Reunion 2013

GENERAL JACKSON RIVERBOAT EXCURSION Front row: Holly Hall, Gen Bono, Janice (Tour Guide)Seated: Barb Hedberg, Jean Patterson, Kathie Sherwood, Barbara Stine,
Peggy Hummel Nancy Evans, JoAnn Smith, Frances Pino, Carol Genecki, Vibeke O'Sullivan, Evelyn Nylan and Karen Happel
3rd row: Bill Sherwood, Bob Hall, Jim Smith, Manuel Pino, James Bakich, Jim Krys, Gladys Krys, John Casey, Henry Nylan,
Gary Happel and Mike Brinchek (son)
4th row back: Michael Brinchek, Ray Bono, Ben Evans, Dave Hummel, Gary Stine, James Miles, Steve Bird, Robert Patterson,
Ralph Mercado, Peter O'Sullivan, Jim Beck, Gene Hedberg, Pete Genecki and Fred Fish

Bravo Company held their annual reunion at Homewood Suites Nashville Airport,  2640 Elm Hill Pike,  Nashville, Tennessee,  May 1-5,  2013. This was our fifth reunion and, once again, the number of participants continues to grow and we were a grand total of 52.

As always our reunion was a festive and memorable occasion that not only provided us with lots of fond memories, but it also contributed to fostering a very special relationship that embraces both the troopers and their wives. Many participants expressed the importance of this relationship during the course of the reunion and one trooper captured this sentiment in a thank-you email by referring to the “Eager Arms Family”. Another thought provoking outcome are remarks like this from several of the  wives: “I have learnt a lot of things about my husband that I was not aware of”. As a general summation, our reunions provide a forum for discussing an epic period of our lives and an opportunity to focus on the three main objectives of our association – fellowship, healing and honoring our fallen heroes.

Our first activity was a visit to the Jack Daniels Distillery on Thursday and this involved a long bus ride through beautiful Tennessee countryside. Janice Dill was our “fantastic” tour guide for all of the activities and she certainly entertained us during the bus ride to the distillery. Janice kept us busy looking for the no-show “walking horses”,  while at the same time participating in a Tennessee history bingo lesson where everyone wins a prize. We also had a Tennessee language lesson that included vague definitions for y’all, fixin to leave, and that magic word  “yonder” that has a special meaning when combined with a slight hand movement, and so on.  One thing that we will never forget was her hilarious performance when she sang the “Ode To The Little Brown Shack Out  Back”. There was some commotion and a lot of laughter after the third verse when some of our troopers jokingly requested that she stopped singing.

TOUR GUIDE JANICE DILL CAVE SPRING WATER USED FOR JACK DANIELS WHISKY
Jack Daniels established the distillery in Lynchburg after finding this limestone cave with plenty of pure spring water. We had a fascinating guided tour of the distillery and it was well-worth the visit. What makes Jack Daniels special is that the whiskey is filtered through sugar maple charcoal in large wooden vats prior to aging in oak barrels for about four years. By the way, some of these old oak barrels are sold for use in making Tabasco sauce and this Jack Daniels flavoring could very well be the reason why we loved to use Tabasco in Vietnam to make our C-rations more “palatable”.

JACK DANIELS DISTILLERY TOUR THE SPRING
Another major attraction at Lynchburg was Miss Bobo’s Boarding house, which reportedly has a fine reputation for true Southern hospitality and traditional home cooking. We had a wonderful lunch at this former boarding house and as many of the dining rooms used to be bedrooms, they were small and several rooms were required for our group.

MISS BOBO’S BOARDING HOUSE LUNCH AT MISS MARY BOBO’S BOARDING HOUSE                                   

We spent most of the time during the evenings at our  hospitality suite, the Mandarin Room, and this is where Bill Sherwood and Bob Patterson kept a well-stocked bar. Our dedicated cooks -Kathie Sherwood, Barbara Stine and Jean Patterson,  excelled in providing delicious snacks during the evenings and a wonderful Saturday Night Supper.

