American Patriot

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by Robert Coram


  BUD returned to Hawaii in April 1945, on the same day President Franklin Roosevelt died. He was assigned to a guard company, a unit of Marines who pulled sentry duty at military installations.

  The unit was sandwiched between the Navy submarine base and Hickam Field. Hickam was the Army’s principal air base in Hawaii and was adjacent to Pearl Harbor. The Marines in the Pacific were building up their forces to invade Japan, and Hawaii remained very much on a wartime footing. It was almost impossible for enlisted Marines to obtain a liberty pass and go into Honolulu. This restriction was greatly appreciated by most locals. The mere sight of a Marine caused local parents to go on full alert. They thought GIs in general and Marines in particular were primitive beings who sought carnal knowledge of anything with a heartbeat.

  There is a considerable body of anecdotal evidence to support this belief.

  Bud was not big enough to hold much liquor. His ID card showed he was now five foot seven and weighed 123 pounds. Nevertheless, he was a Marine, and Marines are known to drink. On a rare trip into Honolulu, he drank more bourbon than he could handle. He did not want to vomit in the bar — he had seen too much of that back at the Lakeshore Inn — so he lurched outside, sat on the curb, and threw up into the gutter. A local bus driver was outraged at the sight and veered toward the curb. Had Bud not had quick reflexes and rolled over backward, the bus would have run over his legs.

  On August 6, an atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. Three days later, another fell on Nagasaki. Everyone knew the war was over and America’s young men soon would be going home. But liberty still was scarce — too scarce for Bud Day. The countless hours he spent running the hills and hunting along the Big Sioux had heightened skills that remain undeveloped in most of us. He soon figured out a way to weave between fences, climb over buildings, and thwart Marine Corps security. On one of his illegal forays into town, he walked by the officers’ club at Hickam Field, where he saw a Navy officer jump out of a jeep and leave it at the curb while he went inside on what must have been a quick errand.

  It was not quick enough, because Bud stole the jeep and drove into Honolulu.

  Shortly thereafter, the shore patrol saw him and figured — as Day says — Something is wrong with this picture (only officers had jeeps) and pulled him over. The shore patrolman did not ask a single question. Instead he walked up to Bud and said, “You’re under arrest.”

  Bud was tossed into the brig and charged with two offenses: “Spec 1: Knowingly and willfully applying to his own use a one-quarter-ton truck, license #87230, the property of the U.S. Navy on 10 Sept. 45. Spec 2: AWOL from 10:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. 10 Sept. 45 when he was apprehended by the Shore Patrol.”

  On September 26 he faced a summary court-martial. He was convicted, sentenced to twenty-eight days in the brig, and reduced in rank to PFC.

  The Marine Corps imposed harsh discipline on its members. But the war was all but over, and liberating an officer’s jeep was understood to be more of a prank than a serious crime. Day served his time in the brig, but his reduction in rank was remitted on the condition that he be a good boy until he shipped home.

  ONE day in November 1945, Bud’s mother looked out the kitchen window of the house on Riverside Boulevard and saw Curly, Bud’s Irish water spaniel that had been missing for almost three years. Curly was sitting by the road, waiting. Christine turned to Ed and said, “Bud’s coming home.”

  Ed walked out to the street and stood beside Curly. The two looked up and down the road. “Bud’s coming home,” Ed said to everyone who passed.

  Bud did not know it, but his father was fiercely proud of him and often boasted about his son’s serving in the Pacific. He kept all of Bud’s letters and read them to anyone who would listen.

  On the boat ride from Hawaii to California, Bud did a lot of thinking. His Marine Corps record was not spectacular. His first year in the Corps was spent in training and in hospitals. Then some eighteen months on an island far from combat where he passed the time reading and fishing and moonshining. This was topped off with a court-martial and time in the brig.

  Nevertheless, he had learned much. Years later he looked back and said, “When I came out of the Marine Corps, I was going to become a professional. I was going to do something. The Marines got me motivated.”

