The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/898366
C-6 Wednesday, November 8, 2017 The Press-Dispatch EAST GIBSON NEWS Submit school news: Email: egnews@ pressdispatch.net Deadline: Noon on Friday net edition yeah, it's that fast! Z M www.PressDispatch.net/Subscribe It's The Press-Dispatch. No matter where you live. Delivered every Wednesday morning! Add it for $5 to your current print subscription or stand-alone for $35/year. OPEN OFFICE SESSIONS Once again this year, I will be utilizing a collabo- rative opportunity for all members – students, staff, parents, guardians, and community members – of the Wood Memorial School Community. With this said, I believe to be most effec- tive with the development and growth of our students it is imperative that every stakeholder of Wood Me- morial have an opportuni- ty to collaborate and pro- vide input in any area/as- pect of interest involving our school(s) they may have. Thus, I will conduct monthly "Open Office" ses- sions, focused on providing time for such collaboration to occur. I encourage you to come meet anytime to review items of interest you may have. You may schedule a meeting by calling 812-749 - 4757 and requesting a time. In keeping with the theme of collaboration and com- munication, I want to invite Wood Memorial stakehold- ers to follow the happenings at the junior high and high school by joining us on twit- ter at WMTrojans1. IMPORTANT SCHOOL INFORMATION • There will be a ca- reer and technical educa- tion open house on Tues- day, November 28, 2017. The event will be from 6 – 8 p.m. (EST), at Pike Cen- tral High School. • A reminder, as outlined in the East Gibson School Corporation Policies and Procedures, the Wood Me- morial High School and Wood Memorial Junior High School adhere to the Closed Campus philosophy identified in the above ref- erenced policies and pro- cedures. Upon arrival to school, a student may not leave without approval of the building principal and being signed out by the re- spective parent. • The Elks National Hoop Shoot is just around the corner, with Wood Me- morial Junior High School once again taking part. The event, for students ages 8 – 13, will be a part of the JHS physical education classes in the near future. More to come from coach Messmer. • Information on how to join your respective class Remind and Schoology ac- counts has been posted to the Wood Memorial High School website. The ac- counts have been estab- lished as a communication and collaboration tool by the student services orga- nization. By joining you will be able to receive pertinent information such as schol- arship opportunities, col- lege admission dates, and much, much more. Please contact Ms. Hill or Ms. Carl- ton for assistance. CALENDAR Wednesday, Nov. 8 HS Student Council Meeting, Noon Thursday, Nov. 9 SAC Meeting, 11:31 a.m. JHS Boys Basketball vs. Barr Reeve, 5:30 p.m. JHS Girls Basketball vs. Barr Reeve, 5:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10 Staff PLC, 8 a.m. Veterans Day Program, 10 a.m. Girls Basketball at Gibson Southern, 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 11 Girls Basketball at Vincennes Rivet, 5:30 p.m. ADDITIONAL DATES OF NOTE Accuplacer – Part 1, Oct. 2 – Nov. 22 Veterans Day Program, Nov. 10 Principal Open Office Hours, Nov. 14 HS Student Council Meeting, Nov. 15 Staff PLC, Nov. 17 WMJHS Spelling Bee ,Nov. 21 Thanksgiving Break, Nov. 22, 23, 24 ISTEP Retest, Dec. 4 – Dec. 15 Wood Memorial 'WHERE IS DICK WOLFE?' Story of local Vietnam soldier revealed in new book By Janice Barniak On Jan. 6, 1968, in Xom Bung, Vietnam, sol- dier Dick Wolfe, of Princeton, was missing. On the recorded radio transmission of his last moments can be heard the pound- ing helicopter overhead frantically seeks the soldier in the chaos of what was one of the few more-formal battles of an otherwise gue- rilla-style war. "Whiskey Echo Zulu," the transmission re- cords the military language. "Sir, we've got people missing." The helicopter team talks to the ground; the ground talks back. Everyone else was accounted for. As the husband-wife team of author-histo- rians Randy and Roxanne Mills describe it, they were listening to the transmission, re- searching Wolfe's life, when out of the cha- os and thrumming beat of bullets, the name of the man they were studying sang out— "Where is Dick Wolfe? We've got to find Dick Wolfe—" In this maelstrom, suddenly their subject