Category: Remembering Veterans

Wayne Johnson strives to make a difference

Story by Elaine Hobson Miller
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.

Wayne Johnson has thought a lot about his legacy and what he will leave behind when he has departed this earthly life. He wants it to be his work with veterans. Considering what he does for and with them every week, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Although he recently retired after five-and-a-half years as veterans outreach coordinator for the St. Clair County Extension office, Johnson still takes veterans to medical appointments, helps them access their government benefits and makes regular visits to the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in Pell City. “I never considered it work because I enjoyed it so much,” he says of his time with the extension office.

Johnson was one of the first people Frank Veal met after moving into the veterans home, and the pair have been friends ever since. A Korean War vet who served in the Air Force for 26 years, Veal is a native of Troy. He owns a van with a ramp that he lets Johnson use to ferry other vets to various appointments. The veterans home takes care of its residents’ medical trips.

“Wayne was here to help Frank celebrate his 91st birthday in August,” says Reshina Pratt, administrative support assistant at the veterans home. “They are very close.”

Johnson also is close to Veal’s next-door-neighbor, Tom Kelly, who is originally from Maryland but raised his family in Alabama. Another Korean War veteran, Kelly has been at the home since 2014. “Wayne visits us weekly, more if we have a need,” says Kelly. “Sometimes he brings us lunch, like barbecued ribs, and he has made trips to Montgomery with us.”

“He’s a good guy, and we appreciate him,” says Veal. “He’s a handy man to have around.”

It’s Personal

One of the reasons Johnson has such an affinity for veterans is that he’s a veteran himself. He grew up in Portsmouth, Va., and joined the Air Force right out of high school. He retired after serving for 20 years, then worked for a government contractor 14 years. Later, he was employed as activities director at the veterans home. He retired from his job with the Extension Service in April to help take care of his one-year-old grandson, Jaxson, and as of late August, ACES still had not found a replacement.

From the beginning, Johnson’s vision was to get out into the community to find veterans and widows of veterans who needed assistance, according to Lee Ann Clark, the St. Clair County Extension Service coordinator. “He worked hard and successfully accomplished his goal of making veterans aware of the benefits that are available to them and helped many obtain these benefits,” Clark says. “Not only did he reach the elderly and middle-aged veterans, but he also assisted younger ones.”

Although his retirement plans originally included relaxation, fishing and spending time with his grandson, he continues to be an asset to the veterans in the community in some capacity.

Johnson estimates that he probably takes vets to appointments and helps them run other errands three times a week. “Some live in their own homes but can’t get out and get their groceries by themselves,” Johnson says. That’s where Veal’s van comes in handy. “I let him keep it at his house,” Veal says.

Johnson met his wife, Cheryl, when both were in the military and stationed in Kansas. She spent 10 years in the Air Force in accounting. When he retired, they decided to come back to Pell City because it was her hometown. They have two daughters and three grandchildren. One daughter, Jaxson’s mother, lives in Pell City. The other daughter, who has two children, lives in the Netherlands, where Johnson was once stationed while in the Air Force.

“Wayne does an awesome job with local veterans,” says Cheryl Johnson, who has been married to Wayne for 30 years. “We need more people like him because there’s a huge need with veterans in this county. So many are here alone, with their children in different states. He works well with people, and he’s still helping with some he was attached to. He picks up people as needed for appointments for a few who still reach out to him, and Lee Ann still refers people to him from time to time. He tries to direct them to the right resources if he can’t help them.”

His motivation, she says, is that he just loves reaching out to veterans. “When the St. Clair Extension Office had that opening, they wanted a veteran, and he was in a position to take the job,” she says. “It was part time, and he took it to have something to do. Then it got bigger and bigger because there was so much need out there. A news article would post, and the calls would continue to come in.” Cheryl says her husband connects with people. “He loves war movies and the history of wars, and loves the stories the veterans tell him,” she says.

Prior to its recent COVID-19 lockdown, the Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home saw Johnson drop by at least once a week to participate in activities with residents. “He’s a great resource for us,” says Reshina Pratt. “One day a homeless vet from out of town stopped by and we called Wayne, and he helped him get the assistance he needed. He’s a kind, caring, helpful man. Even though he has retired (from the county extension office), we still call on him for assistance. I know he’ll be back here after the restrictions are lifted.”

The Rev. Willie E. Crook met Johnson about 20 years ago when Crook was a contractor building community churches. Johnson helped get Rocky Zion Baptist Church in Pell City built, according to Crook.

