Contacts near and far

Grannie Annie walked into our big box store and a lady greeted her. “You are Dick Trail’s wife,” was her statement. Grannie wondered how in the world the lady made the connection and the answer had to do with the lady reading this column. Roxy and her husband live about 50 miles away in a rural setting and have converted their big red barn into a lodging and event center. It sounds like an adventurous place to visit and maybe spend the night with my bride.

Now understand that this old country boy has spent a lot of time in a barn but I never slept in one as in a bed and breakfast. On our farm the barn was big and white. My folks milked cows and kid’s chores included milking and feeding our Holstein cows. My granddad also had a big white barn used in his draft horse business. He occasionally held dances there during the 1930’s, dances with a real live band.

Fifty miles away. Quite a subscription area for this daily paper. Now in the era of electronic communication, I think they call it social media, readers live all over this country. Not long ago I was contacted by a gentleman that was searching for stories about one of my college classmates and friend now deceased. Obviously he had read one of my past columns and was in search of his hero.

The story went like this: “Your friend Robert Delligatti played a huge part in getting tons of folks out of Saigon in 1975. When our group’s buses were stopped by the Vietnamese police at the airport entrance, it was Major Delligatti who negotiated our release. I was told one of the buses we rode on was stolen by Major Delligatti himself earlier in the day. If you have any good stories about our hero Del, will you please shoot them to me?” From Theo Tran.

Yes I spent four years of military academy experience with friend Del. He was a big man, soft looking but tough, obviously of Italian descent. After graduation I ran into him only once. We had hurricane evacuated our KC-97’s out of our base on Cape Cod to a base in upstate New York. Ann never thought much of leaving her and two, then three, little kids to stay and weather the storm! At our temporary shelter I found Del holding forth in the officers’ club bar. He was flying the B-47 at that time. It was a hot day, he had been grocery shopping on his way home and stopped by the bar to see if he had some old friends there. We wondered if his ice cream melted on the front seat as he stayed way too long.

I never ran into him again in my twenty some years in the Air Force. I was dimly aware that he had been in Saigon when the country fell to the North and all the chaos that ensued as we tried to evacuate as many of our fellow South Vietnam military members and families as possible. Evidently friend Del made a difference in one he helped save one Theo Tran.

Not so long ago I received notice that Del’s beloved wife had died. Then he too passed away within a month or so later. Mutual friends said that he died of a broken heart. One of the Lord’s good people.

I passed the request for information on friend Delligatti on to my Academy Class Alumni magazine and it will be interesting to see what returns that I can pass along to Mr. Tran,

The TV screens have been filled with tributes to “Civil Rights Icon John Lewis, Representative from Alabama. Yes the man passed away after some 35 years in Congress. The President has even decreed that flags be flown in his honor. Little mention that the same John Lewis was a Hillary voter who hated President Trump. No matter it did take courage for Lewis and his compatriots to march to Selma, Alabama accompanying the Reverend Martin Luther King because some of the pictures that exist today show police, of some description, taking action against the marchers.

I have always wondered why in the world John Lewis elected to become part of the Democrat Party. That party was an advocate of slavery and following the civil war authored the laws in our south of segregation the kept people with black skin from voting and all the other things in live that most people enjoy. Those were the very things that Martin Luther King was organizing and speaking against. Evidently John Lewis was his right hand man and the Republican Party members in the South already stood for things that the Negroes were striving for. Possibly Lewis figured that he could do more good on the inside, joining the Democrat Party than becoming a Republican and fighting against them. I think that I can understand that sort of logic also.

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail