An Honorable Burial for Wayne Geer

Wayne Geer died alone. A U. S. Army veteran who served a tour of duty in Korea, Geer had no fixed address. He was living in a Belleview, Florida hotel room and was found by the motel owner lying in a small pool of blood. It looked like he hit his head.

Geer had been drinking. Not unusual for the veteran who was often seen around town – a man with a white beard riding his bicycle – but he had quit alcohol, gone on the wagon involuntarily for a while because he was out of work and had no money to buy liquor. The motel owner, a kind man, didn’t want to put him out on the street and let him stay, even helped him eventually get a job as a dishwasher.

That first paycheck as a dishwasher was his last paycheck. Geer bought alcohol and got drunk. He didn’t show up for work. Both the motel owner and the restaurant owner came to see him, urging him to get it together and go to work.

He said he didn’t feel well and yes, he’d be along shortly. The hotel owner was going to go back and check on him, got busy and couldn’t return for four to five hours. Geer didn’t open his door when the owner knocked. He used his key, went in, and found him dead.

An autopsy showed that Geer probably died from the food he’d been eating. Out of work and out of money, Specialist Fourth Class Wayne Geer, U.S. Army, had been living on garbage.

Even after death, Geer did not have a fixed address. His body sat in the morgue, unclaimed and unburied, for almost six months.

“We got a call from the coroner in July saying he still had the body, there was no family, nothing,” said Robert Roche, Funeral Director and General Manager of Forest Lawn Funeral Home and Memory Gardens in Ocala, Florida.

Born Oct. 25, 1945, in Columbus, Ohio, Geer died in the first week of February 2005.

“The coroner knew that Geer was a veteran and there were some family that could be contacted,” Roche said. It was a fortunate call for Geer.

The coroner called the right place. Forest Lawn is the service provider for Dignity Memorial, the name for The Homeless Veterans Burial Program.

It is a program born out of a national shame.

Every night in America over 270,000 homeless veterans – men and women who were willing to serve and die for this country – are sleeping on our streets. They don’t even have a hotel room like Geer.

The reasons are many – downsizing the military, war-related mental illness, physical and mental ailments, and reductions in educational benefits so veterans can’t get training for civilian jobs.

And it doesn’t get better with death. Many veterans go into a pauper’s grave because no one claimed the body and no one searched out their military records.

This program does. It is a partnership helping to ensure eligible veterans receive the honors in death that their service to this country merits. Geer got that honor.

Specialist Fourth Class Wayne Geer, United States Army, became the second veteran in Florida to be buried with a Dignity Memorial service.

“It is an honor to do this,” said Roche.

On a hot, cloudless Monday morning, July 11, 2005, a small group gathered under a canopy in a memory garden behind Forest Lawn funeral home.

A hearse drew up and a coffin draped with a brand-new American flag was carefully removed, then carried to the canopy area.

Behind the canopy an honor guard, made up of veterans from different services, stood at parade rest. Some of them had a bit of trouble standing tall due to age, but snapped up straight to attention, as Lester Vance, Master Sergeant with the Marion County Honor Guard, called roll call.

“Present” they said, loud and clear, as their names were called. Then Vance called Geer’s name. Silence. A silence so thick you could taste it. Even the birds stopped singing. Everyone waited for Geer to answer. He did not.

Finally, an Honor Guard member asked that Geer be excused from the formation. He was excused.

“He has answered his final call,” said Arthur Nace with the Marion County Honor Guard, who presided over the service. “From earth he came and to earth he returns. It is a common end to which we all must come.”

Nace read Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . .” Familiar words that never get old.

“Well done, good and faithful servant,” Nace said and nodded to the coffin.

Then he put his hand on the flag covering the coffin and described the meaning of the colors: blue for the sky over America, red for the blood, sweat and tears shed for America and white for peace that veterans like Geer helped bring to future generations.

The flag was carefully folded into a triangle and presented to Sharon Geer, Wayne’s sister in law who lives in Marion County.

Although she lived close by, Sharon had not seen Geer in 15 years.

