Songs That Make Me Think Of The Lovely Bride - Part 1

Movin' On Up

A slightly better class of duvet the next few days.

Melting Pot

Blue Girl's post about her conversation with a friend reminded me of a discussion I once had with a female co-worker.

"What do you and your friend R. do when you take the kids to the cabin?" she asked me.

"We fish and yell at the kids and build a bonfire and drink beer."

"That's it?"

"What else would we do?"

"When I go out of town with my friends we like to talk about things."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Our hopes and dreams. What worries us and what makes us laugh."

"Huh," I said.

"Don't you do anything like that?" she asked.

"One time we tried to melt a beer can in the fire," I said.

Movies I Never Hated - Part 1

The Sound

"I'm so great, I'm so great, I'm the best father ever."

I was singing to the tune of "Edelweiss" as I filled the dishwasher this evening.

"Shut up," the middle boy yelled from downstairs. "I'm trying to watch TV."

I sang louder. The youngest grimaced and tried to concentrate on his Facebook page.

"Shut up!" the middle boy shrieked.

I sang even louder.

"Are you going to help me with my homework?" asked my oldest.

The last homework I helped him with was the Cretaceous Period clay diorama he made in first grade. It was beautiful. He got an E in that class.

Anyway, that was a long time ago and he's done just fine since then without my help. He's in a literature course now, though, and he recognizes my enthusiasm for the subject even if he doesn't understand it.

"Of course I'll help," I said. "What do you need to do?"

"Annotate this essay."

"Let me see it," I said. "Oh, Annie Dillard. She's great. Are you going to read 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek?'"

"I hope not."

"You should. It's remarkable. And you should read Sigurd Olson and Edward Abbey and Aldo Leopold. I've got their books downstairs somewhere."

"Can you just help me with the homework?"

"Okay. Here's what you want to do." We worked through Dillard's "The Death of a Moth," talking about decay and artistic passion and rebirth.

"Does that make sense?" I asked him after we'd talked for a while.

"Yeah, sure," he said, eager to finish this assignment so he could get back to his chemistry. When he needs help with science the Lovely Bride is able to provide it, and with much less wild-eyed enthusiasm than I bring to literature.

"God, I love this stuff," I said to myself after the oldest went back to the study.

"What?" asked the youngest.

"Edelweiss!" I sang.

"Be quiet!" the middle child yelled.

The Bravest Man I Ever Met

Roy P. Benavidez, Recipient Of Medal of Honor, Dies at 63
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Friday, December 4, 1998

Roy P. Benavidez, a former Green Beret sergeant who received the Medal of Honor from President Ronald Reagan for heroism while wounded in the Vietnam War, then fought to keep the Government from cutting off his disability payments, died on Sunday at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He was 63.

Mr. Benavidez, who lived in El Campo, Tex., suffered respiratory failure, the hospital said. His right leg was amputated in October because of complications of diabetes.

On the morning of May 2, 1968, Mr. Benavidez, a staff sergeant with the Army's Special Forces, the Green Berets, heard the cry ''get us out of here'' over his unit's radio while at his base in Loc Ninh, South Vietnam. He also heard ''so much shooting, it sounded like a popcorn machine.''

The call for aid came from a 12-man Special Forces team -- 3 Green Berets and 9 Montagnard tribesmen -- that had been ambushed by North Vietnamese troops at a jungle site a few miles inside Cambodia.

Sergeant Benavidez jumped aboard an evacuation helicopter that flew to the scene. ''When I got on that copter, little did I know we were going to spend six hours in hell,'' he later recalled.

After leaping off the helicopter, Sergeant Benavidez was shot in the face, head and right leg, but he ran toward his fellow troops, finding four dead and the others wounded.

He dragged survivors aboard the helicopter, but its pilot was killed by enemy fire as he tried to take off, and the helicopter crashed and burned. Sergeant Benavidez got the troops off the helicopter, and over the next six hours, he organized return fire, called in air strikes, administered morphine and recovered classified documents, although he got shot in the stomach and thigh and hit in the back by grenade fragments.

He was bayoneted by a North Vietnamese soldier, whom he killed with a knife. Finally, he shot two enemy soldiers as he dragged the survivors aboard another evacuation helicopter.

When he arrived at Loc Ninh, Sergeant Benavidez was unable to move or speak. Just as he was about to be placed into a body bag, he spit into a doctor's face to signal that he was still alive and was evacuated for surgery in Saigon.