  Bud went to Chicago to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, the closest release point to Sioux City for Marines, and on November 24, 1945, he was discharged as a corporal. Because he had been court-martialed, he was not eligible for the Good Conduct Medal that most enlisted men receive upon discharge.

  Not sticking around, he jumped aboard a train for the twelve-hour ride back home to Sioux City, took a streetcar out to Riverside, stepped down, and began walking the last few blocks to 2222 Riverside Boulevard. He was in his Marine Corps uniform, and his seabag was over his shoulder.

  Ed and Curly were waiting in front of the house.

  3

  Preparation

  AMERICA was thrumming with energy when, in 1945, the sixteen million young men who had gone away to war as boys came home as hardened young warriors. The country’s great economic engine was running on all cylinders, and the young veterans were running at full throttle. Their best young years had been spent fighting across Europe or slogging through Pacific hellholes. But now the job was done and it was time to move on.

  On behalf of a grateful nation, the government opened wide the public coffers. To ease the transition into civilian life, every veteran received $20 per week for fifty-two weeks. Recipients called themselves the “52-20 Club.” But far more important was the GI Bill, one of the most beneficial and far-reaching domestic programs in American history. The legislation gave every GI a month of college for every month spent in the military, plus a bonus for being overseas or in a combat zone. The GI Bill also paid each veteran $50 per month and covered the cost of books and supplies, enabling a generation of men to get a college education, to move beyond their circumstances.

  Bud Day would take full advantage of the GI Bill. But when he returned to Riverside, there were more immediate priorities. One of the first things Day did after moving back into the house was to stand face-to-face with his father and lay down the law. “There will be no more abuse of Mom,” he said. “No more carping, no more criticizing, no more sarcasm. You will treat her with respect.”

  Thereafter Ed’s treatment toward his wife softened. He was still critical and demeaning — that was his nature — but not to the degree he once had been.

  Bud did not call Doris immediately. Even though they had been writing to each other for almost three years, and even though their letters had moved into a realm more serious than correspondence between friends, it was not yet time to renew their relationship. Bud was still in his wild-rabbit days, and he wanted to raise hell and howl at the moon. He wanted to run with his old friends and catch up on the lost years; he wanted to eat Bing Bars and drink something other than Horrible Hooch.

  Some veterans would spend years riding the hoot-owl trail. But for Day this period would not last long. Bud contacted a few other Riverside boys, all members of the 52-20 Club. One was Frank Work. Even in the Marines, the fighting skills of Frank Work were such that he had been picked to serve as the enlisted Marine aide and bodyguard to Admiral William “Bull” Halsey. Work was with Halsey on the deck of the battleship Missouri during the Japanese surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay, and for the rest of his life, whenever that historic moment was replayed on the History Channel or on documentaries, and the camera panned across the American delegation, Work would point and say, “That’s me standing behind Halsey.”

  Day and Work and Paul Jackson and several other young Riverside veterans set off on a period of drinking and hell-raising. Their favorite bar was the Beer Cave, a basement bar down on Pierce Street where young women hung out. Day had a debonair and courteous manner that women found attractive. “Three or four of us would walk into a bar, and within minutes Bud had a girl on his arm,” Work remembers.

&
nbsp; Sometimes Day and his Riverside friends went out to the Lakeshore Inn, drank Cuba libres, and fought with anyone who looked at them crossways. Work remembers that one night he and Day were drinking and listening to the band play the “Clarinet Polka” when he noticed Day staring at a man across the bar. Suddenly Day stood and hitched up his belt.

  “Where you going?” Work asked.

  “I’m going over there and whip that guy’s ass.”

  Work looked at the man and then looked back at his friend. Day was five foot seven and weighed 135 pounds. The guy he wanted to fight was about six foot two and weighed well over 200 pounds.

  “Don’t do that,” Work said.

  But Day picked a fight and was holding his own until the manager tossed him out.

  Then Work went over, picked a fight with the same guy, and wiped the floor with him before he too was tossed out, and he and Day went laughing into the night.

