Bill Hanna speaks occasionally about serving as a guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, an impressive story.
But his talk to 168 veterans and others at the annual Valparaiso Kiwanis and Rotary clubs’ veterans recognition dinner Sunday went beyond that. He spoke of his return to civilian life after leaving the Army.
“When somebody says somebody in our ranks died in vain, I don’t believe that,” he said. “In every breath, in every moment, in every inch of dirt, in every piece of dirt under their fingernails was the spirit of everyone else who made the ultimate sacrifice before them, whether it was in Vietnam, Iraq, France or Japan. They were all there because we’re a collective, we are spirit and body, we’re together, and not just on this planet.”
“Those sacrifices informed the way that we behave. It gives us a standard to live up to, and I don’t believe for one second they’re resting in peace. I think they’re still with us, informing our behavior and holding the standard,” Hanna said.
“When I got out it was pretty tough,” he said. “It wasn’t like some of you experienced, the level of PTSD and other things.”
Hanna spent a year in the CIA recruiting process and had been offered the job but decided it wasn’t a good fit for his family.
He and his wife moved to Colorado, where he served as a college janitor to help pay the difference between the cost to attend college and what the GI Bill paid for.
He later was hired by a Fortune 500 company and worked in the corporate suite with the CEO and his staff. “My boss was a former Marine recon officer who served in Vietnam,” Hanna said. That job wasn’t a great fit for him, either, he said.
Hanna called a contact who was undersecretary of defense and said he wanted to be a part of something bigger than himself, maybe in the nation’s capital. Instead, he was advised to go back home to fight for the folks there.
So he walked into Valparaiso City Hall to see if he could get a job. Dave Butterfield was mayor then. Hanna was hired. His civilian career includes serving as city administrator and as Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority’s president and CEO.
Hanna said he has been inspired by many veterans along the way. “I think about this mission and how difficult it is for people who have faced traumatic experiences, lost friends, limbs, other things, battle scars, PTSD. If we’re not there for them, if we’re not there for each other, no one else will be,” he said.
“Just because we took off the uniform, just because we got our discharge papers, doesn’t mean anybody’s relieved us from duty,” he said.
“What you have in your heart, what you have in your soul, what you have in your head and what you have the capability to do is more needed now than ever. As we dehumanize in a lot of ways, the human spirit becomes more important. You become more important,” he said.
“You are the guardians of the hope of the United States,” he told the veterans. “Every single day we’re still on mission.”
“We are better together, for sure,” said Valparaiso Rotary President Mary Joe Jaime.
“We hope this evening serves as a small token of our appreciation for your service,” Valparaiso Noon Kiwanis President Becky Wright said.
“Take time to listen and learn from the veterans among us,” she said.
RJ Harrison, of Valparaiso, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1974 and was discharged in 1976.
His uncle had just returned from Vietnam when they talked at a wedding. Harrison ended up serving as a military police officer for two years at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
“It was an exciting job, especially when you got to break up bar fights,” Harrison said.
He enjoyed transporting prisoners on helicopters. “You’re sitting down, you can see straight down for two miles.” On one flight, the pilot insisted Harrison hand over the ammo clip from his 45-caliber handgun. Harrison was nervous about it because he was guarding the prisoner. His sergeant put it in perspective. “Where’s our prisoner going to go? We’re 2 miles up.”
Michael Jadrnak, of Portage, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2005 and got out in 2009.
“When I was a kid, I always wanted to be in the military. I wanted to be that Army guy on the hill, blasting away,” he said.
“I had a brain tumor when I was 7, and the Army said, ah, no,” he said. So he went across the hall and the Marines welcomed him.
“I was a truck driver, stationed in Okinawa,” he said, then was in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, first at Camp Fallujah, then Camp Ramadi.
While training in Okinawa as a truck driver, he developed a new family among fellow Marines. “We pretty much did everything together.”
“If I could do it again with all them, I’d do it all over again,” Jadrnak said.
Christopher Heric, of Rolling Prairie, enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in November 2001.
“I wanted to be a firefighter at first, but they said no,” he said. He became a munitions maintenance specialist.
Heric served in Texas, Germany, Qatar, Florida and southern Indiana. Among his duties was making dumb bombs into smart bombs for the war.
He worked the midnight shift in Qatar. “One night, the air raid sirens went off, meaning we were going to get attacked on base.” They quickly donned their chemical protection equipment and hoped for the best for five hours, when the air clear signal sounded,
“We had over 50K tons of TNT in the desert,” Heric said, sitting on the desert floor and covered by tarps. “It would have shook the whole place for hundreds of miles.”
“We could have been blown up into smithereens,” he said. “One good attack, grenade, anything, could have blown up our arsenal.”
Sfc. Timothy Gonyon, of Portage, is now a U.S. Army recruiter. He enlisted in 2012 as an infantryman, right out of high school.
“My whole family served the country,” he said. “I remember watching 9/11 and seeing the towers fall.”
Afghanistan “was nothing like what I expected,” he said, but his brothers-in-arms made it a good experience.
“Thank you, veterans, for breathing life into patriotism into Valparaiso and our community,” Gus Olympidis said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
