RK ARCHIVE - "Mike"

Five years ago, prior to riding my motorcycle to Washington, D. C. the fist time to participate in the annual "Ride to the Wall" and "Rolling Thunder" events and other Memorial Day observances there, I wrote the following remembrance of Mike.

Last year, on the Sunday before Memorial Day, I rode my motorcycle - adorned with "Jim Webb for U. S. Senate" bumper stickers - to Dumfries and met Jim, Mac and Phillip there in order to help promote Webb's candidacy.

After Jim and other current and former military officials gave appropriately proud - and often poignant - speeches about the significance of Memorial Day from atop a flatbed trailer in front of the Harley-Davidson dealership, I was honored to ride with hundreds of other bikers - many of them U. S. military veterans - from there to downtown D. C.

Next weekend I will again ride my motorcycle to Washington, participate in the Memorial Day observances, and visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall once more to pay my respects to Mike and all the others listed upon it.

Mike knew how to solve my problem. "Here, Stevey; wipe your nose with
this!" he encouraged me as I cried and cried, first out of fear of the huge,
boisterous horses moving all around me, and then because my nose was
leaking so badly . . . making things so much worse.

"Noooo . . . I n-n-need something c-c-cleeeean . . . like a hankuchif or a
tishew . . . " I whimpered . . . which I guess shouldn't have been entirely
unexpected for such a little boy who had been on this big planet for
only about four or five years.

"It IS clean," Mike assured me with the authority, confidence and
wisdom of one who was all of nine years old, and with that
trademark, typical big grin adorning his face.

"Sure it's rough; it's supposed to be - it's burlap, but it's clean," Mike
continued to assure and console me as he leaned over and helped me wipe
my face and eyes and blow my nose on the old feed sack. "See?!" he said
enthusiastically as he guided me through my latest crisis. "The horses
won't bother you; they're nice," Mike explained as he led me over to the
nearest beast, boosted me up and let me run my hand down the horse's
mane. "See - there's no reason to cry."

He was right, of course, and I stopped crying, but I never forgot how
gentle and kind he was that day. It is one of my earliest memories of my
first cousin Mike from so many years ago when I was such a small,
frightened "city kid" who had just been introduced to the "country" in a
big, scary way.

On a recent unseasonably warm and dry weekend winter day, I went on one of
my occasional motorcycle/nostalgia rides and ended up at Sherwood Memorial
Park. There I visited Mike's grave amongst the rest of them, situated on
a windy hilltop in Salem, Virginia with a commanding view of much of the
beautiful surrounding Roanoke Valley. My cousin Mike's remains are
buried there in the same part of the cemetery where my parents and
maternal grandparents and other family members are located.

The grave markers never tell enough of the story. They can't. On a
1' X 2' concrete, brass and marble monument there's not enough room
to explain the lives of the deceased; their special personalities, their
ongoing contributions to our lives, their importance to those of us
who can still remember them so vividly. Mike's marker reads:

On this visit I was again surprised at Mike's age when he died - only 23,
just a few years older than our two sons are today.

As well it should be, this cemetery is a peaceful, quiet, solemn place and
I sometimes journey there when I need to slow down the world around
me and spend some uninterrupted time thinking, and remembering . . .

"You guys want to walk up Tinker Mountain?" Mike asked my brother Tony and
me and several of our cousins.

"It's right over there," Mike said, pointing off in the distance toward the
rugged old mountain, several miles away.

"Oh, that's 'Dead Man's Mountain'," I corrected him. "Mom told us all about
it! It looks like a dead man lying under a sheet; this end's the head and
that end's the feet - see?!"

Mike laughed and nodded his head, "Yeah, a lot of people call it that, too.
Y'all want to take a hike up to the top of it?"

"Yeah, let's go!" said a chorus of younger male and female voices, a
cohesive, fun-loving group of first cousins and others who were always
willing to go along with Mike's ideas and plans for us. Of all the
grandchildren of Hazel and Byron Poff, Mike was the oldest and the
biggest and, along with his sister Linda and his brother Jimmy, he
enjoyed taking us on adventures and doing things with us, and we
were always happy to be included.

After getting permission from the various powers-that-be and making promises
to return by a certain time long before dark, we followed Mike over hill and
dell, across creeks and gullies, through meadows and pastures and forests
and finally up the side of Tinker Mountain to its craggy cliffs and rough
rock faces.

What a view! We could see all the way back to where we had started and
everything else for miles and miles around. In the late fifty's there was
no Interstate 81, no huge housing developments, no fast food restaurants,
very few hotels and almost no pollution. It was a clear autumn day and
most of the trees had lost their leaves, so our view was virtually
unobstructed. Mike seemed to know where everything was and he took
his time to point out all the sights to be seen from such a splendid vantage
point. Finally, it was time to head back.

