Rodney Rhodes - Korean War Veteran

A man to ride the river with.

Rodney Rhodes hailed from the Louisiana Bayou country where he was born and raised. He worked as an electrician in NYC after serving his nation during the Korean War. Rodney went through some of the toughest fighting of the Forgotten War and like so many other men and women who served with honor doing that conflict deserves recognition for his service.

However, I am including him here because he became a good friend while I worked at the Trenton, New Jersey Vet Center on Jersey Street. He was a quiet good natured guy who always had time to chat, and in fact visited the Vet Center many days for that purpose alone.

We shared coffee and donuts and discussed his war and mine (Vietnam) and what life became for us after returning home to learn that although we had changed beyond self-recognition, everyone else seemed like the same folks we left behind.

I always told people who asked my age that I was 22 --or whatever I was at the time-- going on 90. He not only found this funny, he knew exactly how I felt and what I meant.

When the Vet Center helped set up a tribute to Korean War veterans to honor them and the local Korean population at the Olympic baseball game between the USA and Korea in Trenton, Rodney was a great supporter and helped in every way possible.

At some point within the years he came to the Vet Center, he visited Washington DC and stopped at the Wall to honor Vietnam dead. He took a terrific photo, had it framed and presented it to me at a ceremony at the Vet Center.

I made him sign the back, which he did including the inscription I used to open this post. When I asked him what he meant, Rodney said, "Where I'm from, riding the river is a way of life. A man to ride the river with is a man you can trust your life to."

Then he told me about a friend of his who he rode the river with years ago. They passed under a low hanging live oak tree. As they did, a snake dropped from the tree into the boat. It wasn't the type of snake anyone might want to have that close since it was a water moccasin. His friend pulled out a pistol he always carried and blasted a couple shots at the snake. He missed the snake, but sank the boat. They remained friends because he knew the man shot at the snake to keep them both from getting poisoned many miles away from the nearest hospital.

Rodney had a way of smiling that told more than his words. After that story, I knew a lot more about him and his values than I had before and knew that he too was a man to ride the river with.

Katie Hess

Katie Hess

Katie was an Irish Setter with a human heart and the ability to understand almost empathically, human emotion.

I can’t recall when I first met her. She was part of the Hess family of Poquott, New York. Brad and Kevin Hess were good friends.

Kevin introduced me to the Who. I was sitting down on the beach under an inverted sailboat that belonged to Mimi Rattigan (Mimi died in a car crash several years later). It was a rainy afternoon, so the beach was empty. Kevin showed up, crawled under the boat with Katie, and said he had heard the most amazing new album titled Tommy by the Who.

I fell into a quagmire of Abbott and Costello and asked Tommy the Who? thinking I’d misunderstood him.

Kevin grinned and I should’ve understood, but due to what I’d been inhaling, I failed the test. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”

We went back and forth a few times and I finally figured it out when he started laughing and pointing at me like I was a beached flounder.

Not long after, I went through a bad break-up that drove me into a stupor of self-doubt and misunderstanding.

The rock in the picture was once used by local Native American women to grind corn while watching their men in the harbor fishing.

That boulder, dragged into location by a glacier, became a place for me to retreat when I needed time to think and stare at the blasted movies, which insisted on grinding through my head explaining what-ifs and such.

Every day I sat on the rock, Katie would show up and in her casual way demand attention until she decided to drape herself on the rock alongside me and relax with a possessiveness only an animal like she could get away with. She helped me re-evaluate my opinions and get on with attempting to live a worthwhile life.

She was a good friend and deserves recognition.

Sandra Diane Strassenburg

His loneliness can be found in the tree reaching upward
Touching the sky in dark silence
A naked splendor
His deepest loves remain within the heart
Truth the makings of the soul
A timeless image
His passions are hidden from all but the wind
Who travels the nights
In search of nature’s purity
A simple beauty
His innocent birth reflects upon the aging earth
As the morning explodes in glory
And a proud shadow
Echoes the creation of man

Sandra Diane Strassenburg - Winter 1971

What love have you to touch my dawn
With dew moist lips upon my own
The world sleeps
So we may be alone with the parting night
At peace with ourselves . . .
I have given my love to you and the day
What heart have you to turn away?

Sandra Diane Strassenburg - Spring 1972

If ever I knew a person whose life was a fragile gift like a thistle’s seed on the wind that person would be Sandy. She lived with personal demons created for her by well meaning adults when she was twelve years old.

She was informed that she would not live to see her thirtieth birthday due to a birth defect received while in her mother’s womb. At the time, the early 1950s the new drug thalidomide (side effects either unknown or kept from patients for obvious reasons) to assist mothers dealing with the extreme discomfort of pregnancy, created severe physical defects in fetuses. Many of our generation were scarred by this, as were their parents emotionally.

She is the one person that fills me with deep regret caused by my inconsistent behavior while she and I were married. We met the year I returned from Vietnam.

I was filled with the nightmares of PTSD brought on by combat experiences impossible to forget without chemical assistance. The aid I chose was alcohol, which kept me in its fog throughout the years she and I lived together and beyond.

This is not an excuse, but a fact. None-the-less the remorse I still feel eleven years after her death is as real now as it was the last time I saw and spoke with her.

That night, Christmas Eve 1981, I had visited my Aunt Betty Titmus at Saint Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, New York. The weather was cold and wet, but not cold enough for snow. As I drove my old 1962 Mercedes Benz along 25A where it runs past Port Jeff harbor, I saw a woman hitch hiking. She wore a short skirt and a light spring jacket. I slowed and stopped to pick her up.

As the car rolled by her, I saw her face and wondered if she would get in. She did and made some kind of comment about how weird it was that I was the person who stopped.

I felt the same way.

I had completed more than two years of sobriety by practicing the 12 step of AA by then. Sandy was drunk and had had a fight with her family, walked out of the house determined to get to The Four Corners Bar in Setauket. My AA sponsor would’ve told me to try to get her sober, which I did by delaying the drive, and parking behind the bar to talk for around three hours.

We discussed what happened with her and her family, and the harder I tried to persuade her stay out of the bar, to go home and spend Christmas night where I thought she should, the more determined she became to do the opposite.

She finally left the car when she had gotten disgusted with my attempts and like a moth drawn to light, entered the bar without a glance back to see if I watched.