became the center of the fight. Air support was needed, but not at the cost of killing a sol- dier that might be alive and suffering. "It was like listening to ghosts," Randy Mills said. Six men found Wolfe, and there are six dif- ferent stories of how and why he died, but Randy Mills said that what he realized was that while that battle was the end of the road for Wolfe, it was a pivot point for the six oth- er men involved; due to the "fog of war," in some ways the accounts conflict or remem- ber Wolfe's death differently, but for all of them, it was important. "I found every one of those guys. Where he died was a definitive episode in all their experiences," he said. They started to tease out the stories, eas- ily with some men, unwillingly or not-at-all with others. "Where is Dick Wolfe—" Answering that question took them into a melee of letters, witness testimony, military documentation and a mother's grief to come out of the other side with "Summer Wind: A Soldier's Road from Indiana to Vietnam." As if the book can stand to say "here he is," by describing the Vietnam War in Wolfe's words and the words of those around him. They developed 120 never-before-seen photographs of Wolfe's journey, which may yet become a photo book of its own. Randy Mills, Oakland City University pro- fessor, came to the project in 2004, when Butch Davis, former police chief, walked into his office with a box of letters and other materials, that represented what the Army sent back to Wolfe's mother after he was killed in action. Despite the intervening decades, Davis ex- plained he wasn't past his friend's death. He told Mills he still went to the graveyard and talked to him. Davis and Wolfe enlisted together, and the promise they would one day tell their grand- children war stories together kept Davis go- ing through Vietnam; it had been a promise, short of alluding to death, that they would both come home safely from the war. Davis instead escorted the body of his friend back to his family, then went temporarily AWOL in his grief. Luckily, when he got back to Sai- gon, the base was under attack, and no one asked about his extended leave, they were just glad Davis could help. Davis knew the Mills duo specialized in history pieces from a biography of the first governor of Indiana to the story of a pacifist draft dodger turned hero, and he asked them to help him "hear his friend's voice again." Walking through the carpet of grass past the house-turned-hall at OCU campus, Ran- dy Mills said people have told him the project lacks the kind of important figure most his- torical books center on—an important or fa- mous person that people will seek out, which would help sell the public on the book. Personally, however, this project repre- sents exactly what he loves to do, to capture what he calls "ordinary people in extraordi- nary circumstances." "I want to see what people like you and me do when the chips are down," he said. Roxanne Mills, an English professor, said for her, one of the great discoveries in the re- search was Wolfe's arc as a person. Growing up in Princeton, he was the mis- chievous, rascally black sheep of the family, always in the shadow of his successful broth- er, Dr. Joe Wolfe. That deepened and complicated when Dick Wolfe was in a car accident that killed a teacher, and left him feeling he couldn't shake the incident or erase it in people's minds. He felt ridiculed at school, so he dropped out and graduated instead by cor- respondence course. In the letters Wolfe wrote to his mother, he talks about military life, going to church, the characters around him, in sharp contrast to the more bawdy letters he wrote to the boys at Bien Hoa airbase. "I guess you won't have me to get mad at now," the soldier wrote home. In the military, though, Wolfe blossomed. He made friends with two boys from a near- by orphanage, and became close to them. He could put his mechanical skills to work, and mystified his fellow soldiers with how well he could load the mortars. The day before Wolfe's death, the com- mander over four platoons was leaving, and he got word that Wolfe had broken the mor- tar record, which was 16 in the air before the first shot landed, and had instead launched 23 before they landed. "This is a captain to a private, and he says 'A lot of people can't believe the numbers, don't get us any short rounds,'" Randy Mills recalled, and the commander asked to see him