  Another time, he and Jim Brodie were drinking at a downtown bar when a pretty girl came in. Day was quite taken with her. But when the bar closed, she left with several band members. Day stormed out of the bar, got in his car, and a few minutes later stopped for gas. He and Brodie were standing by the pump when, coincidentally, the band members arrived with the girl. Day said something. He doesn’t remember what, only that “words were exchanged.” When other band members piled out of the car, Day reached into his trunk, pulled out a shotgun, and fired it into the air “just to scare them.” The police arrived and Day was charged with discharging a firearm in the city limits.

  Day paid a $10 fine and thought it was all over. But several years later the incident would come back to haunt him. Firing the shotgun kept him from realizing his boyhood dream. Firing the shotgun changed his life.

  THERE was an ineffable something in Day that singled him out from everyone else Work knew. When Day walked into a room, every eye was drawn to him. He was small and slight, but there was something in his eyes, something in his bearing, something about the way he took command of every gathering, that set him apart. Years later, when his military comrades in arms were asked about him, they always spoke of his leadership abilities.

  One measure of that difference was seen in his attitude toward the military. Other Riverside boys, once discharged, were through with the military. But Day’s extensive reading and his passion for politics convinced him that a war was imminent with the Soviet Union. “They were looking for trouble all over the world,” Day remembers. “I knew we were going to war. We had to be prepared.”

  Day wanted to join the Marine Corps Reserves. Unfortunately, the closest Marine station was in Minneapolis, some three hundred miles away. Prairie winters were such that the roads between Sioux City and Minneapolis were often closed. But the Marines were unforgiving about absences.

  So Day did the unthinkable. On December 11, 1945, several weeks after he was discharged from the Marine Corps, he joined the Army Reserves. He became a dogface.

  He also took a weeklong series of placement tests in order to enroll in college. (Several of Day’s friends took the same tests and entered college but lasted only a quarter or two.) Day’s placement-test results were high enough that he could enter college as a second-quarter sophomore but not high enough for him to enter a premedical program. So many thousands of veterans wanted to study medicine that medical schools had raised entry requirements to new heights. As a result, Day was stuck with his second choice: law. He was disappointed. But decades later, as a lawyer, he would change the lives of more than a million people.

  Day enrolled in Morningside College on the east side of Sioux City and was scheduled to begin classes in January. He was eligible for four years of the GI Bill. But college and law school usually required seven years. Even though he was starting as a sophomore, he was going to have to double up on courses almost every quarter.

  ONE bitterly cold afternoon in December, Day found himself at loose ends. Snow covered the ground, Christmas was just around the corner, his first Christmas home in three years, carols playing on every radio station. All at once he felt compelled to call “that Sorensen girl.”

  Day’s parents still had no phone and he had not yet bought a car, so he walked several blocks to the drugstore, where there was a pay phone. Doris was surprised to hear from him. She did not know he was back in town.

  “I’m so glad you are home,” she said.

  “I’d like to come up and see you,” Bud ventured.

  To visit Doris, he rode a streetcar downtown, then caught another streetcar to her house — a trip of about forty-five minutes. He was astonished at how much she had changed. She could be described only as voluptuous. And her smile could light up a room. Bud Day was overwhelmed.

  He looked around and noticed that on the wall was a crocheted Viking ship — a constant reminder to the Sorensen family of their proud heritage. A still dazed and dazzled Bud nodded, turned to Doris, and said, “You are a Viking.”

  For the rest of his life, he would refer to her as “The Viking.”

  One Friday, Bud and Doris were in the recreation room at her house. A fire burned in the fireplace. They were playing Ping-Pong when Bud said he was about to begin classes at Morningside. “Are you going to Briar Cliff?” he asked.

  “No. That’s a Catholic college,” she said with a smile. “And I’m Lutheran. Besides, I’m not in college.”

  Bud stopped and ignored the Ping-Pong ball that went sailing by. “Are you a senior in high school?”

  “No.”

  “Are you a junior?”

  “No.”

  He was flabbergasted. “My God. You’re not a freshman?”

  She laughed. “No, I’m a sophomore.”

