Friday, November 05, 2010
Veteran passes on lessons of patriotism
Gail Jasper
Priscilla Richardson is columnist The Botetourt View. You can contact her at 981-3430 or via e-mail.
Priscilla Richardson
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As Veteran's Day rolls around once again, we all need a reminder of the sacrifices our armed forces made to keep this nation free. Some died, some were disabled, some suffer still with post traumatic syndrome. Others seemingly came back from their service intact, but they still lost out in career and family time. And we need to remember and honor all of them for what they gave.
One to remember: Buchanan's Gail Jasper, 65. He served as an Army captain in Vietnam as the commander of a transport company, hauling supplies. Was this dangerous work? "I think so," he said. "We were near combat. When you're shot at, you're not looking at the bullets, you just get out of the area." He earned two Bronze Star medals, but he feels the ones disabled are the "real heroes." Today he keeps his captain's jacket hanging in a closet in his home, next to that of his father, a World War II vet.
Jasper prepared for his eight and a half year military career that started in 1968 by doing his college prep work at a military school, Fork Union, and by getting his undergraduate degree in Kentucky.
Collecting Lionel trains, starting at age 5, hooked him early in his life. "I got a lot as presents." And now as an adult, "I've had a train set up since we moved here in 1975, but I've changed it three or four times." The tooting engines with their cars, depots and other village accessories in his garage cover an area larger than many living rooms. Although he once belonged to a model train organization he doesn't any more. "People have drifted into other things."
You may remember Jasper as the general manager of the Exit 150 truck stop owned by Travel Centers of America. He retired from there but: "I was bored." So he went back to work, this time as a teller at the Fincastle office of the Bank of Fincastle.
One thing engaging him over the years has been his Buchanan home. He and his Iowa-born wife Patricia moved into his grandfather's 1837 home. He met her when she was teaching military dependents at a school in Germany. Back home, she taught school for 37 years and Jasper admires her service, too -- "service to other people's children."
Their Pattonsburg home, now a showplace that they sometimes have opened for benefit home tours, has needed a lot of work to retain its beauty -- and to add electricity, modern plumbing and so forth.
Maybe living in a piece of family history influences him, but Jasper likes to talk to his grandchildren, one in the area and the other in North Carolina, about patriotism and service to the country. He admires Joe Johnson, one of our local military heroes. "Think about what he gave to this country. We would not have the freedom we have today if not for those like him. People here never experience how people live under a socialist dictator type of government. They think every place in the world is like it is here.
"And think of all those soldiers I met in Vietnam. People don't realize what a soldier had to go through in a combat area. They don't realize the patriotism, the difficult experience of losing friends. It irritates me that people don't realize that."
Eventually Jasper will retire again and his and his wife will travel, visiting family around the country and taking it easy. No boredom this time. And he'll never forget the patriotism and sacrifices others made.
