Jim and Barb Pierce, Rudy and Cathy Montoya and myself left Albuquerque at 0600 on Friday, June 3 for Las Vegas, NM. At 0800, in the parking lot of the mortuary, I was reunited with Howard Maguire and SSgt Jim Bennett.
I met Denny, a longtime friend of Mac’s. Mac was the best man at his wedding, and Howard was his godson. He brought a lot of great pictures. Also met Stu Jacobs, Eileen’s husband.
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We went en masse in for the viewing. I have been to a lot of funerals, and I always disliked it when folks said, “Doesn’t he/she look great?” No, they don’t. They look dead. However, I spent a lot of time with Mac in the last few years and he looked great as a dead body in his Dress Blues.
I had my digital camera in the pocket of my funeral suit,
but did not take one single picture. I was not in the mood. My
photo and video eye saw two great pics. One was Stu Jacobs in his
yarmulke, going in alone saying a prayer and placing something in
the casket. Another was SSgt Jim Bennett, who placed his hand on
Mac’s forehead, then put something in the casket. He came to
attention, and gave Mac the slow salute. I do not need to have a
picture of that, it is burned in my memory.
The funeral director told us we needed to leave by 0930, because we only had 30 minutes at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe.
So off we go. We got there just before 1100, but they were tearing up one of the roads leading into the cemetery, so we did not get to the gravesite until 1110. We played the bagpipe version of Amazing Grace while we were moving the casket.
The military service was conducted by the Santa Fe VFW.
CJ, they old guy conducting the service had a patch that read
China-Burma-India. He had the speech down pat. The guys with the
M-1’s were not that good. They had loading problems and were
ragged. Someone needs to teach them how to clean an M-1 Garand.
OK, maybe I am being critical; they do this all day long.
We all think we can still come to Attention, do a Left Face, Right Face and About Face, but you should have seen Jim Bennett do it under a stressful situation. The VFW guys did a good job of folding the flag and presented it to Jim, who was in greens and white gloves. He did a Left Face, two steps, Right Face, three steps and presented the flag to his brother Howard. At this point you are supposed to say something about “With thanks from a grateful nation”. Jim bent down and whispered to Howard for maybe 30 seconds. Left Face. Three steps, Left Face at the end of the casket, a perfect About Face and marched from the tent.
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By then we only had 7 minutes left. Roberto Trammel, a good friend of Mac’s, read a eulogy in Spanish. By then our time was up. There were three other people who had intended to read something, but the cemetery guy told us to leave. Jim Bennett was severely pissed off, but said nothing. Jim Pierce and I went to Jim and asked if there was anything we could do. “No, we can do all this back at the house.” Which probably saved the bones of the cemetery guy.
At the gravesite, some minor acquaintance of Roberto came up to Jim and said, “We have no business in Iraq, if you want to go defend some other country, then do it, but you ought to be here defending us.” Jim turned and walked away, thereby saving another’s bones. Jim was a pro all day long.
So, we got a bunch of chicken and salad, and went to Pendaries. Mac had left his rifles, his shotgun and a couple of handguns to Jim, so he was upstairs taking inventory. “Jesus, Teak, he has enough ammo here to equip an infantry platoon.”
Later, in the living room, Jim and Howard sat and told old family stories, and they came fast and furious, like all the projects that Mac had “forced” them into over the years. This is broke, let’s fix it, this needs to be rebuilt, this needs to be built.
I told them the story of our sojourn in Bolivar, Ohio, where Mac had two of Lee and Terri Bishop’s sons properly sanding and priming her new kitchen cabinet doors. He was sick then, sitting in his lawn chair. The boys would say, “Is this OK, Mac?” He would get up, feel it and say, “Nope, you missed the edges. After you fix that, switch to a finer grit sandpaper.” Both Jim and Howard identified with it immediately.
Later that afternoon, we all got in a circle in Mac’s living room, charged our glasses with Stu Jacobs bourbon, and had the ceremony we had intended. Denny read the St. Crispin’s speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V, Jim Pierce read the OSS proclamation written by Gene Richert. Jim was going to read the poem sent to him by Jimmy Nail, “A Veteran Died Today”, but could not do it. He handed it to me, and I was willing, but Howard wanted to, so he did. We drank the toast to Mac.
It was a great, wonderful and sad day.
Last update: 2005-07-25 by
Dennette@WiZ-WORX.com