Remembering The Colonel

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

By Richard Anderson

When I was 10 years old, I joined the Boy Scouts. My Scoutmaster was a neighbor, a friend of my parents, named Fred Peter, but my folks often referred to him as “The Colonel.” Because Col. Peter was a neighbor and a family friend, my contact with him went far beyond our regular weekly Scout meetings.

We shared many a meal together, invited each other to family functions, sometimes just got together to listen to music (The Colonel introduced to me to opera, of which I still have scant knowledge, but, because he admired it so, I hold it in high regard) or to shoot billiards in his pool room. (He was the first person I met who had a pool room, which I thought was pretty cool.) Once I even stayed with him and his wife, Barbara – whom I still to this day call Mrs. Peter – when my parents went away on a vacation.

In short, I got to know a little about The Colonel, including why he was called The Colonel. His house was full of photos, plaques, certificates and even medals from his time in the United States Air Force, where he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by the time of his retirement. There were framed quotes about war from people like General Patton and George Washington on his walls, including one that suggested that there were worse things on the planet than war, though I didn’t understand that at the time.

I don’t remember all the details – I was a kid, a teenager, so no doubt I didn’t give him enough of my attention – but I recall one story he told about being 19 or some such ridiculously young age and helping to navigate a bomber from England to the coast of Normandy, France, as part of D-Day.

I remember another story – or maybe it was part of the same story – about him taking a face full of shrapnel, little pieces of which still sometimes worked their way out from beneath his skin and fell onto his lap or into the sink when he was shaving. Mostly I remember how intense his cigarette-rasped voice could get when he started to talk about honor, duty, patriotism, America, loyalty … .

It’s been years now since his three-pack-a-day habit did what D-Day couldn’t do – kill The Colonel. I’d be lying if I said I thought about him every day. I don’t.

But I do think about him this time of year, around Memorial Day, and around Veterans Day, and now and again throughout the rest of the year, like when Mrs. Peter sends me a birthday card, or when I’m reminded of my Scouting days, or when I pause to think about what it means to be a man, to have honor, to be a patriot, to be an American.
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Remembering The Colonel | Planet JH News Article: Editorial

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