The Town That Remembered Walt Kessler
Les Hartman has run Hartman Funeral Home in Millbrook, Ohio for twenty six years, and in all that time I had never heard him say what he said to me on a Tuesday afternoon in October, standing in his back office with a cup of coffee going cold in his hand.
“Dottie, I need you to hear this straight, because I don’t want you blindsided Saturday. Walt Kessler’s service. Best guess, we might get four people.”
“Four,” I said.
“Maybe. Could be less.”
I run the ladies auxiliary at VFW Post 4417. Thirty one years this spring. I have organized more funerals for our men than I can count on both hands twice over, flag details and potluck lunches and folding chairs set up in church basements, and in all that time I had never once heard a number that small attached to one of ours.
“Walt doesn’t have family,” Les said. “No children. His wife passed in 1991. His sister’s been gone eleven years. We called every number in his address book and half of them are disconnected, and the other half are strangers who bought the house years after whoever used to live there moved or died.”
“He was in Korea,” I said.
“1951 to 1953. Army, 2nd Infantry Division, rifle company. Three campaign stars on his separation papers.” Les slid the folder across the desk like he was handing me something fragile. “Ninety five years old. Lived alone out on Route 9 above the hardware store he used to work the counter at. The woman who found him was the mail carrier. She said the mail had been piling up for two days.”
I looked at the thin folder. A discharge paper. A Social Security card. A photograph so old the edges had gone soft and brown, a young man in uniform with a grin that did not match the rest of what I knew about Walt Kessler, which was almost nothing, because nobody in Millbrook under the age of seventy really knew Walt Kessler at all. He came into the hardware store on Thursdays sometimes to buy washers and screws he probably did not need, and he nodded at people on the sidewalk, and that was the whole of it.
“Four people,” I said again, because I needed to say it out loud to believe it.
“I’m sorry, Dottie. I know that’s not what you want to hear.”
“It’s not,” I said. “And it’s not going to happen.”
Les looked at me the way my husband Reuben looks at me when I have already made up my mind about something and he knows arguing is a waste of good breath.
“What are you going to do,” he said. Not really a question.
“I’m going to make some calls.”