 “When I worked with him then, he had another job but came by and checked on the construction twice a day, before and after work,” says Crook.

“He’s a dedicated man. The Lord led me to build a ranch for underprivileged, inner-city kids. I talked to Wayne about helping me, and we started Gateway to Life Youth Ranch in Ohatchee 12 years ago. He’s president of the ranch, which hosts at-risk kids on weekends so they can enjoy the outdoors, fishing, woodworking and the animals at the ranch. We also mentor fourth- and fifth-grade boys’ classes at Saks Middle School in Anniston.”

Crook vouches for the fact that Johnson has befriended many veterans through the years. “Many times, he has come to the ranch to pick up or drop something, and he has had a vet with him,” Crook says. “He cares about them and would do anything in the world for them. He’s a giving man. We didn’t have any funds when we started that ranch, and he has gone into his pocket several times.”

A modest man, when asked why he continues to work with veterans, Johnson has a quick and simple reply: “It gives me a sense of satisfaction.”

At 95, World War II vet Bob Curl recalls horror of war, an unconditional love and a wonderful life

Story by Paul South
Submitted Photos

Barely a year out of high school, Bob Curl saw things a kid his age ought never see: the shattered bodies of young men, their lives snatched in a twinkling.

He’s also known the joy that every human heart should know, the magic of an unconditional, long-lasting love that endures to this day, though its beloved is years gone.

Like a Frank Capra movie of the 1940s, Curl – now 95 – has known horror and heartbreak, love, laughter and selfless service, the stuff poured into a life well lived.

A resident of the Col. Robert L. Howard Veterans Home in St. Clair County, Curl still drives, running the roads, snapping photos of his trips with cameras from his large collection of vintage photography gear. He’s been interviewed by historians from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

His smiles and his stories are well known at the place he calls home – a wonderful place, he says, where he’s been known to join a side in a rollicking game of volleyball. “I tell people I live at a country club,” he says.

Chat with him long enough, and Curl will tell you stories of bloodied French beaches, a department store fire, the Sabbath morning he first saw the love of his life and the time he met the legendary war correspondent Ernie Pyle.

What a life.

First, let’s tackle the hard part of Bob Curl’s days.

In June 1944, his job as a Navy radarman was simple – to use the high technology of the day to find Omaha Beach. He did. In a briefing in Britain days before the invasion, the teenage sailor learned that he would be part of the first flotilla of Allied vessels, facing batteries of German 88s, heavy artillery protected by reinforced concrete pillboxes.

“We were told we were probably going to be killed,” Curl said. So, I wrote a letter to my mother. I told her I wish I’d been a better son. She didn’t know where I was or what I was doing. But I thought that was the end of me.”

A strike on one of those pillboxes, Curl believes, saved his life.

On June 9, three days after D- Day, the initial Allied thrust onto the European continent, aimed at ending Nazi occupation, Curl slogged ashore through bloodied water and shrapnel-peppered sand. What he saw is seared in memory, more than 75 years later.

“… Bodies and parts of bodies all over the place,” Curl remembered. “(Pulitzer Prize-winning newsman) Ernie Pyle came on our boat. He went on the beach the second day (June 7) and when he came back, he wrote what he saw. They censored it and wouldn’t let it go through. At that time, the only way you could make a copy was carbon paper and onion skin paper. And he submitted his story, and they thought it was too graphic and too bad. So, they censored it.”

Pyle, who was killed in the Pacific while embedded with an American unit, on D-Day wrote of bloody boots and the mundane and the strange that fighting men carried into the carnage – cigarettes and writing paper, a banjo and a tennis racket.

Pyle saw what he thought were two sticks jutting out of the sand. He was mistaken.

“They were a soldier’s two feet,” Pyle wrote. “He was completely covered by the shifting sands except for his feet. The toes of his G.I. shoes pointed toward the land he had come far to see and which we saw so briefly.”

As Pyle finished the dispatch that War Department censors quashed, Curl asked him for the trash-can-bound carbon of the story and Pyle gave it to him. It’s long lost, but after the war, as a college student struggling with an English class, Curl copied Pyle’s story word for word, hoping for a needed good grade.

“I thought, ‘Oh boy, I got him now,’” Curl said of his tough taskmaster professor.

Pyle’s work earned Curl a C+.

After victory in Europe, Curl was preparing for the invasion of Japan on Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands when he learned of victory in Japan.