  Day put down his paddle and lit a cigarette. He smoked and paced, not saying a word. He had become smitten with Doris three years earlier. How old must she have been at the time? Twelve? Impossible. He didn’t want to think about that. Now she was only a sophomore in high school. What would his friends say? He was a former Marine, about to turn twenty-one, and he was dating a sixteen-year-old girl.

  He looked at her again.

  She looked twenty.

  He smoked and paced and looked. She was a smart and levelheaded girl with a good sense of business. She had held down a responsible job in her father’s business since she was twelve. Plus, she was the prettiest girl he knew. And, as Day remembered many decades later, “God, what a body.”

  As Bud anxiously deliberated, Doris stood at the end of the table, watching, smiling, and waiting. Bud took a final puff from his cigarette, threw the butt into the fireplace, and said, “Oh, hell. What difference does it make?”

  Doris’s father had grown fond of Bud back when Bud delivered the Sunday paper. And Doris’s mother, having read Bud’s letters to her daughter for the past three years, knew the relationship could become serious. But Doris was so young. There must be rules. Doris was a devout Lutheran and was very unworldly. Bud’s friends were too old for her, and her friends were too young for him. They could not leave the house on dates. And Bud could visit only on Friday or Saturday evening.

  The rules said nothing about phone calls, so every afternoon at 4:30, Bud hiked down to the drugstore, called Doris, and talked for an hour or so. And he began showing up at St. John Lutheran Church on Sunday mornings, as Doris sang in the choir. Bud sat with Mr. and Mrs. Sorensen.

  IN January 1946, Day entered Morningside College. The primary purpose of the small Methodist college was to train young men for the ministry. Religion courses were obligatory for all students. The school was prudish and strict — that is, until it was inundated by the tsunami of iconoclastic, beer-drinking, swearing, skirt-chasing, cigarette-smoking veterans, men who had been killing people for the past few years, men who knew every whorehouse in the Pacific and Europe, men usually more interested in a degree than in an education.

  Few events in American history have had such an effect on the American university system as when millions of government-funded veterans entered colleg
e after World War II. Officials at Morningside realized, as did college officials all across America, that the veterans were a financial boon. When Day signed up for Morningside, the tuition was $35 per quarter. By the end of his first year, tuition had jumped to $100. Then it was raised again. (GI Bill payments were raised commensurately.)

  But colleges and universities found that with financial blessings came a trade-off: veterans were often disruptive. Dozens of new professors were hired to teach the flood of GIs. Professors quickly found that while they were looked up to and deferred to by traditional college students, such was not the case with the GIs. These scarred men had built-in bullshit detectors that made them laugh openly at the professors or challenge them on every point. Veterans found that much about college life was shallow and nonsensical — and it was nearly impossible to change their opinion. At the beginning of 1946, Morningside College was trying to close a beer joint about a block south of the campus. Then the ex-GIs landed and the bar owners were suddenly making such profits that a competing beer joint was opened a block north of the campus. Both bars thrived, and Morningside had to swallow some of its Methodist ideals.

  For young veterans, the automobile was the metaphor for their upward mobility. Like many others, Bud borrowed money and soon was driving a 1940 Mercury convertible, metallic red with a white top. He was very much the man about town, a handsome young vet going to school at Morningside and shouting, “Radook!” every time he saw one of his Riverside buddies.

  Even though he was living at home, the car payments left him terribly pressed for money.

  He gave his mother the $50 discretionary income he received from the government every month, and his spending money came from a series of jobs that he worked after class and on weekends. For a while he drove an armored car. Then he was a security guard at the gate of the Zenith assembly plant. He was employed at an abstracting company, checking property titles. And he worked at a bar. But the jobs that paid best — about eighty-five cents per hour — were in the stockyards and meatpacking companies. There, he chased cows into pens owned by meat packers. It was dangerous work. When the cows were off-loaded from trucks into the yards, they were crazed, bellowing wide-eyed behemoths, unpredictable and dangerous. Dozens of times Day was chased up a fence by a charging steer. A mistake in timing or a misstep on the fence would have had serious consequences.

 

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