“He was a loner, it was his choice. When his parents died, they left him some money and we tried to get him to move into a house, he wouldn’t do it,” Sharon recalled. Geer was also estranged from other members of his family.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Wayne was He was divorced a number of years ago. Sharon talked with his brother and they think Wayne’s entire service time was spent in Korea. That is how they remember it. Geer left the service after serving his tour.

Only after Geer died, and in talking with the motel owner plus seeing the autopsy report, did Sharon learn about Geer’s final hours. The family was not able to do a burial and signed papers releasing Geer to the Homeless Veterans Burial Program.

Partners for this program include the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Veterans Administration, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, local veterans organizations (in this case, the Marion County Veterans Council), medical examiners, coroners and Dignity Memorial funeral and cemetery providers, including Forest Lawn Funeral Home and Memory Gardens.

It is a two-sided sword. Homeless veterans get the honor they deserve, but program proponents fear that widespread knowledge of the program will lead to abuses – families literally dumping their dead veterans, refusing to claim them, avoiding the funeral expenses.

“We’re afraid people will refuse to claim bodies and expect free burial,” said John Rose with the Marion County Veterans Council. Still, they are getting the word out, passing out brochures, hoping it will help some veterans get their act together while they are still alive.

“We’re visiting vets in nursing homes, urging them to be proactive, to have a will made, to make a power of attorney,” Rose said.

There are the ones who fall between the cracks and die alone and unprepared, like Geer. He may have died alone and sat unclaimed for some time, but his funeral was done with dignity and his service to this country received traditional honors.

The Honor Guard raised their rifles and fired three rounds of blank ammunition. They did this three times. One rifle was set into the ground with a helmet on top. This was for Geer.

One by one, the Honor Guard filed by Geer’s casket. Since Geer couldn’t return the salute, Vance stood at one end of the coffin and returned salutes for him.

A member of the Honor Guard stepped forward, raised a bugle, and played taps. Notes, so haunting, so sad, cut through the clear morning air and soared into the sky. Surely the angels heard it too. The last note lingered, lingered, lingered and finally died.

Then Geer’s coffin was returned
to the hearse and driven to the National Cemetery in Bushnell, Florida.

Specialist Fourth Class Wayne Geer, U.S. Army, finally has a permanent address, a piece of ground with his name on it.

Lucy Tobias is a freelance writer. © 2005 Lucy Tobias.

For further reference:
www.DignityMemorial.com

Wild, Natural and Untamed

The Ichnetucknee River had a mind of its own, determined, focused, flowing at a fast clip, mysteriously drawn towards the Santa Fe River that then flows into the Gulf of Mexico. I don’t resist. Putting the paddle down on the kayak, the current takes me where it will.

Our kayaks put in at the north end of the Ichnetucknee Springs State Park in Fort White, Florida. We, some 14 of us, are all part of a kayak trip organized by Lars Andersen with Adventure Outpost in High Springs.

Lars has a “Wanna Go list” and sends out e-mails of upcoming trips. A girl named Sharon from Jacksonville said she’d been on Lars’ list for two years and this was the first time she could make a trip. A night dispatcher, she worked the night before,got no sleep, drove two hours, and was ready to get in the water and go.

In a kayak, the view is different, higher up. Putting the paddle down is like going from being the driver – steer this way, steer that way, to being a passenger. There is time to look around at the banks of the river. My hands are in my lap. The current is driving. I’m the passenger, sightseeing.

This is wild, untamed, natural Florida. That means there are snakes and alligators high up there on the food chain. Out of respect for them (or should I say fear), I stay in the kayak. No swimming for me.

I see clusters of white apple snail eggs deposited above the water line, glued to the bark to cypress trees. The snails thwart predators by putting the eggs there, giving the young ones a chance to hatch without immediately being eaten by a fish.

Huge cypress trees grow up, up, up, reaching for the sky with their roots in water. I never noticed before but here, out in this unspoiled river wilderness, the air carries the odor of cypress.

Today is overcast; thank goodness, no merciless summer sun to fry us into crispy critters. Perhaps the overcast holds in the air’s perfume. It smells woodsy, with deep green overtones, call it eau de swamp.

