Episode 02: Love Comes Calling
[intro music]
Carolynn: Hi again. This is Carolynn Zorn. Welcome back to my saga.
I hope you enjoy Episode 2. I call it, Love Comes Calling.
Carolynn: In episode one, I share how Dave and I met and I read his Marine Corps boot camp letters. Here is another one. On 22 May1965, that’s military date format, Dave writes home:
Male Voice: “Dear Folks, There’s no definite word as to where we are going. Right now morale is high and the troops aren’t too worried about going anyplace where there is fighting.”
Carolynn: At the time Dave joined the Marines, most Americans didn’t know we had a presence in Viet Nam. As a note, Vietnam was spelled as two words in the beginning, only later to be combined as one word.
Every marine must serve a 12 month tour of duty, so I knew Dave would have to eventually ship out. But he was sure that his destination would not be Viet Nam –at least not anytime soon. Besides reassuring me, he also was optimistic with his letters home because a month later he writes. . .
Male Voice: “Don’t worry please. I know you must be wondering about Viet Nam. I can tell you, truthfully, that you have nothing to worry about for the next 6 or 7 months or so,” signing off for now, Dave.
Carolynn: Dave attended a Field Message Center Course for 4 weeks on 9 Oct 1964, as my record show. He was sent there for training probably because he could type. Who would guess Dave would be going to a jungle because he also had weeks of winter survival training, which of course, he would never use. So, it makes you wonder about military training doesn’t it? Our guys were never prepared to go into jungle fighting but there they were.
Carolynn: And then, on 6 July 1965, Dave writes home from the USS Alamo. . .
[Ocean sounds]
Male Voice: “Well, right now we are floating off the coast of Viet Nam. We are going to land tomorrow. I don’t expect any trouble at all the whole time we’re here--- which is going to be 6 or 7 months. I wasn’t going to tell you about going into Viet Nam because I didn’t want you to worry but they’ve told us that we’re going to be guarding a new airstrip that they’re building. Remember, I’m going to be in a headquarter tent; far, far away from any enemy. Believe me, I do not want to be a hero!”
Carolynn: The airstrip they would be guarding was in Qui Nhon where he would be for 119 days before moving to Chu Lai. Here’s how his travel itinerary went: He left San Diego on May 24 on the USS Pickway under the command of the famous Colonel Leon Utter. He was part of “Utter’s Battalion, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 3rd Marine Division for 13 months – not the 6 or 7 he told his family. On the way to war, they stopped in Hawaii for a day of R and R where Dave had a stranger take a picture of he and his friend Phil Cushman and Doug Stahr on the beach. That photo remained in his wallet until the day he died. Brothers forever. His platoon spent some time in Okinawa before leaving on the final leg of the journey to Viet Nam on the USS Alamo. They landed on July 9th not the 7th as he predicted in his letter home.
[Sound of helicopter from Nam]
Carolynn: What he didn’t tell his mother was that his real job. He had a top secret clearance and every other day he would board a helicopter and be dropped in the middle of a field to wait for one of ours to come and escort him to the field unit’s commander so he could deliver the day’s de-coded message. He then waited in the moist jungle heat until he received the sealed envelope with the commander’s return message. He was guided back to the open field again and left to wait alone for his return ride—a dust off. The marines who had escorted him faded back into the foliage.
His buddy Phil told me about this and how standing alone, abandoned, in the open, waiting to hear the approaching helicopter pick up seemed like an eternity. He and Phil rotated days and every time Phil saw Dave climb on the helicopter looking like he didn’t have a care in the world, Phil would wonder if he would see him again. On one occasion, his Heuy helicopter received incoming rounds, the bullets just missing him but peppering the seat he usually rode in. Because he changed seats that day, he had only shrapnel wounds on his cheek when he rotated home. The real wound, the PTSD, he had for life, but he hid it as a child might hide something he broke and he didn’t want his parents to find out about. Well, I didn’t find out that he was broken, about his lifelong struggle, until years later when I found an old email to his buddy, Phil.
[pause] [tinkle sound]
It said, “I’m still functioning but seeing a therapist for depression—PTSD from Vietnam.”
