The Town That Remembered Walt Kessler
“Walt Kessler,” Boone said when I called. “Rifle company, Korea?”
“That’s him.”
“We’ll be there. Full detail. Flag, rifles, bugler.”
“Boone, there might only be a handful of people in those pews.”
“Dottie,” he said, and I could hear him setting something down on his end, the particular care a man like Boone takes with things, “I’ve done this detail for one man standing in an empty parking lot because the family couldn’t make it in from Florida in time. We don’t adjust the honors to the crowd. We adjust the crowd to the honors, best we can, and that’s your job this week, not mine. Mine’s the flag.”
I have thought about that line more than once since.
Thursday afternoon my granddaughter Emily called me from the parking lot of Millbrook High, out of breath.
“Grandma, I told Mrs. Hale about Mr. Kessler in history class. The Korean War unit we’re doing right now. She wants to bring a few of us Saturday if that’s allowed.”
“How many is a few?”
“Six of us, I think. Plus Mrs. Hale. The kids in the history club.”
I sat down hard in my kitchen chair.
“Emily, that would mean the world.”
“Grandma, nobody in my class even knew Korea happened before this unit. Mrs. Hale says most people call it the forgotten war. She says it would mean something for us to actually go.”
I did not cry on the phone with my granddaughter, because I am not a woman who cries easy, but I am not going to pretend my eyes did not sting a little standing in my own kitchen at four o’clock on a Thursday.
“Tell Mrs. Hale yes,” I said. “Tell her we would be honored.”
By Friday night, when I called Les one last time to go over the order of service, he did not sound like the same man from Tuesday’s office.
“Dottie, I think we have a problem,” he said.
My stomach dropped.
“What problem.”
“I own thirty folding chairs. I counted them twice.”
I started laughing, right there on the phone, the kind of laugh that is half relief and half something close to tears.
“How many do you think we’ll need?”
“At this point,” Les said, “I honestly do not know. Lavonne put the notice on the Courier’s web page and people are sharing it. I’ve had six calls today from people asking if they need an invitation.”
“Tell them the only invitation Walt Kessler ever needed was that he served.”
“I’m putting folding chairs in the center aisle and I’m still worried,” Les said. “I’ve never said that about a service with no family listed.”