The younger spawn and I drove over to see the 3/5-scale memorial yesterday afternoon. Just as I do when visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., on this Veterans Day I sought out one name in particular.
Wilma and my mother grew up across the street from one another in southeastern Ohio. They stayed in touch through the years and our families often visited each other during my own childhood. Wilma's elder son, Tom, turned out to be the kid that every mother dreams of -- a good student, an Eagle Scout, the straightest of straight arrows.
The much-older Tom became something of an uncle to me. I was especially fascinated with his love of (and excellence in) Scouting, joining Cub Scouts about the time that he enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Late in the summer of 1966, Tom began a tour in Southeast Asia. While operating near Phouc Vinh on 6 November, the platoon he led was pinned down by enemy fire. Seeing that his machine gunner was wounded, Tom advanced to tend to the soldier. He then reloaded the machine gun, picked it up and charged toward the enemy, laying down suppressing fire that allowed his platoon to withdraw and redeploy.
Tom fell mortally wounded just short of the enemy position. For his gallantry, 1st Lt. Thomas Ralph Murphy posthumously was awarded the Silver Star.
He was 24 years old and I, at the age of 9, suddenly had much more to look up to.
A couple of years after Tom's death, Wilma summoned me to her home. Reminders of her son, from sports trophies to the flag that draped his coffin, surrounded us in the sitting room. She gestured to several shoe boxes on the floor at her feet.
"I want you to have these," she said, her voice choked with emotion. "Tom would want you to have these."
Holding my breath, I lifted the lid from the box closest to me. Inside that and the other packages were hundreds of mementos of Tom's years in Scouting -- neckerchiefs and slides, hats and patches and pins and more. I was as stunned as I was honored.
From that moment and until my Scouting days were done, when donning my olive-green Boy Scout uniform I made a practice of wearing at least one item that had been Tom's -- as long as I'd earned it myself, of course. It was my tribute to his memory, his example.
I surely felt his presence, perhaps even his approval, the day that my Scoutmaster pinned an Eagle Scout medal to my chest.
As I stood before panel 12E yesterday afternoon, tears welled in my aging eyes. I reached out with my right hand, touched the name at the end of line 34 and whispered my thanks.
My left hand was in my pocket, clutching Tom's Boy Scout knife.