Just one paddler ahead of me and she strokes away, leaving me in the dust. The rest of the crew is way behind. I puzzle about this, briefly, and find out later that Lars is giving natural history pointers along the way, and the other paddlers are all clustered around him. At one point he pulls a snake out of the tree to show them. I’m glad I missed that part.

So for a few miles, it is just the river and me. I feel like I’m the first human to ever see these parts, a visitor to a world coveted by developers and prime riverfront property. Fortunately, the Ich is inside Ichnetucknee Springs State Park and will be forever free. Thank you, thank you, to park planners and the Florida Legislature who had the foresight to do this deed back in 1970.

You may already know the south end of the Ichnetucknee Springs State Park. That’s where the tubers put in for several hours of floating along. When my kids were little, we went down the Itch on tubes. It is a rite of passage for Floridians, part of bonding with the landscape.

The water is a bracing 72 degrees all year long. You can freeze your ass sitting in a tube. The better course of action is to bring goggles and a snorkel, lay on your stomach and watch the incredible wet world below. Sea grasses swaying in clear water. Young bass darting out of your shadow.

We went back a few years ago, all adults now. At the end of the float trip, my middle son said tubing wasn’t as much fun as when he was little, but maybe he’s too hooked into the fast lane.

Time to slow down there, son.

Anytime you can put the cell phones away, float with the current and spend a few hours with Mother Nature, going down a river unspoiled by houses, docks and speedboats, now that is my idea of fun at any age.

The wanna go person, Sharon from Jacksonville, said afterwards that the trip was awesome and she’d go on another one. Then she drove back to Jacksonville and went to work that night.

Lucy Tobias is a freelance writer and former award-winning newspaper columnist. © 2005 Lucy Tobias.

For further reference:
www.Adventureoutpost.net
www.abfla.com/parks/Ichnetucknee/ichnetucknee.html

Squint Your Eyes Frequently

Everyone is so quiet you can almost hear brush strokes. Inside Linda Blondheim’s small studio, eight artists are squeezed in somehow, easels turned every which way. If we step back to give our mind a rest, we bump into another artist.

Our task at the moment – paint the trunk of a palm tree. This is a one-day palm tree workshop. Linda is a plein air painter and a pathfinder. She helps artists find their path.

As we work, we get quizzed.
“Why do you do what you do?” Linda asks, and goes around the room. Meaning, why are we artists? Answering, “I don’t know” is not an option. If you do try that, and I did, she will gently keep prodding, asking the question in different ways, making you think, stretch, articulate. It is not just about the brush, it is about attitude, and that colors your palette.

Elaine Trice holds her brush in mid-air and said: “I paint because I am driven every day to do something artistic.”

Driven. That’s a good word. We all nod. We understand. Also compelled. Called. Drawn. We’re here, aren’t we? We want to be better, don’t we?

It is pouring rain outside. Inside, on each easel is a line drawing of a palm tree trunk (there’s lots of pieces poking at different angles).
Our job is to fill it in. We have to figure out where the light is coming from, left, right, above, below? What colors to use, and how to mix them, how to establish light and shadow? So many problems in search of a solution. It isn’t easy.

Our palette is limited. French Ultramarine Blue, Payne’s Grey, Titanium White, Cad Red Light, Cad Yellow Lemon. Fancy names for the three primary colors plus an almost black and a white.

Some work in pastels, others use oils, or acrylics or watercolors. I was thinking of combining watercolor and pastel, but it is all I can do to keep up the pace with just watercolor. There is a piece of a palm tree trunk on a table. A still life. We could use that for reference (this is not a day to be outside). But everyone opts to go their own way. One trunk is green and red, another red and black, another shades of blues. Mine has a lot of browns and some yellows. Who knew trunks could be so diverse?

“Do you all know about colors or should I give a little lecture?” Linda asks. We all say, sure, we know about color. A little while later, she asks each one of us if we are a colorist and a tonalist. It gets mighty quiet. I, for one, haven’t a clue. But people speak up anyway. We know better than to say, “I don’t know”. I put myself down as a colorist. Turns out, I’m wrong.

