Karen Hon, a veteran living in Colorado, flies a new American flag every Memorial Day. That tribute barely hints at the holiday’s personal significance. It took her years to get a grip on the day, the month of May, even
Karen Hon, a veteran living in Colorado, flies a new American flag every Memorial Day. That tribute barely hints at the holiday’s personal significance. It took her years to get a grip on the day, the month of May, even the month of April.
In May 1968, Hon was 10 years old, living with her family in Chicago, when her father, Army Sgt. 1st Class Johnny Hon, was shot dead by a sniper in Vietnam. His body was brought home for burial on the day before Memorial Day. For Hon’s family, the holiday would come to mean annual visits to the cemetery to lay flowers at his grave.
“Memorial Day is very powerful to me,” Karen Hon tells us, her voice filling with emotion and pride so suddenly it catches her by surprise.
From another war, another tale of service: The Chicago Tribune reported on Memorial Day 1944 that Army Pfc. Fred Bucholz was awarded, posthumously, the Distinguished Service Cross. Fighting the Japanese at Kwajalein in the South Pacific, Pfc. Bucholz dragged his wounded platoon leader into a shell hole. Pfc. Bucholz was killed putting a Japanese blockhouse out of action with a hand grenade.
The nephew of Pfc. Bucholz, also named Fred Bucholz, will fly the flag on Memorial Day at his home, as he does each year. He knows of his family’s war service and is awed by it. Three Bucholz brothers served in World War II. Two died. A few months after Pfc. Bucholz was killed in the Pacific, younger brother Henry was killed in France. A third brother, Marvin, made it home.
“It’s pretty rare to lose two boys in a conflict,” Fred Bucholz tells us. “I think about it all the time.”
With the United States at war for nearly 15 years since 9/11, there’s no risk of forgetting Memorial Day’s meaning: an expression of gratitude for those who gave their lives in the service of our country. But it’s worth pausing, away from the day’s pageantry and barbecues, to reflect on how each military death is a permanent loss to an American family.
The elder Fred Bucholz was a star football player in high school in the 1920s. He joined the Army in 1942 at age 34, making him an older soldier at war. He was cool in combat and modest about it. On Attu in the Aleutian Islands in 1943, Pfc. Bucholz’s company was dug in on a creek bank when Japanese machine gun fire ripped through the muddy embankment, burying an officer under soggy mud. Pfc. Bucholz dodged bullets to unearth the lieutenant’s face so he could breathe. The private received a commendation for bravery and sent news home to a fourth brother, Carl, but asked him not to tell anyone.
The younger Fred Bucholz has yellowed press clippings about his uncle’s heroism on Attu and Kwajalein. The Army also named an airfield for Pfc. Bucholz on Kwajalein, ensuring his legacy. “They don’t just name an airfield after privates unless they did something pretty remarkable,” the nephew says.
He’s got fewer details about the service of his other fallen uncle, Sgt. Henry Bucholz, who had captained his college football team. He was a machine gunner killed in France on July 21, 1944. The nephew knows a lot more about the impact of the deaths on his family. His grandmother was devastated by the loss of two sons, while Marvin was left to wonder why he survived when two brothers did not. “I don’t think he ever recovered,” Fred Bucholz says. “He never married, never had children.”
When Bucholz thinks about his uncle Fred, he focuses on his courage, and the inevitable question asked by the untested observer: “Could I have done what he did? Would I have had the courage? A lot of guys would have stayed back and held their position and stayed alive. Whatever motivated my uncle to do that is hard for me to grasp.”
Johnny Hon was a member of the Illinois National Guard and later an Army reservist during the Vietnam era. He and his wife, Darline, had three daughters. Karen remembers dancing the twist with her father when she was about 8, and riding in a truck together to retrieve school desks and books from a closed church. And her goodbye hug: She was allowed on the plane to see him off in his dress greens.
“It wasn’t a popular war, that’s obvious,” Karen Hon says. “However, my father had the fortitude to say, ‘This is America, this is my country.’” Duty called, and Sgt. Hon volunteered for Vietnam. He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division and was leading a patrol when he was killed. It happened about six weeks into his tour. He was 32.
Karen Hon remembers that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley came to the funeral home. Darline Hon told the Tribune a year after Sgt. Hon’s death that he loved the Army: “I guess I’m just a soldier’s wife — and very proud of it.” But with the war dividing America politically, the years afterward weren’t always easy. “There were people who tried to be hurtful,” Karen Hon says. “You lived with that.”
Military service in the post 9/11 era is nothing like that: The public knows to keep a separation between the uniform and politics. “They are hailed as good soldiers,” she says. “I think it’s made people stop and think about actually what was said and done to the Vietnam vet.”
Karen Hon made her own statement about her father’s sacrifice. She joined up, serving 25 years in the National Guard. When she retired a few years back she was a platoon sergeant. It was the same position her father held.