The return trip was even more fun than the one up the mountain since we
followed Mike's example and used gravity and nature to our best possible
advantage. The dry, fallen leaves had choked the draws and gullies and
valleys with their crinkly carcasses, and we could sit and slide on piles of
them down the sides of the mountain and its foothills for long distances
before having to jump up and run to the next available natural sliding
board. Before long we were back at the Stiglich's home - sweaty, out
of breath and with bits of leaves and dirt and pine needles stuck in our
hair and ears and eyes and noses and shirts and pants and socks and
shoes - but back on time, and safe once again.

In 1964 Mike graduated with honors from high school and then went on to
study at the University of Virginia but, after a couple of years, he decided
that college wasn't for him. So, following in the footsteps of his
parents, Myra and Leon - both of whom had served in the military
during World War II - Mike and his sister Linda made the local
news by joining the Air Force together in September, 1966. Mike trained
in Texas, soon earned the rank of staff sergeant and was then stationed
in the Philippines. He became a cryptologist (code breaker, receiver and
transmitter of encrypted messages) with the National Security Agency
and volunteered for service in Vietnam. In October, 1969 his reconaissance
plane caught on fire and crashed in the jungle, killing all six crew members
and bringing to an abrupt end their promising young lives.

I'll never forget the awful emptiness that I felt when I learned of Mike's
death. He had always been bigger than life to me, and now his life was
suddenly over. By then I was nineteen years old and attending the local
community college while working a part-time job for the newspaper. As
difficult as it was for me to deal with Mike's death, I could not imagine
the pain and sense of loss which was being experienced by his parents
and siblings. The world was never the same again for any of us.

Within a month after Mike's funeral, my father committed suicide and - in
addition to all of Dad's other problems and troubles - I often wondered if
Mike's death may have added to his depression enough to result in
such a sad, dramatic end.

"Who's next?!" Mike shouted - maybe a little bit out of breath but never
seeming to grow tired of playing with us - and a dozen voices all
responded in nearly identical fashion . . .

Mike grabbed the closest volunteer
by her arms and, holding firmly onto her thin wrists with his big hands, he
began to spin her around and around while leaning back against the
centrifugal force which was created. In the mid-sixties it was play time
again in our grandparent's expansive upper yard and, as usual, Mike
was in charge of the entertainment.

Soon this latest adventurer's arms and legs were extended straight out as
she found herself flying several feet off the ground in a twirling circle of
delight and near-fear while quietly screaming, "Stop - stop - stop . . . I -
can't - breathe . . . " Then Mike laughed out loud as he slowed his
spinning and allowed her to return gently to the earth and roll around in
the grass under the chestnut trees while giggling away the exhilaration
and regaining her breath.

"Next!" he'd shout again, and we'd all run toward Mike, who, at 6' 3" tall,
was probably one of the world's largest human thrill rides - for yet another
turn, time after time after time . . .

It seemed as though our lives - our youth - would never end. Mike was
the first and the oldest, but he was also the first to go, so he will
forever be the youngest of us all.

Mike's name is appropriately inscribed on "The Wall" of the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and I've sought it out each
time I've visited that impressive, sobering monument since its construction
back in 1993.

will provide you with more information about the plane in which Mike and his crewmates flew, the nature of their mission, their
ultimate fate, and the precise location of Mike's name on "The Wall". And,
at this link; http://www.thevirtua...
Mike's name can be entered into
the search engine where it will provide additional information about
him as well as a brief comment from another radio operator who had
served with him in Vietnam.

Mike and others like him have also been honored elsewhere for their
bravery and courage. In 1998 Mike's parents received a letter from the
United States Department of Defense, recognizing that while serving
as cryptologists with the National Security Agency since its formation
in 1952, Mike and 151 others had made the "ultimate sacrifice" as
"they served in silence". Along with those other heroes, Mike's name
is listed on a monument located within the National Cryptologic Museum
at Fort George G. Meade near Baltimore, Maryland. You can read
more about this additional honor at this link:
http://www.nsa.gov/m...

Were those other 58,225 soldiers - whose names are etched on "The Wall"
of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial . . . or those other 151 individuals -
whose names are inscribed on the cryptologic monument . . . as
essential and important to their families as Mike was to ours? Are they
missed as much as he is today, more than thirty years after his death?

My answer to those questions is quite simple: Yes, probably so. I have
no doubt that they were all special and unique to their families and friends
and other loved ones.

Of one thing I am absolutely certain - I will always miss him, and
there was only one Mike.

Comments

Mike's legacy (cycle12 - 5/20/2007 9:48:06 AM)

Thanks, "Glant"; I'm sure that most of us know people like Mike who can affect us in immeasurably positive and profound ways. He certainly left a lasting impression - and presented a model of consistently kind and gentle behavior - for our immediate family and his many friends.

We all believed that Mike was safe in the Phillipines until he volunteered for service in Vietnam, just one of thousands upon thousands of heroes who did so and did not return from that war.

Let's keep our military men and women in our thoughts and prayers this coming Memorial Day on Monday, May 28.

Steve