The Janitor Who Came to My Graduation

On the Field

When they released us, families poured out onto the blacktop. It was a flood of hugs and phones and people crying in the cold sun.

Ardith got to me first. She came at me in that lavender windbreaker with her gray curls blowing all over the place and wrapped me up so hard my beret nearly slid off.

She was crying. Not polite crying. Real crying, the kind that shakes.

“Your daddy,” she said into my shoulder. “Your daddy would have been so proud, honey. I know he would. I just know it.”

I held on to her. I had not been hugged like that since my father’s funeral.

Mr. Varga did not hug. He stood right beside us, very straight, his hands at his sides, his chin up, his jaw working. Families and soldiers in uniform moved all around us and he did not move an inch.

When Ardith finally let me go, I turned to him.

“Private Dorrance,” he said. His voice cracked on it. “Welcome to the United States Army.”

A woman near us, somebody’s grandmother in a sweatshirt, said, “Oh, let me get one of all three of you.” Ardith handed her phone over without letting go of my arm.

That is the picture. Ardith crying and hugging me, me in my green uniform with my beret crooked, and Mr. Varga standing very straight beside us, looking off across the parade ground like the whole Army was watching.

Ardith posted it before we were even off the field. She did not ask me first, but I would have said yes. She wrote:

“Our girl Maci Dorrance graduated Army basic today at Fort Leonard Wood. Otis did his basic right here in 1976. Two soldiers from our little town, fifty years apart. We could not be prouder of her.”

That was all. It was not aimed at anybody. Ardith Varga does not aim things at people.

But Ardith Varga and my mother had been Facebook friends for nine years.

The Pin

We had lunch together one more time before I had to report back. Then we stood in the parking lot by their Buick, and the wind came across the lot and nobody wanted to say goodbye.

Mr. Varga reached into the pocket of his navy jacket.

“I’ve been carrying this around since Monday,” he said. “Ardith said I should give it to you in the car. I said no, I’d do it standing up.”

It was a small enamel pin. A red number one on an olive drab shield, the Big Red One, the division he served in at Fort Riley almost fifty years ago. The enamel was worn at one corner where a thumb had rubbed it for a long time.

“I wore that patch on my shoulder for eight years,” he said. “Bought the pin the day I got out. It’s been in my sock drawer for forty. It ought to go back in the Army. You’re the Army now.”

“Mr. Varga, I can’t take this.”

“You can, and you will. That’s an order from a sergeant.”

I held it in my palm. It was warm from his pocket.

“You fed me every day for four years,” I said. “You never once asked why I was there so early.”

“Didn’t need to ask,” he said. “I was there early too.”

Ardith turned away and pretended to look for something in her purse for a long time.

Then Mr. Varga did something I had never seen him do. He brought his right hand up, slow and correct, and saluted me.

I know the rules. I know a civilian is not owed a salute and a private does not get one from anybody. I did not care. I came to attention in that parking lot and returned it, and we held it, the two of us, until Ardith said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you two,” and hugged us both.