In the summer at the bus company I worked for, we stripped the paint off buses and repainted them. It was part of their warranty projects. As I have mentioned, they sold and serviced buses as well as contracted with the local school to transport children. They hired a strange dude that played the accordion to paint the buses. I would often be assigned to move around the wheeled scaffolding for him as he sprayed down the buses with the ubiquitous yellow paint.
They also did tour packages to ball games and events as well. They had the contract with a local outdoor concert outfit. The parking was so far away from the amphitheater, we were hired to move the patrons to and from the seating. I saw Styx, Chicago, The Doobie Brothers, and Kansas for free. They were big tickets in the late Seventies. One guy handed me 20 dollars as I unloaded a group after the concert. As he held out the Twenty in one hand and a beer in the other he said, "Thank you dude." Then he turned and promptly fell down the loading stairs head first into the gravel on the side of the road. His buddies just picked him up - his face bloodied - waved me on, and laughed at him to come on.
In the fall, as the corn reaches ten feet high, intersections become dangerous. One morning, early in the route, I only had ten kids on the bus. I remember a kid in the front saying rather calmly, "that guy ain't going to stop." The driveways in Wisconsin are often a mile long. A man in a pickup truck rammed the side of the bus at full speed out of a drive way. It was a classic T-bone. He probably could not see the bus for the corn. Yet, he was obligated to stop at the end of his drive way. The bus was thrown in the opposite ditch where I ran over some small trees as glass and metal flew all around me. Later I was amazed the bus had not rolled over. When we came to a stop we could not get out because the door side was completely caved in. I was dazed but I did a quick assessment of my kids and we all climbed out the back door like we had been trained. Actually, I think a couple of the older kids literally pulled me out the back door. The man in the now crushed truck at the end of his drive way, looked dead.
Here is the amazing thing. I radioed in - no cell phones in the Seventies. As my head cleared I realized I had to crawl back in the bus to activate the two-way radio. My bus had been totaled. A Sheriff's Deputy came - it took about 25 minutes to get out to the boonies - and tended to the other driver. Another bus came and took the kids on to school. I went home. The impact was so significant, the next day I had to have my wisdom teeth pulled. Can you imagine the gnashing of teeth if an accident like that would happen today in this politically correct, law suit ridden, over-protective culture? I am guessing there would be a half dozen ambulances on scene, all kids sent to the hospital, a helicopter for the pickup truck driver, and I probably would have been in the hospital for a week.
About a month after the wreck I quit the bus company and I quit school. I could not focus, it all seemed so pointless. Jack the personnel guy, stood at the shop door and gave me an understanding look. "Call me Bob, don't worry about it," he said. I hopped in my own pickup truck, left my girl friend crying in my rear view mirror and headed out to West Virgina to see Ol' Grover an Army buddy of mine. Ol' Grover was 24. "Ain't no need to be bothered by all that bullshit, Bubba," I remember Ol' Grover saying as he gave me that wise smile of his. "Y'all don't worry about a thing. We all got the cure up in these here parts, just leave it to me," he said. We headed up to the mountains with a couple veteran friends of his and a borrowed camper and played cards and drank beer for a month. Once in a while we went out to hunt a deer or two.
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Corporal Jesse L. Thiry, age 23, of Casco, Wisconsin. Jesse was in the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. Corporal Thiry was killed by hostile fire in Anbar province, Iraq, on April 5, 2004. Casco is a small town just north east of Green Bay. Thiry died in Fallujah, where a mob attacked, killed, and mutilated four U.S. contractors just the week prior. Jesse was the fourteenth Wisconsin military member to die in Iraq. At the time of Thiry's death, 631 U.S. service members had been killed in the Iraq war. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Thiry had been in Iraq less than a month when killed and was part of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force's mission of occupying Fallujah, Ramadi and other cities about 30 miles west of Baghdad. At the time it was one of the areas of Iraq with the most intense fighting during the U.S. military's 11-month deployment in Iraq. The Journal Sentinel also mentioned that Cpl. Thiry was a Marine weapons instructor in Quantico, Virgina. He transfered to an assignment that would take him to Iraq just eight months before he was scheduled to leave the military. Jesse Thiry is survived by his mom and dad Susan and Randy Thiry and seven siblings. He is the fourth of eight children and a graduate of Luxemburg-Casco High School where he wrestled and ran track. He entered the Marine Corps shortly after graduation.
3,608 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
26,558 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.
76 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
109 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
