SALINA, Kan. (AP) - Dick and Mavis Schuman sat in awe as the conversations rattled on, mingled with laughter and tears of joy, all thanks to a chain reaction they started roughly seven years ago.
They said little, mostly smiled and shook their heads in amazement during the two-hour lunch gathering at Gutierrez Mexican Restaurant in Salina.
It had all the elements of a family reunion, yet some were meeting for the first time.
“Small world,” Dick Schuman said.
Call it fate, a random act of community kindness, military brotherhood or patriotism. One or all of those factors contributed to some heirlooms avoiding the landfill and finding their way to Terri and Casey Meadows’ studio in Red Feather Lakes, Colorado. There, memories of Terri’s brother, Michael Woodbury, and others in uniform, have been enhanced.
“These guys are so awesome,” the teary-eyed Terri Meadows said after sharing stories and paying homage to her older sibling and others she knows who served in the Vietnam War.
“I was honored to have him for my brother. That’s why all these things are so important to have back,” Terri Meadows said. “I have it all in that studio. It’s where I hang out and talk to him.”
Some of the lunch group were classmates from Salina High School, class of 1966, to be exact. Others with local roots didn’t meet until they served in the military.
The gathering in Salina centered around a large pencil drawing and scrapbook that Dick Schuman rescued from a garage of a house. He bought the property in 2008 to remodel and sell. He knew the items were special, but time had lingered to the point where something had to be done.
“We were about ready to throw ’em away,” he said.
Schuman knew that the house belonged to a Mike Woodbury but had no other details. He later would learn that Woodbury died in 2006 of cancer thought to have been caused by Agent Orange used in Vietnam.
But 69-year-old Schuman, himself a former soldier who served in Vietnam during 1965 and 1966, was not acquainted with Woodbury.
“Being a veteran, I thought somebody would want this,” Schuman said. “Mavis put the scrapbook in the basement.”
The pencil sketch of Mike Woodbury, Bill Beller and Douglas Chambers was stored in the Schumans’ garage, and for a while, Dick forgot it was there.
Later in 2008, he brought up the scrapbook to 68-year-old Dan Pestinger of Salina, a fellow Vietnam veteran, over coffee at a McDonald’s restaurant.
“There were pictures of a girl on a horse and a rattlesnake hunt,” Schuman said.
Pestinger recognized the name and picture and told him, “I knew Mike Woodbury.”
As it turned out, Pestinger knew Woodbury from the U.S. Marines during basic training at Camp Pendleton, California.
Another friend, John Melvin, of Salina, got involved shortly after, also over coffee with Pestinger at McDonald’s. Melvin was a classmate at Salina High School with Woodbury and Bill Beller, who was killed in action roughly a month into his service in northern Vietnam. Woodbury, Beller and Melvin enlisted in the military during their senior year at Salina High School.
“Mike and Bill went in on the buddy system. They were footloose and 18 years old, and thought they would go over there and kick some ass,” Melvin said.
On another occasion, Pestinger, who’d borrowed the scrapbook from the Schumans, quizzed Melvin about it. The memorabilia brought back some important moments in his life.
“John took over from there,” Pestinger said.
In the scrapbook were photos of Woodbury’s sister, Terri, who was probably 15 at the time. Today, she and her husband, Casey, live in northern Colorado.
Melvin didn’t know them, but a mutual friend and classmate, Tom Peterson, who lives in California, had contact information.
The Salina Journal (https://bit.ly/1IzD6ZH ) that about 18 months ago, another friend, Vicki Kerbs (also in the class of ’66), of Salina, delivered the scrapbook to the Meadows’ mountain home.
Kerbs dated Mike Woodbury after he returned from Vietnam. He never married.
Another surprise was Terri’s discovery of her brother’s dog tags, wedged between the scrapbook’s pages.
“It’s like another piece of him that I was missing when I put together his things after he passed away,” she said. “I had all of his medals.”
Also enshrined at the Meadows’ studio are a collection of arrowheads that Terri and her brother found at their grandfather’s farm (where Milford Reservoir is now), and the rattlesnake tails that Mike Woodbury amassed while he hunted the poisonous snakes in northern Colorado during the early 1970s.