A love story

He would have a personal victory once he returned home. He married his wife, the former Nell Spring. The Methodist minister’s son met his future wife at a church youth social on Valentine’s Day in 1943. They dated for three months. He enlisted in the Navy the Saturday after graduation in May.

He fell in love with her earlier that day, as he walked into church with a friend on his first Sunday in a new town.

“When I walked into church that morning, the most beautiful girl I ever saw was giving the devotion up there,” Curl recalled. “I nudged that boy next to me – I was 16 or 17 – I said, ‘I don’t know who that girl is, but I’m going to marry her.’”

It was the beginning of what would be a 69-year marriage, an old-fashioned love affair. She’s gone now, but every night, he talks with her, looking into the eyes of her picture adorning a wall in his room.

“She was the most wonderful lady I’ve ever known.”

Early years

Theirs is a magical story, one of several he tells. He got his first job in a local movie theater. Armed with a broomstick with a nail poking sharply from its end, Curl picked up trash.

His salary in the teeth of the Great Depression? “I got to see all the movies for free,” he said. The cost: One thin dime.

Another story was like something from a movie. As a nine-year-old while shopping with his mother at Birmingham’s iconic Loveman’s department store, a fire broke out, filling the store with smoke.

“We couldn’t go down the elevator,” Curl said. “I had my mother by the hand. We made it down to the first floor. The smoke was so thick, we couldn’t see. But we heard a voice telling us, ‘Come this way,’ That voice led us all the way out of the store. We got out through a broken show window.”

Ironically, Curl spent his professional life after the war as a Birmingham firefighter, who would go on to help train new recruits in the fire service. Like so many of his generation, Curl gave back to his community, while at the same time raising his family.

Now in retirement, he’s still impacting lives. A small bottle of shrapnel-laced sand from Omaha Beach – given by Curl to the veterans’ home – is part of a display honoring those who served.  But more than the artifacts of war, Curl radiates happiness.

Said Hiliary Hardwick, director of the Veterans Home, “He definitely doesn’t act 95. He just has the most positive outlook on everything. I’ve never heard him or seen him when he’s upset. He just kind of takes life as it comes, and he just makes the most of it.”

 She added, “He’s probably one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. He generally thinks of others before himself. He’s unique. You know, they call the World War II guys ‘The Greatest Generation.’ He’s truly the epitome of that. He’s selfless in everything that he does.”

Curl, she says, “just radiates happiness.”

Curl credits his heart for others to his dad, the late Rev. John Wesley Curl, whom he calls, “the best man I ever knew.”

Asked how he would sum up his own wonderful life, Curl responds with the two words he hopes will be his epitaph:

“He tried.”

St. Clair Memorial Gardens serves as county’s only dedicated veteran burial ground

Story by Jackie Romine Walburn
Photos by Graham Hadley
Submitted Photos

When folks at St. Clair Memorial Gardens and Usrey Funeral Home decided to dedicate a section of the cemetery to U.S Armed Forces veterans, owner Steve Perry first consulted with local veterans.

“I actively got together with a group of veterans in town,” Perry says. “We wanted their input, to know what’s important to them.”

The veterans’ group with members who served in Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War supported the idea and helped Perry work up rules and regulations for the veterans’ section in Pell City, which opened in 2012.

The rules they decided on are pretty much the same as those used by the Dept. of Veterans Affairs’ official U.S. veterans cemeteries. The section is for veterans and spouses and dependent children. Official honorable discharge papers – known as DD214 – are required to qualify.

Alabama’s only official U.S. National Cemetery is the Alabama National Cemetery at Montevallo and is one of 148 national veteran cemeteries, 33 soldier lots and monument sites in 42 states, according to the VA.

The idea behind the Pell City veterans’ section was not to take away from Montevallo but to expand on it and to offer a nearby choice for St. Clair-area veterans.

“The vets were all behind the idea and wanted to see it happen,” Perry said. “They liked the idea of the burial ground being closer to home and wanted to make sure things were done right, and we didn’t just throw up a veterans’ section. That’s why we follow the strict rules and regulations.

“We take comfort in knowing that vets had a part in putting this together,” said Perry, whose family has been the funeral home business since 1927, with Usrey’s Funeral Home in Talladega, which is now operated by Perry’s brother Mike. The Pell City location – funeral home and cemetery – were purchased one after the other in 2003 and 2004.
St. Clair Memorial Garden’s veterans’ section is set off from the rest of the 14- acre cemetery by a U.S. flag and large granite markers for each division of  the U.S. Armed Forces – the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard.  The first burial in the veterans’ section was in 2012 – the wife of one of the veterans Perry consulted early on.

