STORY EIGHT

LOOKING AROUND, THE VIETNAMESE, AND THE UNEXPECTED, OR AN UNTIMELY RECALL NOTICE

A few years before my potential retirement, we started looking at various possibilities in terms of relocation. We spent a month traveling in the Southwest, concentrating on Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. We visited a number of areas that we read or heard were possibly good retirement places. Flagstaff, Phoenix, and Prescott in Arizona; Santa Fe, Taos, Albuquerque, Las Cruces in New Mexico; and Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver, Durango and Grand Junction in Colorado. We also toured North and South Carolina, notably Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh. We even arranged to subscribe to some of the local papers for a short time, so that we could get the flavor of what was going on in the area. The New England States were also not overlooked, but we decided they were too extreme in their winter weather. Meanwhile, we were still working and any actual relocation plans were just something hazy for the future.

About this time in the early eighties, a call went out in the Washington Area to assist, if possible, dislocated Vietnamese who had escaped to the U.S. and were in need of a host family to help them get back on their feet. We had a bedroom free, since the Thai girls had finished their schooling in our immediate area, and had either returned home or transferred to other schools, and Molly decided to sign up for the program. A month later we were introduced to a young man who was Vietnamese and needed a helping hand. He was polite, spoke English and was a chain smoker; that was a problem. We did not smoke in the house and asked him to please step outside when smoking. His wish was to attend college and he was interested in a future medical career. He was also very much involved with the politics of his country vowing that he was going to go back one day and straighten everything out. We were amused by this but did not discourage him. Instead we enrolled him at the University of Maryland, paying his first year of tuition. He studied hard and did well. After a year, he found some other relatives that had come and decided to live with them, which is a normal Vietnamese tradition. We heard from him again several years later and apparently at that time he was on his way to a medical career.

The call for finding suitable families for newly arrived Vietnamese "boat people" continued in our area. It was as natural as apple pie for us to contact the local social worker who was Vietnamese herself, and worked through the Lutheran Church, for a new placement. We were asked to attend a series of seminars over the next six weeks. The program covered mainly the plight of these people, their motivation for escape, cultural differences and the best ways to make them feel welcome and transform them into our society. After the sessions, some of them with qualified people who had gone through the experiences with Vietnamese in their homes, we were ready for a young man who was placed with us, called Lum.

He was another courteous, well-trained young man, who later informed us was just a wee bit older than stated. We entered him in high school and since he was familiar with English, he did very well. Lum was helpful around the house and never complained. He did ask us for a bicycle to ride to school, which otherwise was a ten minute walk, and we quickly obliged him. The Lutheran Church sponsored periodic get-togethers for a number of similar persons. Through this social activity he was able to speak his native tongue and have some traditional foods and interactions with other Vietnamese. He told us later, when he gained more of our confidence about his parent's plight back in his native country. They had sided with the U.S. in the war and were punished for it. Lum also told us, how he and the others almost did not survive on the high seas because they ran out of food and water until rescued by a passing ship and interred in a Malaysian camp. Two years later he found out that one of his brothers managed to get out as well and the social service was working on his case to try to get the two together.

Mid 1985, after some thirty-eight years with Uncle Sam, I decided to retire, lest I become one of the older, more fossilized occupants of a nondescript office. There was a well-attended farewell party for me at a nearby Officer's Club replete with the usual speeches and gifts and well wishes for the future, and that was that. Molly too had been thinking retirement, but in her case it was not so much the time she had put in, although that was sufficient, but her physical deterioration that was complicated with a job related car accident and subsequent numerous operations. She filed her paperwork and was given a disability retirement some eight months later. It was now time to become more serious as to what to do, if we were to do anything at all.

One morning, while still in bed, we decided that for a number of reasons including health, less stress, a quieter environment and above all, just to be a couple again, we would take the plunge and leave Maryland. Our married youngest daughter voiced the loudest complaint saying, "Children should leave home, not parents." We opted for Grand Junction, Colorado feeling that Durango was just a bit too cold in the winter and more of a tourist town. We visited the city, found a modest ranch style home facing Sherwood Park, and arranged for its purchase.

Once we returned home to Maryland, packing and sorting out years of accumulation went into full swing. In the end, we did not get rid of as much as we should have had so that we had a large moving van considerably well filled. Lum, who was still with us at the time, proved to be a big assist and a meticulous packer, especially for the more fragile items. It was a big job and the house became a total mess as boxes were stashed all over the place. Lum was placed in another home, a very nice one at that, and eventually married a lady from Peru. The movers arrived, started to load the Moving Van and we were on our way. Molly wanted to keep the Maryland house, just in case she wanted to return someday, so with one daughter and her family utilizing the basement, the rest of the house was rented.

Molly and I drove our two little pick up trucks, also well loaded, across country. Since both vehicles were equipped with CB's we talked our way through the long hours of driving, particularly after leaving Ohio. We did not push too hard, logging only some four to five hundred miles a day and taking ample time for meals and rest stops. We also had "Sugar" along, a Schnauzer puppy that we had just recently bought to replace our long lived poodle, Daisy, who made it to age seventeen; that meant many stops for a puppy break. Finally, after some five days we made it over the mountains and into Grand Junction. The movers had not arrived yet so we spent time looking around and staying at a local motel near the airport. Molly found that the town had a Lane Bryant, one of her favorite big girl shops and she also discovered a shop called, Plump and Luscious which made her happy. The dryness of the area seemed to result in a definite improvement in her aches and pains and she remarked about that after only a few weeks here. The moving truck arrived about ten days later and we moved into our new home. It was hard figuring out exactly where to place the furniture since this was a much smaller house, but we managed to accommodate almost everything; we still had to cope with unpacking some two hundred boxes a week later.

Then one night, about two in the morning, Molly woke me up saying she was not feeling well and wanting to go to Saint Mary's Hospital nearby. I drove her there and after checking her out the attending staff thought she may have had an upset stomach. They then suggested she stay there for observation awhile longer. About an hour after that, Molly unfortunately had a severe heart attack. Her condition was further complicated by her diabetes from which she suffered for a number of years. The Hospital had an emergency cardiology clinic and she was placed in the special unit under intensive care. After some ten days of valiant effort, she lost the battle and I lost her.

It was a tough time for me, especially being worn out from the constant almost twenty-four hour stay at her bedside for all that time. It was a very sad time because I felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under me just when we were getting together, as it were, for a second time. The children flew in for the funeral and a week later, it was all over. The family returned to their homes and jobs in the East and I decided to stay. Since we had just arrived two months earlier, we really did not have a chance to get to know anyone, so that aside of my immediate neighbor, I was left mostly to myself. Straightening out the rest of the house together with paperwork, a hobby, correspondence and Sugar kept me busy for a while. Married for over thirty-six years, I felt like something was missing and that I needed someone to take care of and in turn someone to take care of me.

That however, dear reader is another STORY and if you would like to pursue what the aftermath was, you will have to turn to PART III. Thank you.

©1990 Herbert Holzbauer

published @1997 edition S.p.N.LAUB

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