WAR STORIES

MORE WAR STORIES

So that the troopers could tell and retell their embellished war stories without interference from their wives, they came up with a brilliant scheme to keep them gainfully occupied; provide them with a gigantic puzzle and apparently someone removed a couple of pieces to make sure they could not complete it.

PUZZLE MAKERS  PUZZLE MAKERS

SATURDAY NIGHT SUPPER   VISITING CARL ARNEY Carl Arney (seated) Bill Sherwood, Jim Krys, Gary Stine & Bob Patterson (kneeling)

Although Darlene and Carl Arney planned to attend the reunion, they had to cancel at the last minute due to a health problem. Fortunately, we were able to bring the reunion to Carl with a treasured visit by several of his combat buddies.

Another reunion highlight was our dinner and show at the Grand Ole Opry on Friday evening. This is the show that made country music and Nashville famous, and we enjoyed hearing a variety of artists who were either “wannabes” or part of what is known as the “Opry Family”. After the show we found our wonderful Janice, who was all “lit-up”.

DINNER BEFORE THE GRAND OLE OPRY SHOW GRAND OLE OPRY SHOW

GRAND OLE OPRY SHOW

For most of us, the lunch and show on the General Jackson Showboat on Saturday was our best activity and a wonderful experience. The food and show was outstanding, and we all enjoyed the cruise on the Cumberland River with live entertainment provided by Steve Hall and Shotgun Red. These entertainers certainly lived up to their reputation for providing a “jaw-droppin' and gut-bustin' show”, and the Southern-style buffet was “mouth-watering”.

GENERAL JACKSON SHOWBOAT  LIVE SHOW ABOARD THE GENERAL JACKSON
On Saturday evening, we conducted a memorial ceremony to honor our 36 fallen comrades and this caused many damp eyes. Tom De Young started the ceremony with an invocation and this was followed with the following remarks by Peter O’Sullivan. Peter stressed the importance of honoring and remembering our fallen heroes and identified four actions that we had taken to accomplish this: We list the names of our fallen friends on a special page on our website and we have dedicated our site to their memory. We conducted our first memorial ceremony at The Wall last year and plan to do the same in 2014. We are assisting in providing photographs of our 36 fallen heroes for use in a new Vietnam museum, called The  Education Center at The Wall. One of the main displays will be the larger-than-life pictures of the over 58,000 service members who died during the Vietnam War and their pictures will be displayed on their birthdays.  Finally, this important initiative is aimed at informing the relatives and friends of our 36 fallen friends about our website, as it contains a lot of information about their loved one. To accomplish this we posted a personnel message with information about our site on each page of our 36 fallen heroes on The Vietnam Veterans Memorial website.

SALUTE DURING MEMORIAL CEREMONY
We concluded our ceremony with all the troopers participating in a Roll Call of our 36 fallen heroes, followed by a salute during the playing of Taps.

THE LADIES  Seated: Barbara Hedberg, Evelyn Nylan, Joann Smith, Jean Patterson, Gladys Krys , Vibeke O'Sullivan, Barbara Stine
Standing: Pam Potts, Nancy Evans, Karen Happel, Gen Bono, Carol Genecki, Kathie Sherwood, Peggy Hummel, Frances Pino,
Holly Hall

BRAVO COMPANY TROOPERS Front: Hedberg, Hall, Smith, Genecki, Beck Middle row: Sherwood, Nylan, Krys, Happel, Casey, Fish, Bakich, Mercado
Standing rear: O'Sullivan, Brinchek, Evans, DeYoung, Gordon, Miles, Bono, Patterson, Stine, Pino, Hummel, Bird

The final events of our reunion were the group photos,  and thereafter the sad goodbyes and see y’all next year in Washington DC.

Thanks for photographs to Jean Patterson, Barb Hedberg, Jim Miles and Jim Beck