The veterans’ section is laid out in lots of 16 grave spaces for a total of 352 spaces, which are filled in order – not by selection, the same way official veteran cemeteries are filled.

Spaces can be pre-purchased, but purchasers cannot pick the space location. This tradition of going in order, not pre-selected location, is the way the national cemeteries operate, Perry says. Burial spaces for a veteran and a spouse can be together with companion markers.

All honorably discharged veterans of active service are entitled to a free marker, a burial flag and military funeral honors, regardless of where they are buried. Usrey and cemetery officials help veterans apply for these benefits, including the bronze markers used at St. Clair Memorial Cemetery. No large family markers are used in the veterans’ section.

National VA cemeteries provide the burial space and opening and closing at no cost to the veteran’s family, according to www.va.gov. Families are still responsible for funeral home, cremation or other burial costs.

Because the St. Clair cemetery is not associated directly with the VA, spaces in the veterans’ section are purchased, in advance in a pre-purchase or at the time of burial planning.

However, Perry and staff handle the paperwork for veteran families, applying for the free grave marker, which are bronze as all markers are at the St. Clair cemetery. They also help arrange for military funeral honors at the family’s request.

Military funeral honors provided by the VA for qualifying veterans buried at veterans’ cemeteries or elsewhere include a presentation of a U.S. burial flag, folded and presented to the family and the playing of taps, according to www.va.gov. Federal law defines a military funeral honors detail as two or more uniformed military persons, with at least one being a member of the veteran’s parent service of the armed service.

Word is still spreading about Usrey’s services for veterans and the Pell City location’s veterans’ section, Perry says, noting that some veterans and families don’t know about the section just for veterans and others have family burial plots already purchased or family traditions of church cemetery burials.

“We just want veterans and their families to know this is here. We’ve always supported veterans, and this is a tribute to them,” Perry says.

The support takes on a personal meaning to the Perrys, too. Both of their grandfathers were World War II veterans, with the paternal grandfather serving as a paratrooper and the maternal grandfather serving as a medic in World War II, Perry says.

“This is a tribute to their service, too.”

A special way to honor those who served

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photos courtesy of Jerry W. Garrett Jr. and John Bryant
Submitted Photos

During the Christmas season this year, it will be a time to reflect on the gift of freedom and to pay tribute to those who secured it.

At 11 a.m. Dec. 19 at St. Clair Memorial Gardens, the second annual Wreaths Across America (WAA) observance will place wreaths at gravesites of veterans.

Hundreds of wreaths will be put on veteran graves at St. Clair Memorial Gardens, Valley Hill Cemetery, Oak Ridge Cemetery and elsewhere in the county, said Mindy and Keaton Manners and Julia Skelton, local WAA organizers.

The first WAA event in St. Clair County was Dec. 14, 2019. That morning, families, friends and volunteers placed 300 live, evergreen wreaths on veteran graves as part of a nationwide effort.

“Each year, millions of Americans come together to remember the fallen, honor those that serve and their families, and teach the next generation about the value of freedom,” notes the national WAA organization. “This gathering of volunteers and patriots takes place in local and national cemeteries in all 50 states” and some American cemeteries in Europe. “… In 2019, approximately 2.2 million veteran wreaths were placed on headstones at 2,158 participating locations around the country in honor of the service and sacrifices made for our freedoms.”

Broken Arrow Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), along with Steve Perry and Usrey Funeral Home, worked to bring the local event together. Giving their assistance were St. Clair County High School JROTC, Canoe Creek Society of Children of the American Revolution (CAR), Henderson Builders Supply Co. in Pell City and numerous residents of Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home.

Susan Bowman of Pell City was touched by the number of wreaths and the number of people who came to help place those wreaths.

This was her first time to be part of such an observance.

She got to place wreaths at the graves of her father, Jesse Hooks, and her sister, Kathy Lynn Hooks, both of whom had served in the Army.

“I was very proud and teary-eyed. I was very teary-eyed,” she said. “Just emotions running through me.”

Those same words would describe the writer of this article and her sisters as well. Only two months before WAA, our dad – retired Chief Master Sgt. Porter Bailey – had been buried with military honors.

