62 Seconds Worth of Distance Run

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My phone sent me this reminder four years ago. That’s Gene, my third Marine division sweetie, in front of the second flag raised on Iwo Jima.

I miss Gene so much. He was one of the kindest men I ever knew. So masculine and so gentle.

A lot of the vets I grew up with felt like surrogate uncles or grandfathers. Gene felt like a second dad.

I spent my 25th birthday celebrating Gene’s life with his family and friends in the heart of Montana… toasting him with a smooth bourbon and stories for days. It was really one of the best gifts he could have given me. There was so much beauty and peace. The fulfillment of a life well lived.

A life well lived might be an understatement.

A life he thrived in, an unsatiable appetite for life, a life in Technicolor.

As long as I knew him, he was taking Edgar Guest’s line - “fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run” and filling it with 62 seconds.

The year before Gene died he suffered a heart attack while hunting with his son. "Don't worry about me," he said, "get your shot then we can go to the hospital." He didn't want to miss out on anything.

When he went on hospice and knew it was a short matter of time, he continued to make plans - just in case hospice didn’t work out. He had a date lined up for the Marine Corps Birthday in November and talked about going to our Iwo Jima reunion in February.

In the days leading up to his death, we texted constantly (he was an incredibly speedy texting machine). I sent photos of old times. Someone told me he was going through all the photos on his phone, trying to remember EVERYTHING.

Gene has been born prematurely. In the 1920s the survival rate for a preemie baby was incredibly low. He and his twin brother were kept in a shoebox by the fire to keep warm. They both made it.

He became a marine. Survived the battle of Guam and Iwo Jima. Went into law-enforcement on the Hollywood beat. Became a park ranger at Glacier National Park. He had an illustrious life. He had an epic life. But in my mind he represented masculinity, kindness, stability, and integrity.

Gene told me once that if there was ever anything I needed, he was just a phone call away. And he meant it. But he didn’t wait for me to make that call. He called me – to make sure I was OK, to make sure I had everything I needed, that I was happy, content. Just to check in.

I miss those check-in calls a lot. I’d like to tell them about my life, my love, my work. I know he would’ve been so invested.

I visited a friend on hospice this week. I work with a lady with severe dementia. I am constantly surrounded by vivid reminders of the mortality and shortness of life. And there have been several days of late where it all just felt like a lot.

Then a little memories like this pop-up. And I’m flooded with recollections of people like Gene– who shaped my perspective on kindness, how to be treated like a lady and a woman, what integrity looks like… unconditional love. These little moments make everything worthwhile.

They make my own life technicolor.

On the day that we actually have an extra 24 hours, February 29, I want to be like Gene: filling the most unforgiving minute with every second worth of distance run and saying, “You can take me to the hospital after you get that shot.”

Operation Meatball

Honoring Veterans & Connecting Them With the Youth of Today

Iwo Jima 79

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Remembering the Battle of Iwo Jima with the Iwo Jima Association of America and Veterans.

This is my 9th year attending this reunion, and it truly is a gift to still have these National Treasures with us. Five veterans are here this week a far cry from the dozens that used to show up when I first started coming. And the shenanigans that used go on! The stories. Tall and short. I used to keep a quote book of the amusing things the vets would say to me. After nearly 10 years - it’s quite a book.

“I’m BC. They say, “What's BC?” I’m Before Computers” - Roy Earle USMC

This week the 5 veterans in attendance are all about 98 years old. Louis will be 99 in two weeks, but he only uses a wheelchair if he has too. The vets don’t complain about age or infirmities. They’re happy to be here, among their comrades and friends. We talk about Iwo, but we also talk about life. It’s a veteran’s reunion, but it feels like family.

Juan - smashing swabby and former Rodeo Cowboy - regales us with stories of his Arctic adventure with Admiral Byrd, busting broncos, and literally dozens of stories that ended with a classic fist fight. This vigorous lifestyle is no doubt the key to his youth and health.

There’s a reason they say there is no such thing as an ex-Marine. These veterans of the battle of Iwo Jima are sturdy and staunch. They are now old, the memories fade for a few, but they are fighters. And they continue to come. “As long as I am able, I will keep coming to the reunion.” Is the common line.

It is indeed a testament to the quality and mettle of their generation and their belief in the importance of remembrance.

How are you Louis?”