Turning boys into killers and putting them under constant distress, fear and experiences of loss, is not without its consequences as history had repeatedly told us; called soldiers heart, shell-shock, combat fatigue, and then post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD-- it’s a condition we’ve bestowed on our fighting men and women for thousands of years.
[Barbershop tags- Though I’m gone For a Long Long Time]
Carolynn: Dave returned home from Viet Nam on June 19th 1966. Here he speaks about when in an interview he did with his cousin Max Zorn who was interviewing him for a school project.
[Insert Dave on tape interview “welcome home”]
Carolynn: Dave was among some of the first troops who landed in Vietnam in a combat mission and so, he was among some of the first troops who came home so his homecoming wasn’t as traumatic as maybe some of the later marines and soldiers who came home, however, war does leave an impact.
Carolynn: After he spent a few weeks trying to experience the non-combat world of his family home, his friends, his neighbors--when some of the sharp cutting edge of daily fear he had experienced began to fade, he started to begin his new life. He didn’t resume his former life, because that teenager, and those years were gone. He writes in his book:
[tinkle]
Carolynn: “When I left the states I weighed 190 lbs. At six feet two inches I had been in great shape. The bathroom scales now read 145 lbs. I had changed in so many ways.”
[tinkle sound]
[Insert another clip of Dave’s interview talks about combat]
Carolynn: Dave almost died of dysentery in Viet Nam, not an uncommon occurrence in the early years of the war and another event he downplayed to his family back home. A black medic, Robert Peeples saved his life. Many marines would wake up in the morning to find the beds on either side of them empty, their occupants having died in the night. “Peeps” as he was called, found Dave with a 104.8 degree temperature and insisted he be transferred to the hospital in Qui Nhon on 11 October 1965. Without that intervention, Dave would have likely been one of the “disappeared during the night” marines.
Dave never forgot Peeps and stayed in contact with him. In one phone conversation, Peeps said “I had the mistaken notion that people didn’t remember me—obviously with your mention of me in your book, my perception is way off base. I was in awe when I read your account of our experience in Viet Nam. You remembered me after 45 years and so I was not insignificant.”
About his near death experience, Dave wrote home only a couple of sentences:
Male Voice: “I joined a large group of people with dysentery. I spent 3 days in a hospital ward with air conditioning, real beds, and my very own bed pan!”
Carolynn: And after he lost his very best friend since boot camp, Tom, on March 4th 1966, Dave’s letter home was also brief. On the 11th he wrote:
Male Voice: “ Dear folks, our battalion was ordered to the field for a one day sweep of an area south of here. I didn’t go as usual. We weren’t expecting much of a fight but as war often delivers, it cost us plenty. Almost 50 marines dead and of those, one I knew extremely well—that I considered the greatest—Tom Wardrop.”
Carolynn: Dave and I had double dated with Tom and his girlfriend. Tom was killed by a sniper while trying to aid a fallen marine, Lt Peter Amish, who lay wounded in an open field. Later we would visit Tom’s parents in Indiana and his grave often. The anguish felt by losing one’s buddy, his partner in combat, friend, haunts veterans forever. Behind closed doors, they cry when they get the courage to even talk about it. They mostly keep their sadness hidden, from wives, and from parents.
During our marriage, Dave teared up every time he talked about Tom. I didn’t understand it then, after all it wasn’t like Tom was family, I kept telling myself. Later, my unsympathetic manner would haunt me.
[taps music fade in and out]
[ pause]
Carolynn: As Dave continues in his book: “Before my 30 days of leave expired, I decided to find Carolynn and see if we could get back together or start all over again. By now, I was able to clearly think about my future after the Marine Corps and that future—without her—seemed unnatural. While driving around town I saw people and places that reminded me of her, and of us. This was our town----- and life here without her became unthinkable. We had history and, by God, we would have a future. We were meant to be together.
[tingle sound]
[phone ringing]
I telephoned her mother at the music store she owned. The tone of her voice during the initial greeting and subsequent obligatory inquiries and pleasantries was encouraging. She didn’t hang up on me and seemed genuinely interested in how I was.