do it. The mortar tube was so hot, they couldn't even touch it after Wolfe performed the feat. "He came into his own as a man. He real- ly showed his maturity," said Roxanne Mills. His family read the hair-raising tales from battle with a new admiration for the former black sheep. Dick Wolfe died before reading the last two letters from home. In one, his brother said: "You're head and shoulders above me. So Dick, what I'm trying to say is, I'm really proud of you." Roxanne Mills said she wished he'd had a chance to read that letter and know the re- spect his family had for him before he died. She lost a cousin the same year in Vietnam, which made the project that much more per- sonal for her. Three years into the project, however, the parallels were too much when the Mills' son died. They shelved the project, as it seemed too close to home to read letters of a son to a mother, and investigate the grief as they dealt with their own fresh loss. When they eventually returned to writing the book, it was with a different understand- ing and appreciation for Rosemary Wolfe, who it turned out, kept her son's memory under her bed until the day she died. Roxanne said that seeing the family deal with the death in line with the Catholic faith helped her see a new side of the story as well, even as a non-Catholic. The way the family would go talk to their son even though he wasn't there resonated with her own expe- riences. There are many small stories, and forgot- ten heroic actions wrapped up in the death of Dick Wolfe, said Randy Mills. From the ra- dio operator directing a battle after the cap- tain is downed, to the survivor's guilt of the commander who left, but begged to be put back into the action with the men he was rap- idly losing, the chaos is organized in "Sum- mer Wind" as it's finally finished, and now published, available by pre-order through Barnes and Noble at their website, http:// randrmillsauthors.com/, where readers can click on the pre-order spot. "You never know who's going to be a he- ro," Randy Miller said. "It was an honor to write this." Vietnam soldier Dick Wolfe, of Princeton, died in Xom Bung, Vietnam, on Jan. 6, 1968, and is the subject of the new book "Summer Wind: A Soldier's Road from Indiana to Vietnam." This picture shows him loading mortars, which he was renowned for among his company, having broken the record for number in the air at one time. Contributed photos Above is one of the many undeveloped photos that local historian-authors Randy and Roxanne Mills, professors at Oakland City University, were able to bring to light as they explored the life and death of Dick Wolfe. Super Science Saturday set for students November 11 Area high school students are invit- ed to attend Vincennes University's Super Science Saturday on Nov. 11. The program offers a full day of activ- ities where students can investigate, experiment and learn more about the wonders of science. The event is sponsored by VU's College of Science, Engineering and Mathematics, and will take place in the new Updike Hall. Admission is free and lunch is provided. Registra- tion is required. Check-in will be at 8:45 a.m. (EST) and students will choose from nine different activities, ranging from "Projectile motion experiments: How big a 'splat' can we make" to "Making moisturizer" to "Behind the scenes at a veterinary clinic." Super Science Saturday will con- clude with "The Amazing Chemistry Show," featuring a dazzling array of explosions, colored foam, liquid nitro- gen, and glow-in-the-dark solutions. The chemistry show is open to the public and admission is free. Super Science Saturday is open to area high school students with an in- terest in science. Registration can be made by calling Lori Osmon, 812- 888 -5131 or losmon@vinu.edu. The schedule will be: •8:45 a.m. - Check-in (Updike Hall) •9 a.m. - Activity 1 •11 a.m. - Lunch •Noon - Activity 2 •2 p.m. - Careers in STEM, hosted by the Society of Women Engineers •2:45 p.m. - The Amazing Chemis- try Show (Skelton Center) Activity choices include: —Fun with titrations —Fish population sampling using electrofishing techniques —Designing urban agriculture —Making moisturizer —Classic construction: making math artistic —Projectile motion experiments: How big a "splat" can we make? —Climate detectives: Coring is not boring! —How to make silly putty and how to "silver" a bottle —Behind the scenes at a veteri- nary clinic.