“And you all said you know all about color” Linda chides us gently, and then she explains. A tonalist uses white and black to establish values. A colorist uses colors to lighten and darken.

Ah, I’m a tonalist. Until today, I didn’t know that.

While we’re working on another exercise – paint a palm tree using only highlights and shadows, no middle tones, Linda prints out “Ten Simple Steps for Plein Air Painting”. We all get them. I look at the list and think these are pretty good steps for life, not just plein air painting.
Here are seven out of the ten:
1.Keep your composition as simple as possible.
2.Omit fussy details.
3.Squint your eyes frequently to establish values.
4.Block in values early.
5.Create depth – Try not to put major elements on the same plane.
6.Work all over the painting.
7. Step back frequently and give your mind a rest.
After the morning session, Linda and her family feed us lunch at her home next to the small concrete block studio outside of Gainesville, Florida. We’re all in a swoon. The plates look paintable, quite attractive. We tucker in.

Morning was warm up exercises. Afternoon is the real deal. We find a photo that speaks to us and go to town, well, not literally. I start in watercolors but it doesn’t look like much. She suggests casein, a medium that has been around for oh, thousands of years. It is made from milk and is water based. Feels and acts like oil. I called it the “poor man’s oils”.

It was like being hit with a cattle prod. Casein changed everything. I liked it a lot. Later, Linda would say, “You didn’t know you’d come here today and find a new direction.”

That’s how it is with learning new things. Engaging. Life-changing. Painting palm trees is good excuse to be outdoors. That’s the meaning of Plein Air. Works for me. I love being outdoors.

I know I’m looking at palm trees a whole lot closer now. And I’m squinting my eyes frequently to establish values, not just for palm trees.

Lucy Tobias is a former newspaper columnist and a freelance writer. She can be reached at Lucy@Lucyworks.com
© 2005 Lucy Tobias

References:
www.lindablondheim.com
www.pleinairmagazine.com

Column updates:
Please join me in congratulating Cindy Bell of Ocala, Florida, who received an award for most raised funds by an individual in the Chapter of Beta Sigma Phi named Laureate Delta Sigma. Cindy raise $1280 for Relay for Life held at Trinity High School in April 2005. Her husband, a cancer survivor, was one of the people interviewed in a column called “Here for the Long Haul” posted on April 29, 2005.
Laureate Delta Sigma members raised $2800. The total amount raised for the 24-hour Relay for Life at Trinity was $62,000. It all goes for cancer research. Two thumbs up to Cindy and Chapter Laureate Delta Sigma.
Remember James? He’s the shelter dog profiled in a column called “These are Good Dogs” posted on March 4, 2005. I am pleased to report that James has been adopted and his new owners have agreed to keep up his training and attend classes. James is one lucky, and happy, dog.

You Don’t Know Me

I went to work a few years back at a mid-size newspaper. Like most reporters, I’m a newspaper junkie, reading it every day. Have to, just to keep up. I noticed the editors, not the cop reporter, wrote up any late night murders or mayhem. Having been a cop reporter for four years, and then gave that up for environmental reporting, I wondered why.

Turns out the cop reporter refused to give his home phone to any editor. That was amazing to me. If I’d done that, I would have been fired. Night calls are part of the cop beat. But then, I’m a white woman, very low on the totem pole. He was African-American, very high on the diversity totem pole.

To this day I think letting that happened made us all smaller, every one of us, and our journalism profession. No one won that one. We all lost. The reporter lost integrity by not doing his job, even if he did go on to a better-paying job at a bigger paper. Management lost credibility by bending criteria to fit a diversity profile. The rest of us were reminded, quite forcibly, that the playing field is not level.

And you know what? We could have been dead wrong. There could have been good reasons why he didn’t give out his phone number.

I’d forgotten that incident, because life goes on and you don’t want to carry that kind of frustration around. It is too heavy. Then I went to see “Crash” recently.