So, I took the next step, “How’s Carolynn?” I asked.
“Oh, fine” came her reply, very matter-of-factly. She continued, “She’s living in Chicago now. I guess you heard she got married in Las Vegas two weeks ago.”
[pause]
------I don’t remember the rest of the conversation,” is what Dave wrote.
[Barbershop Tag: When I lost you]
Carolynn: (near tears) I wasn’t married. I got married a week later. I never knew Dave had even called. He never knew if I was even told that he had called. What would I have done if I had known before I repeated my vows?
[phone ringing]
[pause]
Carolynn: On May 31st 1994 Dave called me. My kids had told me someone named Dave had called and left a message but I didn’t know any Dave I said. I didn’t know any Dave in California.
He called back.
[pause]
Carolynn: My first words were, “why did you break up with me?” Without pause, the question that had haunted me for thirty years, since that last phone call on a rainy night in Chicago, erupted from my mouth. I never knew why he hadn’t answered my letter. Later, Dave told me he thought about chickening out and saying at that moment, “oops, wrong number,” and then just hanging up. As I sat in my condo living room with my husband next to me, Dave and I exchanged stories about our life over the last three decades. He told me how he got my phone number from my sister, Jaime Lyn Bauer, a soap star at the time, after he bumped into her at the radio station where he worked. He figured it was time, it was a sign, and so he swallowed his fears and called. In my diary I wrote, “he said he thought of me constantly over the past years. And now that we were finally in touch-- we were both married.”
[Barbershop Coppertones clip: Somebody Stole My Gal]
Carolynn: My diary I recorded my feelings from that day like this: “He called me at work every night at 5 pm because he had a break before he had to go on the air.”
You see, Dave was an award winning broadcast journalist for KNX radio in Los Angeles. He was referred to as “the voice of Southern California.” Everyone in California may have known his strong, bass voice but I didn’t recognize it as the voice of the 19 year old guy I had been engaged to so long ago. I began to eagerly await the opportunity to hear it every night. My secretary would almost swoon when she took his calls. I thought I might have to get a fainting couch for her. Everyone commented on his voice and I would come to know it very well.
[radio clip Dave signing in on radio shift at KNX]
Carolynn: A few days later, at the end of his call on June 3rd, I recorded in my diary that his parting words were, “I never stopped loving you, you know,” and then I typed into my computer diary the words, “I was stunned.”
We began exchanging audio tapes as well as cards and letters. An imperfect way to get re-acquainted, but the only way we could. We lived 2,000 miles apart. We talked about our spouses, and the difficulties we were experiencing every day in our relationships. Neither one of us was in a good place. He said he should have gotten a divorce a long time ago but he didn’t want to confront the conflict that would most likely erupt. He had been reading the book, Embraced by the Light and was strut by the words, “Our own actions determine the course of our lives and we can alter or redirect our lives at any time.” Now that he was approaching his 50th birthday, he decided he could not continue to live his life as it was, he had to change it. I told him I was in the process of giving my relationship one last try. It was on life support. I was not only unhappy but now afraid of my husband.
Carolynn: A short time after this, I wrote in my diary, “I was in my storage unit looking for my yearbooks because Dave told me we sang together in choir. He remembered so much about our time together and I didn’t. As I opened my scrapbook from college, a letter and a piece of paper fell to the floor. I picked them up and tears started to form as I read our engagement announcement from the yellowed, brittle, old newspaper clipping. The letter with it, was one of the last ones I had received from Dave and I knew it was from him, instantly. Here are my actual words from my tape I recorded on June 4, 1994.
[Insert CZ clip from middle of tape June 4 side 2: “I can’t tell you what was going through my mind ….]
Carolynn: The cards, letters, tapes, and phone calls continued and plans were made to meet each other. I had to escort my daughter to college in the LA area in August and that seemed like a good time. I was so anxious to see him again, see how I felt, see if there was still an attraction. I knew that first love revisited could be cagy and our circumstances added complications. One of the complications was about to be resolved however: my husband.