Getting to place a WAA wreath at his gravesite stirred the pangs of grief. But it also filled our hearts with pride for the 37 years he served this nation in the Army, Air Force and Alabama Air National Guard.

The day brought emotional extremes for Lyle and Shelly Harmon, who are the parents of three sons.

Well in advance of the ceremony, Harmon – who is St. Clair County’s district attorney and chief warrant officer 4 with Alabama Army National Guard – had agreed to serve as master of ceremonies. Then, hardly a month before the observance, son Sloan (known as “Boo”) was fatally shot just off an I-20 exit.

An airman first class with the Air Force, Boo was a KC-135 crew chief at the Alabama Air National Guard’s 117th Air Refueling Wing in Birmingham. He had just turned 20 a few days before the murder.

Though serving as WAA master of ceremonies so soon after Boo’s death was difficult, “I felt I should,” Lyle Harmon said. “… I can’t even express how humbling that was to do that. … It was quite humbling.”

At the same time, it was “a huge honor,” Harmon added.

During the ceremony, veterans of the Army, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines each placed a wreath at the respective monuments that stand at St. Clair Memorial Gardens. Because the veteran who was to place the wreath at the Air Force monument could not attend, Shelly Harmon did it.

Lyle Harmon watched his wife – a grieving, heartbroken mother – place a wreath of tribute at the Air Force monument.

Thinking back on what Shelly did that day, Harmon recalled, “I’m just so proud of my wife. She is unbelievably faithful and strong.”

The origin

The simple request of another grieving mother was the catalyst for the local WAA observance.

In early summer of 2019, that mother contacted a DAR group in Birmingham, explaining that she was unable to place a wreath or flag for Memorial Day on her son’s grave in St. Clair Memorial Gardens. Mrs. Manners – a member of Broken Arrow DAR in Pell City – and her husband volunteered to lay the wreath.

When Mr. and Mrs. Manners went for that reason to St. Clair Memorial Gardens, which is the only cemetery in the county with a section specifically for the military, the couple were surprised by the number of veterans’ graves they saw.

In the two-mile trip from the cemetery back to their home, Manners – an Army veteran – and Mrs. Manners decided they must organize a tribute to veterans interred there.

For about six years, the couple had attended WAA observances at Alabama National Cemetery in Montevallo. Now, they felt it was time to bring that tribute to St. Clair County.

They set a goal of 300 wreaths, 260 of which would be for St. Clair Memorial Gardens. The remainder would go to graves in Valley Hill Cemetery, Oak Ridge Cemetery and Broken Arrow Cemetery at the request of various families.

St. Clair County High School JROTC joined the effort, raising funds for 100 wreaths and providing military color guard for the ceremony.

The JROTC leaders, Retired Maj. Channing McGee and Retired Sgt. 1st Class Vicki Glover, said participating in WAA “teaches cadets the importance of community service and instills patriotism by honoring these veterans and their sacrifice.”

For the 2020 event, the cadets plan to provide another 100 wreaths. (For information on how to help the cadets meet their goal, see the accompanying story, “Sponsor a wreath.”)

St. Clair debut

The first WAA event in St. Clair County was met with such support in the community that the entire ceremony was finalized within three months, the Manners said.

But the enthusiasm following the event brought the 2020 ceremony together even quicker.

“Two days after this past event, we had it all lined up for this year,” he said.

This year’s event will also feature a replica of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. (For more information, read the accompanying story, “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier replica to be on display.”)

After attending last year’s WAA, John Bryant of Alpine encouraged fellow members of the Knights of Columbus, Assembly 2972, Our Lady of the Lake to volunteer to lay wreaths of remembrance on graves of fallen heroes and to honor those who served the nation.

“I can’t think of anything that shows more patriotism than to honor and to show respect for our veterans,” Bryant said. “… I feel like we need more patriotism. We need to let this country know we love it, and we need to remember that the privileges we have today are because of our veterans.”

Skelton, who is also a member of Broken Arrow DAR, said volunteers will be needed to help place wreaths at St. Clair Memorial Gardens and possibly at Valley Hill Cemetery and Oak Ridge Cemetery.

Wreath placement generally is guided by military designations on headstones or footstones. However, Mrs. Manners said wreath-placement requests can be made for veterans whose grave markers have no military designation. A copy of the veteran’s DD-214 or a photo of the veteran in uniform will suffice as proof of military service.

Editor’s Note: To request wreath placement and provide documentation, email Mrs. Manners at mindy.manners@yahoo.com.