“I’m contrary.” - Iwo Jima Veteran, Louis B.

Always Kiss Goodnight: A Story for Valentine's Day

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Kanter+irene-and-marvin--1949.jpg

Marvin and Irene Kanter’s love story is one of my favorites. I came across it 10 years ago while searching for local WWII vets my sisters and I could invite to the first function we ever decided to host. It was to be a grand dinner at a classic car museum in San Marcos with special guest, Maurice Renaud son of the wartime mayor of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, France.

I somehow managed to find Marvin’s address and sent him an invitation with an extra note saying I hoped he’d attend (his movie star looks might have encouraged us just a bit to reach out). Happily to our surprise they accepted. The couple was everything and more. Marvin was even better looking and more charming in person, and Irene was absolutely fabulous with a side of spunk. She had been the one to propose to Marving back in 1947, and time had not dimmed that quality.

"If you see a good looking man in a black sports coat, watch out. He is Navy all the way." - Irene Kanter declaring to an Army veteran

Irene passed away shortly after that dinner, but Marvin stuck around for a few more years. Their love story never gets old. Sweet and simple. Long lasting. No doubt they put the work in to make it so.

I sometimes wondered if the movie Anchors Away written based off of their meeting.

Yours to decide.

Always Kiss Goodnight

Helen Anders American-Statesman Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013 

Mr. Kanter at our 2014 Veterans Dinner.

It was Halloween night 1944, and a new student at the University of Texas, Irene Wolfson, had a date to a Longhorns football game. Told a blue norther was coming in, but not knowing quite what that was because she’d just arrived from Florida, Irene dressed smartly in a one-button suit with a yellow angora sweater.

“I go out to get in the car,” Irene recalls, “and driving is this sailor with coal-black hair and a fantastic smile.” That, however, was not Irene’s date, although her date was also in the car. The sailor, Marvin Kanter, on shore leave from the Navy, had a date of his own. Still, during the evening when it became clear that Irene had under-dressed for the norther, he lent her his pea coat. The next day, Marvin left to catch a ship out of San Francisco.

“All the way to California, I was picking yellow angora off my pea coat,” he says. His memory of Irene stuck with him just like the angora, and when he was back in Austin — two years later, after World War II had ended — he tracked her down for a date. Then he went home to Missouri and she to Florida, but they corresponded. Irene’s mother saw his picture in her daughter’s room and instantly disapproved.

“He has a weak chin,” she tsked. Undeterred, Irene proposed to Marvin when they got together one weekend in 1947.

“What are your future plans?” Marvin asked Irene, who quickly answered: “I plan to marry you and settle down.” In 1949, they did just that, opting to move to Austin, where Irene quickly landed a job with a fabric store and Marvin worked for a pharmaceuticals wholesaler.

“I don’t think anyone expected the marriage to last,” Irene muses. But here they are, 64 years later. Irene wound up teaching school, then becoming an administrator, serving as assistant principal of Anderson High School for 20 years. Marvin took a job with the Texas Railroad Commission and spent 34 years of weekends officiating at football games, many of them attended by Irene and their daughter, Shelly.

“Remember that time we put hotdog wrappers on our feet to keep warm?” Shelly remembers, and both her parents laugh.

Mr. and Mrs. Kanter at our 2014 Veterans Dinner.

Mr. and Mrs. Kanter at our 2014 Veterans Dinner.

Now retired, Marvin and Irene take a swim in their pool at exactly 4 p.m. every day (unless it’s too cold) and follow that up with a 5 p.m. cocktail hour. They may be out of the business world, but they’re far from idle. They work from time to time as extras in movies shooting in Austin — in fact, they enjoyed a decent amount of screen time behind Sandra Bullock in a restaurant scene in “Miss Congeniality” — and they travel relentlessly, heading out for a tour of interior Alaska just four weeks after Irene had hip surgery. Talking about all this, they grin at each other like newlyweds.

“We have a lot of fun together,” Irene says.

“We laugh a lot, and we try to stay young,” Marvin says. “And whether the day has gone smooth or rough, at the end of the day, we kiss each other.”

“Sometimes it’s hard when you’ve had a fuss,” Irene says, “but we do.”

http://www.statesman.com/lifestyles/always-kiss-good-night/3rPiyfI7ktv4v9tooYr2RN/