Need to thank vets driven home

Veteran of the Year Bill Goralski

By David Horst  sandhill7@gmail.com 

Normally I write this column about nature topics. Today, the closest I'll come to that is human nature.

I want to tell you about an experience last weekend. How I experienced it was shaped by growing up while my country was involved in an unjustifiable and wasteful war, and growing up with a father who was happiest when his head was under the hood of a car.

Later in life, my dad bought the car he wanted as a young man. This is a special vehicle, even among collectable cars. It's a 1958 Ford Skyliner, known more popularly as a "retractable."

The car has a solid hardtop that -- thanks to the best engineering of the mid 1950s -- retracts into the trunk. With the passing of my dad almost a year and a half ago, the car has been in my care.

But this story is not about cars, it's about veterans.


For several years, my dad drove his “retract” in Milwaukee's Veterans Day Parade. I've driven in the parade in my father's memory in the past two years, and have been moved by what I've seen.

When I got behind the almost comically huge steering wheel last Saturday and made the dual glasspack mufflers roar, every block along the cold and windy mile-and-a-half route in downtown Milwaukee held a smattering of people there to cheer on the marching bands, the old cars and, primarily, the veterans.

My passengers were Milwaukee County's Veteran of the Year, Bill Goralski, and his wife, Ann. Bill is a towering body attached to a smile. He earned the honor by volunteering with multiple veterans organizations, in addition to other civic work.

"I go to a lot of meetings," he said.

Bill served in Vietnam as a medic with an infantry unit. There was no parade when he got back from Nam.

My memory of that time centers on an adolescent sense of nations being capable of immorality and fear that Selective Service would last long enough for my number to come up. (It did not.)

As we drove past the scattered but energetic crowd, people lifted signs stating their appreciation. "Thank you for MY freedom," one read.

There was a continual exchange of "Thank you for your service!" shouted from the curb and Bill's reply of, "You're welcome. Thanks for coming out today."

"Semper Fi, Marine," he would yell to anyone so identified by a hat or a uniform.

But the exchange that really struck me was between veterans of the "police action" in Vietnam.

"Welcome home," Bill would call out to veterans of his war, and "Welcome home," they would call back.

Almost 40 years later, these veterans still feel compelled to offer the welcome they were deprived of.

The war was wrong. It was an unjustifiable waste of young men. But when opponents of the war got the upper hand at home, their reaction to those who served also was clearly wrong. How lasting the pain of that wrong is, was driven home to me.

Thank you for your service, Bill, then and now. Thank you for your service, Vietnam vets and all veterans of foreign wars. And thank you to those who stood in the cold to say their service will always be remembered.