Have you seen the movie “Crash”? It is relentless. One of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. Ebert gave it four stars and he NEVER gives four stars. Well, hardly ever.

“Crash” works as a title. Several different story lines crash into each other. Cars crash into each other too. There are wrecks everywhere. The common thread uniting the wrecks is prejudice. Lots of prejudice. The prejudices crash into each other and the fallout is spellbinding, scary and real.

It is not a movie. At least it doesn’t seem that way. It is real life. They are us. Their days are our days, like a black police detective whose mother uses drugs. He hides this fact from his white girlfriend. Or a white couple walking back after an evening out tries to get in their SUV and is thrown out. The car is stolen by two black youths.

The couple immediately wants the locks changed at home. Wouldn’t you?
A locksmith comes to do the deed in the middle of the night and the wife rails that she wants the locks changed again the next day because the locksmith has tattoos on his body and she thinks he’s a gang member. The locksmith puts the keys on the table and then goes home to his wife and little girl. The look he gives her on the way out speaks volumes.

There’s an invisibility cloak involved in the story too, but I won’t give that part away except to say there are times when an invisibility cloak would be wonderful. But so far, finding one has eluded me.

I walked out of the film stunned by the way each drop of prejudice was like a stone thrown into a pond. It had ripple effects that changed lives bigtime. And are we immune? Does it just happen on film? Heck no. “Crash” won’t let you off the hook. You know they are talking about things very close to home. Prejudice is like acid etching away solid metal – it is corrosive and we all have it, whether we learned it at home or find it along life’s way.

Prejudice happens because we don’t know each other, or even ourselves – our heritage, someone else’s heritage, and someone else’s dreams. If you don’t know yourself, or the persons around you, what’s to respect?

In that story about the cop reporter, I don’t know why he wouldn’t give out his phone number because I never asked. Maybe he had good reasons. I just seethed and assumed it was a race thing.

Prejudice grows by assumption. The word “assume” breaks down into making an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. And that’s how prejudice grows. We assume we know what the person next to us is going to do because of what? The clothes they wear, their hairstyle, tattoos, language? The words “you don’t know me” resonate here. Any teenager knows that to be true.

Finally, prejudice grows through silence. It is not enough to not laugh at a racial joke. Step up and say something. Silence condones agreement. It means the joke teller is a bully who can get away with belittling other people.

There’s a nifty little booklet called “101 Ways to Combat Prejudice” and it is free. You can download it at the Anti-Defamation League’s Web site. ADL and Barnes & Noble put together the pamphlet in 2000, following a rash of high school shootings. It is part of a campaign called “Close the book on hate”.In addition to ways to stop hate, there is an extensive reading list.

On the back page of the pamphlet is a pledge. It starts with these words:
“I pledge from this day onward to do my best to interrupt prejudice and to stop those who, because of hate, would hurt, harass or violate the civil right of anyone.”
Amen.

See “Crash” and sign the pledge. Dignity towards one another will save us. And we need saving. Prejudice is growing. We are deep troubled waters. We all know what water can do. It can turn into a tsunami.

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for further reference : www.adl.org has “101 Ways to Combat Prejudice.

Inhaling North Carolina Mountain Air

Two Canadian geese flew overhead. That was exciting. I stop to take a shot but I’m not fast enough. All I see are their behinds.

Lowering the camera, I continue walking down from the high meadow, my running shoes making squishing sounds in the wet grass. I’m breathing as instructors tell you to do when you show up at yoga, Pilates or water aerobics – inhale deeply through your nose, expand your abdomen then let your breath out slowly through your mouth, with a long “hahhhhhhhh”

It makes me giddy, like drinking wine. Sipping North Carolina mountain air isn’t the same as drinking your garden-variety house wine. This is rare, fine wine, the kind you need to treat with respect.

Up here, away from the toxic wastes of carbon monoxide from cars, away from busy lives demanding life be faster, quicker, sooner, demanding in a shrill voice making a sound not unlike cats howling on a garden fence, well, up here, away from all that, the air has a different taste and a different sound.

