Teaching History Matters

Rest On, Buster: Remembering a Soldier, a Storyteller, a Friend

One of the hard parts about this project is that people you come to know and love grow older and pass away on you. But you are thankful you came to know them, and grateful to have seen how they enriched your life and the lives of others.

I first met Buster nearly 20 years ago, when I attended my first 30th Infantry Division reunion. He served as the chaplain, the master of ceremonies, and the chief auctioneer at our final banquet. He had a funny way of putting folks at ease; the auctions were something like a comedy act. He was very devout and serious about his chaplain duties, though.

Buster was a combat medic. His words on what that meant have stayed with me: “You did not stop to think about how you would cope. You just did the best you could.”

When I first met him, at the 2008 reunion, one of his quiet worries was that his brother Bill might be overlooked by history, overshadowed. That kind of loyalty ran through everything he did.

Buster was so moved by the appearance of Holocaust survivors in the Old Hickory men’s lives, after 62 years apart, that he told that story everywhere he went. After his wife died unexpectedly, he was at a loss. But getting out into the community to share the story of the Holocaust and the 30th’s connection to the Benjamin photograph kept him going for a while. He’d call me up at school, looking for pictures to share with students down South. He became a Holocaust educator. He was sure proud to be an American.

He and his son Sandy, who has also since passed, expended a great deal of energy traveling to our high school in upstate New York for the last reunion with soldiers and survivors. At the tail end of this short clip, he describes one of the wonders of that trip for him. I guess if I were dancing with a lovely young thing, or two, or three, I would say the same.

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Today I am sharing a video featuring him in a national news broadcast. A producer from ABC News in New York had called me looking for the Benjamin photograph for a piece on veterans returning to Normandy. Though the 30th did not land until after D-Day itself, Allied forces were only ten miles in at that point, with some very heavy and decisive battles still ahead. The 30th would be bombed not once but twice by Allied heavy bombers on two consecutive days, before the launch of Operation Cobra.

Seventeen years ago today, I recorded this clip, holding a minicam up to the evening news. Before modern technology. Before any of us knew how little time was left.

Buster died alone. His wife had passed. His son Sandy, whom I also knew, had passed. Now this grainy video is about all that remains.

I want to close by paraphrasing ABC reporter Erin Hayes, whose words have never left me:

Maybe, just maybe, a group of students will discover these veterans and get them to tell their stories. To hear what I heard. That a generation soon to be gone left us a legacy of bravery and wisdom and resilience. We really, really should treasure that. Before it is too late.

On the eve of D-Day, the day of days, let us remember.

Rest on, Buster. Peace to his family, and to all of their families.

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