[pause]
Carolynn: I came home on August 2nd 1994 to an angry, out of control man who threatened to toss me to the curb. In my diary I wrote, “I told him he couldn’t order me out, I had a legal right to live there as his wife.” Then he said, “I can hire a truck and have you and your things on the curb in 24 hours.” He was using the divorce word again, as he had many times before. Even though he was apologetic the next day and said he couldn’t stop himself. He said he tried but he couldn’t, even when he wanted to. At that point, I knew the marriage was over. I wouldn’t feel safe or secure with him anymore. This was the last rage episode I wanted to come home to. So, another of my marriages was falling apart. We had been best friends before we married, I knew he had anger issues but I also thought he loved me. I doubted now that he ever did.
On the other side of the country, the left side as they say, Dave was suffering his own angst. I recorded in my diary on August 5th of that year, “Dave talked about how he felt like a stranger in his own home. He was just there to pay bills and fix things.” I asked him if he and his wife ever had romantic dinners for two in the fruitful years of their marriage and he said NEVER.”I received a card from him that day that said:
Male Voice: “It was easy finding a card that says I love you, but finding the right person to send it to took a lifetime. I love you, always have, and always will!”
Carolynn: For years, Dave had continued singing barbershop. He loved barbershop harmony. He hummed it in the car as we drove along, wherever we went in later years. He was part of a quartet called Nostalgia back then. It was his escape from a troubled marriage he said. I found this old recording buried among his things years later. It was as if he was singing to me even back then.
[repeat clip from Nostalgia Let Me Call You Sweetheart]
[pause]
Carolynn: And now, after talking on the phone for over three months, I was actually going to see him. I was taking my daughter to Los Angeles to go to school.My heart was already his. I couldn’t wait to see him.
[barbershop tag: Where is Love]
Carolynnn: So, on August 10th I dropped my daughter off at her dorm room in Southern California. The flight from Detroit and the drive to my daughter’s college and back to my hotel room in Studio City, near my sister’s house, zapped my energy. I was napping when I heard a knock on the door. I woke with a start, I haven’t even brushed my teeth I thought. I felt unprepared, and scared and excited and shy. I looked through the peephole and there he was. He had a mustache and didn’t look anything like the 19 year old boy I had fallen in love with so long ago. But he was here. I had gotten to know him all over again on the phone. Laughter bubbled out of me when I saw him remove his gum and stick it on the door molding. He had forgotten to remove it before knocking. As I opened the door, I held a plastic mistletoe nosegay over my head. He stepped into the room and without hesitation he kissed me encircling me with his arms. It was as if the thirty years had never happened. It was the kiss I remembered---- we fit together---I wasn’t too short and he wasn’t too tall; two pieces of a puzzle slid into place side by side. In my diary I wrote, “We felt connected. It was magic---again.”
The next day, he slipped me a greeting card under the hotel room door before I woke up. When I retrieved it, I opened it and it said:
Male Voice: “With every look, every smile, every touch . . .I fall in love with you all over again!”
Carolynn: And so our long romance, our love dance, began again. We stumbled as we danced, tripping over life events for even a remembered love dance, could trip you up.
[Barbershop Tag: Give Me Your Hand]
[pause]
Thank you for listening. And my thanks to the Barbershop Harmony Society for the barbershop tags I use in these episodes. And a big thank you to my friend for sharing his voice by reading Dave’s letters home and to the living members of Dave’s Barbershop Group, Nostalgia, Art and Don who were gracious to allow me to use clips from their performances. Also, thanks to Max Zorn for sharing his interviews with Dave which he did many years ago for a class project. In addition, thanks to the University of North Alabama and their Master of Arts in Writing program which propelled me down the path of podcasting. While I am just taking my first baby steps, I am assured by my wonderful professors that it will get easier and for your sake, better.
[pause]
Dance along with Dave and I in Episode Three as we learn new steps, and practice old ones in our love affair waltz while trying to navigate the music of our lives. Our life mixed with the flat notes of daily decisions, and long periods of waiting for harmony.
[theme music Paradise fades in and out]