It is clear, sparkling, quiet but robust bordering on bold, containing echo notes of mission bells ringing the liturgical hours, a deep, resonating reminder that the world is bigger than our individual selves.

Inhale, exhale. Ahhhhhhh.

This mountain air, where I’m standing, has an aroma particular to this place – the Hawk & Ivy Bed and Breakfast, a 24-acre holistic country retreat in Barnardsville owned by old friends of mine, Eve and James Davis. They do sometimes wonder if they own the Hawk & Ivy or it owns them. Either way, it is a spiritual and deep relationship.

The mountain air at Hawk & Ivy is infused with the odor of pine trees and wet buttercups, balanced with delicate overtones of rosemary and forget-me-knots growing in Eve’s garden at the bottom of the slope.

I’m alone. Breathing deep. Everyone else is asleep. The sun is rising from behind a ridge to my right. Secretly, I’m pleased. Shangri-La is mine, all mine, at least for a little while. Yep, that’s selfish. Early risers get to be a little selfish.

The pair of Canadian geese honk then begin banking in a huge U turn. Hold the phone! They’re coming back. I fumble with the lens cap and get it off. First rule of picture shooting. Take the lens cap off. It makes a difference.

Walking quickly, I know where they are going. The geese are banking sharply now, gliding on to land on a small pond to my left.

Time for stalker mode, especially since I only have one, short lens and need to be close. I move from tree to tree, trying to blend in, become part of the landscape. I shoot, move on, try not to fall flat on my face as all of this maneuvering is downhill over semi-rough terrain.

This drill also gives the digital camera time to digest all those pixels from the last shot. Nope, this is not one of those zillion frames a second and just-how-much-did-you-pay-for-that-speed cameras. I’m praying the ducks will stay a while so I have time for a good shot.

Swimming slowly, their long black necks held straighter than I ever stood, even though my Mom kept saying, “stand up straight”; they never look right or left, just straight ahead. The geese are looking for something. I don’t know what. Food? A sign their friends have been here? Room at the inn?

To my surprise, later, looking at the pictures big on a computer screen, the geese, as the glide along from one end of the small pond to the other, actually project ripples of water ahead of them, causing the refection of trees in the water to be distorted. The scene is impressionistic, like a Monet painting.

It feels right, standing still, making like a tree, fully focused on the geese. And there’s something else. Time stands still. There is nothing more important than the geese, the pond, the sun rising over the ridge, the now.

Is time standing still because we all turned off our cell phones? Or is it standing still because we left our regular lives to come here?

Maybe is it something about the mountains that embraces us as part of the landscape and we give in easily, not moving, just breathing, wanting to be part of this grandeur.

I don’t know the answer but I do know that I am deeply happy to have stalked the geese, walked to the high meadow, and smelled the early morning mountain air.

People are stirring now. The geese have gone on their way.
Breakfast is served. Eve, a marvelous cook, brings a plate with an omelet, ringed with flowers she just picked from the garden. The breakfast table erupts. Pandemonium as everyone fumbles for their cameras. There are shouts of “Don’t cut the omelet yet” as people get in position, clustering around the plate to take pictures.

Eve brought the outdoors inside, flowers on a plate, celebrating spring, bringing the dance of life to the breakfast table.
After breakfast, our mountain days are up. We reluctantly leave, friends who came for a reunion, going back to the flat lands and our separate lives. I want to bring the mountains back but they won’t fit in the car.

Upon returning home I meet a friend who is getting married in June. I tell her about the geese, the buttercups, and the mountain air. She confesses she’s never seen a mountain.

Never seen a mountain? Say it isn’t so. There should be a rule somewhere saying you can’t get married until you’ve been to the mountains. I tell her she should go, take that husband-to-be with her, that being in the mountains is a life experience that will change perspective. It is humbling, and empowering, all at the same time.

And if she is lucky, Canadian geese will fly by, bank, turn around and land at a nearby pond. The pictures may may or may not turn out but the memories will be hers for a lifetime.

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for further reference go to www.hawkandivy.com with James & Eve Davis as innkeepers.