in Kearney, Missouri. Frank was a janitor at the school.
When they noticed that my Father’s family was struggling, they stepped in, and he lived with them for a period of his life in Kearney.
Lawhun contacted me after she had gone through some old pictures belonging to her grandparents and found some of my Dad, along with a letter he had written to Mrs. Reynolds (as he called her when he talked about them, always fondly.)
Lawhun mailed all of them to me.
Some of the pictures we already had, some we didn’t. I loved seeing my grade-school-age father so happy, so unbroken by what came later, and always so strikingly handsome.
His smile was always so bright and welcoming. Even Lawhun noted something my family talked about over the years — he had the most perfect teeth of anyone I’ve ever known. He had incredible dark eyes and dark hair, especially in his youth.
The true gift, though, was the letter my 20-year-old Father wrote to Mrs. Reynolds after he met my Mother, Doris Jo Edwards, at that time.
Daddy had accompanied one of her brothers home on leave to Jefferson shortly before he would head to Vietnam. They married about two weeks after meeting each other and were married 40 years until his death.
He must have called Mrs. Reynolds to tell her he was getting married before he wrote the letter.
“I never figured I really ever want to get married, and never before going to Vietnam, but I’ve met the young lady that’s made me change my mind,” he writes in the letter.
He said my Mother is “very pretty,” a real ‘Texan.” He wrote about their struggle to determine if they would eventually live in Texas or in Missouri. He talked about how his father and two brothers — “the boys” — were coming to the wedding, even though he had thought they wouldn’t be able to afford the trip.
He goes on to say he wished Mrs. Reynolds could have met “Jo” before they married.
“But I’m sure you’ll approve of her,” he writes.
My mama heart couldn’t help but cry. It was all so sweet.
This Veterans Day, I’m happy to have had a glimpse into my Father’s heart and soul before being a veteran changed the course of his life.
And I’m thankful for the couple who seemed to have loved my father like their own.
Happy Veterans Day to all who served.