Sergeant Benavidez was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in 1968, but a subsequent recommendation from his commanding officer that he receive the Medal of Honor, the military's highest award for valor, could not be approved until a witness confirmed his deeds.

That happened in 1980, when Brian O'Connor, the Green Beret who had radioed the frantic message seeking evacuation, was found in the Fiji Islands. Mr. O'Connor told how Mr. Benavidez had rescued eight members of his patrol despite being wounded repeatedly.

President Reagan presented the Medal of Honor to Mr. Benavidez at the Pentagon on Feb. 24, 1981.

Shortly before Memorial Day 1983, Mr. Benavidez came forward to say that the Social Security Administration planned to cut off disability payments he had been receiving since he retired from the Army as a master sergeant in 1976. He still had two pieces of shrapnel in his heart and a punctured lung and was in constant pain from his wounds.

The Government, as part of a cost-cutting review that had led to the termination of disability assistance to 350,000 people over the preceding two years, had decided that Mr. Benavidez could find employment.

''It seems like they want to open up your wounds and pour a little salt in,'' Mr. Benavidez said. ''I don't like to use my Medal of Honor for political purposes or personal gain, but if they can do this to me, what will they do to all the others?''

A White House spokesman said President Reagan was ''personally concerned'' about Mr. Benavidez's situation, and 10 days later the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret M. Heckler, said the disability reviews would become more ''humane and compassionate.''

Soon afterward, wearing his Medal of Honor, Mr. Benavidez told the House Select Committee on Aging that ''the Administration that put this medal around my neck is curtailing my benefits.''

Mr. Benavidez appealed the termination of assistance to an administrative law judge, who ruled in July 1983 that he should continue receiving payments.

When President Reagan presented Mr. Benavidez with the Medal of Honor, he asked the former sergeant to speak to young people. Mr. Benavidez did, visiting schools to stress the need for the education he never had.

Born in South Texas, the son of a sharecopper, Mr. Benavidez was orphaned as a youngster. He went to live with an uncle, but dropped out of middle school because he was needed to pick sugar beets and cotton. He joined the Army at 19, went to airborne school, then was injured by a land mine in South Vietnam in 1964. Doctors feared he would never walk again, but he recovered and became a Green Beret. He was on his second Vietnam tour when he carried out his rescue mission.

Mr. Benavidez is survived by his wife, Hilaria; a son, Noel; two daughters, Yvette Garcia and Denise Prochazka; a brother, Roger; five stepbrothers, Mike, Eugene, Frank, Nick and Juquin Benavidez; four sisters, Mary Martinez, Lupe Chavez, Helene Vallejo and Eva Campos, and three grandchildren.

Over the years, fellow Texans paid tribute to Mr. Benavidez. Several schools, a National Guard armory and an Army Reserve center were named for him.

But he did not regard himself as someone special.

''The real heroes are the ones who gave their lives for their country,'' Mr. Benavidez once said. ''I don't like to be called a hero. I just did what I was trained to do.''

Electrolyte In Blue

My youngest's basketball team played its first tournament of the year last weekend. It was ugly, even leaving aside the ambulance ride one of his teammates got, courtesy of a collision between head and floor that fortunately turned out to have caused no lasting harm.

After the game, I was standing in the hall near the coach.

"You're not going to be my first parent complaint, are you?" he asked.

"The only complaint I have is that my kid isn't crying after a game like that" I said. "Hell, I'm crying. Other than that, I've got nothing."

"Good."

"Why do you think there's going to be a complaint?"

"I told one of the kids to get his head out his ass."

"Mine?"

"No. Another one."

"You should have told mine that. I'll tell him on the way home."

"I'm more worried about your kid's eyesight," said the coach. "He seems to have trouble distinguishing between our red uniforms and the other team's blue uniforms when he's passing the ball."

"I'll buy him a color wheel," I said.

"Shut up," muttered my son, who'd been listening to the conversation.

"Do you want to go visit your friend at the hospital?" I asked.

"No," said my kid.

"Then don't tell me to shut up again."

"Can we go home now?" asked my kid.

"Yes. Daddy needs to medicate his pain."

"Does that mean we have to stop at the liquor store on the way?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Will you buy me a Powerade before we leave?"

"Sure. What color do you like, red or blue?"

"Blue."

"See," I told the coach. "There's your problem."