Terri Meadows found those in the trunk of a car, owned by her father that had been stolen in 2006. The car was in an impound lot in Wichita.
“It looked like someone had been living in the car,” Terri Woodbury said.
Adding more perspective was the grisly experience that Mike Woodbury and Bill Beller encountered in Vietnam. Woodbury was an artilleryman and the “number one gunner,” Terri said. Beller was a “grunt,” an infantryman, Melvin said.
Both men were stationed near Khe Sahn and the Laotian border, not far from the Demilitarized Zone. Beller was in Kilo Company in the 3rd Battalion of the 9th Marine Regiment.
“They were known as the walking dead,” said Pestinger, who served in Vietnam from July 1967 to August 1968.
Kilo Company was involved the hill fights that took place between late April and early May in 1967, according to printed materials passed around the table.
Beller was killed on April 30 of that year, while defending Hill 881 North. He’s buried in Gypsum Hill Cemetery, in a special section for soldiers.
Woodbury was injured during that period but survived. He came home with a Purple Heart and other medals, Melvin said, but had lots of problems putting the war behind him.
“If you know anybody who served there, they’re damn lucky of be alive. It was a hellhole,” Melvin said. “I know it bothered Mike a lot when Bill got killed.”
The two friends “had such great plans for the future,” Terri Woodbury said. “When Bill didn’t come home, things changed for Michael.”
The “Dear John Letter” Woodbury received just before going overseas, also didn’t help. Woodbury talked of going AWOL (absent without leave), Pestinger said, but buddies convinced him to stay put.
Troops from Khe Sahn came home with scars, Melvin said, and most of them were invisible.
“I was in the Navy, on a destroyer. I saw Vietnam but nothing like they did,” Melvin said. “They paid the ultimate price.”
Nightly war portrayals by legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite, a young Dan Rather, and others caused the Woodbury family and countless others to gather around their televisions.
“We watched every night at dinnertime. We wanted to see if we could spot them on TV,” Terri Meadows said.
The TV reports prompted her father, William “Woody” Woodbury, a Navy veteran who fought in World War II, to take drastic action, said Terri Meadows, who was in junior high at the time.
“Once he sent Mike a .38 special, in a package of cookies. We were hearing that soldiers were being killed by snipers, even after they got paperwork to leave,” Terri said. “My dad wanted Mike to have extra protection.”
Melvin shared stories of a happier, more innocent, time at Salina High, being among the typical ornery young men who would engage in mischief. Included was talk of skipping math class to grab some burgers at the Cozy Inn. The fragrance of onions they carried back to class earned them a pass to the principal’s office.
Pestinger was impressed by Woodbury’s stature.
“He was a picture-perfect Marine, good looking and muscular,” Pestinger said.
In November, while Schuman was tearing down a house in north Salina, he met up with Pestinger, who was collecting aluminum to recycle.
“I had a storm door in my garage to give to him, so we went there,” Schuman recalled. “Behind it was the sketch.”
By then, the drill was easy. Schuman called with the good news, and Mavis sent a text of the picture Nov. 16 to Terri and Casey.
“I think I burst out crying. I was in shock,” Terri Meadows said. “I thought the sketch was gone.”
The couple were traveling from New York back to home in Colorado, and arrangements were made to meet at the restaurant Thursday in Salina, where all of the characters could gather for lunch, learn more about the soldiers they cherished, and return to Terri the sketch, titled “Woody’s Boys,” and dated Dec. 16, 1967.
“My father loved them so,” she said.
The artist was Douglas Chambers, a Navy veteran, now of Shawnee, and a cousin of the Woodburys. In the sketch, he is the sailer on the right. Beller is in the center, and at left is Mike Woodbury.
A friend of Terri’s at the table, Lori Hall, of Salina, said after lunch, “It makes me happy that ’Woody’s Boys’ have come home.”
Conversations continued into the Gutierrez restaurant lobby, and the parking lot, where goodbye embraces included invitations to visit, go fishing, and reminisce some more.
It was clear that lasting friendships were in development.
“You never know,” Dick Schuman said to Terri Meadows. “I just might find more stuff.”
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