Kaethe Schwartz was born in 1941 in Poland, and as the Russian Army advanced, her family, ethnic Germans, fled to their homeland. They found refuge near Dresden. Kaethe was 4 years old when the allies fire-bombed the city, an event made famous in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five.”
“The sky was bright red,” she said.
Her family came to this country in 1956 and settled in Nebraska. She was pretty and popular. On the Sunday before Labor Day in 1961, she and two friends went to a German Day Festival in Omaha. They saw some young men sitting at a table. Kaethe asked one of the young men to dance. His name was Tom Hopkins. He was about to enter his senior year at Omaha University.
“I didn’t really know how to do the polka, but I faked it,” he said recently at his home in Glendale. Kaethe, now his wife, rolled her eyes. “He couldn’t dance,” she said.
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They were married in June of 1962. They moved to Virginia where Tom was enrolled in the Marine Corps Officers’ Basic School at Quantico. He graduated in December.
The communist insurgency in South Vietnam was not yet in the news.
A newly minted second lieutenant, Tom was sent to Hawaii. Kaethe went with him. Tom trained and trained and trained some more.
In March of 1965, the first detachment of Marines landed in Danang. Tom’s battalion sailed to Okinawa. Word in the battalion was they would be replacing the Marines who had been sent from Okinawa to Vietnam. Word was wrong. They would be following those Marines.
Tom’s battalion landed in Chu Lai, a little south of Danang. They were supposed to clear the area of Viet Cong for a future air base.
To establish an air base, the Marines had to move the farmers out. That job fell to Tom. He was told that the South Vietnamese government had compensated the farmers for their land, but that did not seem to be the case. The farmers and their families seemed to be taken by surprise as they were forced off their land. Their children cried.
Even now, 60 years later, Tom tears up as he talks about it. He was following orders, but should he have?
Tom’s year in Vietnam was hard. The days were hot. The nights were often so dark you couldn’t see your hands in front of your face. The Viet Cong were not part-time soldiers with old and unreliable weapons. They were full-time soldiers with modern weaponry.
Survival was often a result of good fortune, or so it seemed to Tom. In August of 1965, he was ready to lead a platoon on Operation Starlite until the higher-ups decided at the last minute that he should stay behind and head security for the encampment. The operation turned out to be a meat-grinder. Forty-five Marines were killed, more than 200 wounded. “What if?” thought Tom.
He made it home. He was 6-foot-4 and 160 pounds.
He retired in 1967 as a captain.
He got a job in the pension industry, putting them together and administering them. His work brought him to ӣƵ. He and Kaethe bought a home in Glendale. They raised three children, all of whom earned athletic scholarships to college, two in volleyball and one in diving.
Captain Tom, as I call him, is a thoughtful, spiritual man.
One day, years ago, Captain Tom was outside his house doing some yard work when a cab approached and stopped. A young man got out. “I grew up in this house,” he said.
Captain Tom invited him in. Feel free to look around, he said. The young man stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up. My brother lived in the bedroom at the top of the stairs, he said. He was killed in Vietnam, he said.
Glenn Moller’s nickname was Clipper, which was usually shortened to Clip. He graduated from Kirkwood High School in 1964 and went to Knox College. He played basketball there. After three years, he dropped out with the expectation of being drafted. In fact, he notified the draft board that he was no longer in school. He was drafted.
His situation was different than that of many young men at the time. His father was very much against the war.
Glenn’s cousin, Dave Moller, became a newspaperman, and in 2002 while working for the Union newspaper in Grass Valley, California, he wrote a story about a fiery Christmas dinner at the Mollers’ in 1967. Glenn was home from basic training. The subject of the war came up at dinner. A huge row ensued.
“They don’t understand,” Glenn said to his cousin.
Not long after, he was sent to Vietnam.
He was killed in the early morning hours of Good Friday in March of 1968. He had been in Vietnam for eight weeks. His company was operating along the Cambodian border northwest of Saigon. Their position was overrun by North Vietnamese Army troops.
Of course, Captain Tom did not initially know any of these details. He just knew that a boy who had grown up in the bedroom at the top of the stairs had been killed in Vietnam. He started spending time in the bedroom. He felt the young man’s presence. ”He spent 6,000 nights up there,” Captain Tom told me. “Of course, I feel his presence.”
Glenn was the same age as my sister, Lorna. She died of breast cancer many years ago. She went to Knox College. The enrollment is just over 1,000. They probably knew each other. They almost had to.
“Go on up there,” Captain Tom told me during my recent visit. “Just sit on the bed for a few minutes.”
My mother and grandmother had the magic, but I never did, I said. Still, I went up there and sat on the bed for a few minutes. I came up empty.
But you can be sure that some time during this long Fourth of July weekend, Captain Tom will spend some time in the bedroom at the top of the stairs.
