Happy Father's Day 2014!

A Story about Dad (aka Bruce Bear Miner, Jr.)

"Wow, that is so cool!"

Yes, just putting on an olive green jacket with my last name emblazoned on the front, I was the envy of the neighborhood boys on Highview Avenue. I wasn't just another 6-year-old kid. Nay, I was Army Man.

First Lieutenant Bruce Miner, shown here in Chu Lai, 1970.

Some men were just made to be fathers. Not just good fathers, but great fathers.

Some men are just 24, but take a look, and there is so much more.

How and why those drab olive green button-downs with the name MINER stiched into the fabric came to be is emblematic of the man who is my father. Walter Cronkite had already gone on national television and declared Vietnam a lost cause when Bruce Bear Miner of Cheshire, Connecticut received his draft letter. 

Dad didn't burn his draft card, flee the country, or exhaust every potential deferment imaginable (unlike some politicians we know). Dad knew how the system worked: The Army has picked somebody, and if it's not you, it's somebody else from your town with your birthday. That person might not have as much education, and therefore, not qualify for Officer Candidate School. Dad was one step ahead of the draft board on that one. He accepted the call, took the job, and earned his Lieutenant Bars before his eventual deployment.

Many years later, when I was in high school, some of the guys on the cross country team thought it would be a gas if we all wore one of those olive green jerseys on competition day. It's always something wild. Sometimes it's flourescent tacky Hawaiian Shirts, sometimes its 10-gallon straw hats, this time, the boys and I decided to go military. 

Dad wasn't exactly thrilled at first when he heard the news that I was sharing his memorobilia with the boys, but he had and Mom were in the process of raising three teenagers simultaneously. Compared to other rigors of parenting that he and Mom had triumphed over and over again, this was really child's play. In fact, he even showed up at the competition on his lunch break!

I was telling the story to the guys about life in the 328th Radio Research Company (at least what very little I knew about it) when all of a sudden, Dad showed up, unannounced, to lend some moral support to the team. Since these were his jerseys, he was the star of the show know.

"Is it true?" asked my friend and teammate Bill Savvis. "Kevin says you weren't anywhere near Charlie."

"Oh, well, I was no hero." Dad answered that question as he had about a million times before. 

On Golden Pond with Jeanne, Alison, Julia, little Adrianna, and a very enthusiastic Anthony!

But he was too modest. To someone else in Cheshire who could have received that draft letter, he was a hero. From the day he was able to reach up to the top shelf and get a jar of peanut butter for us kids, he was a hero. When were on the raft on Belgrade Lake and we heard thunder, and my pre-pubescent body couldn't get me out of the water in time, well, obviously, Dad was a hero.

As he always had been. Like I said, he was born for it.

And yes, this story does have an epilogue. In 2009, his grandson Anthony was late for school and didn't have his coat. By chance, I was in Wethersfield that day, and I was searching through every closet in the house, desperately trying to find any warm article of clothing in the house that would be suitable for a seven year old boy.

"What do you think of this one, Anthony?" I would say.

"Uh, no," he would respond. I couldn't blame him. I had to think of something.

Then, there it was. A standard-issue Korean War jacket that the pencil-pushers at the Pentagon had allocated to soldiers in Vietnam. Because you know, it gets cold in the jungle, right?

"What do you think of this one, Antony?"

"Uh . . . maybe." 

Success!

Antony put on the jacket. The bottom zipper was about six inches from his toes. But we had a winner! Just one example of many of the great victory laps that Dad is now enjoying as Grandpa.

With gratitude,

~Kev