Weathered warriors -- WWII vets meet every week for eggs, table talk

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Nov 11, 2006 by Stephen Speckman Deseret Morning News

LAKEPOINT, Tooele County -- Inside a truck stop on a cold fall morning, they look like just another bunch of old guys.

They park in handicap stalls and wear hearing aids -- or admit they should.

Mickey Bailey, a radio operator in the Navy during World War II, is blind and needs someone to cut his food. Fellow seaman Jim Hales uses a wooden cane when he walks.

Nine men from the "Greatest Generation" who once joined this dwindling group for breakfast every week have died.

For about 15 years as many as 20 World War II veterans have been meeting on Wednesday mornings at eateries around Tooele County. It's nothing formal, just some eggs, hashbrowns, pancakes, coffee and usually light conversation.

If you ask why they started getting together or who first organized the gatherings, you don't get a straight answer. Near to the truth is that most or all at one time worked for Kennecott and most saw combat during World War II.

Brothers Andy Nielsen (Army) and Eldon Nielsen (Army and Air Force) were both in the war.

But when they meet, everyone already understands what the others went through during the war. It's the reason they give for not talking much about how one of the men still has shrapnel in his hand and hip or how another dug holes in the sands of Iwo Jima to escape being shot.

These days, they come from the Salt Lake and Tooele areas to gather at tables pushed together near a buffet at the TA truck stop just off of I-80, north of Tooele. They don't, however, need many tables anymore.

World War II veterans are dying at a rate of about 1,000 per day - - the U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2004 there were 3.9 million left.

Those from this breakfast club who have died, like Navy seamen Sheldon Bliss and Keith Reid, have taken whatever war stories that went untold with them to the grave.

Keeping it light

They have funny names for their group: ROMEO (for "retired old men eating out") spelled out on hats they wear; and March of the Penguins (some of the men, most in their 80s, waddle or hobble as they walk).

On a recent Wednesday, someone brought an obituary of a woman the group knew, an old photo taken near Brigham Young's house in Salt Lake City and a news clipping about the cremation of a 700-pound man.

The pieces of paper are talking points, lying next to Bob Davis' bifocals on the table.

Davis and Calvin Coon often go at it. Davis poked fun when Coon couldn't remember his own telephone number. Coon and Davis were Merchant Marines.

Coon had the upper hand a few moments later when Lamar "Bish" Davis (no relation to Bob) couldn't remember the name of the man, Bob Pollock, who was sitting right next to him. Pollock saw action as a Navy seaman during the battle for Iwo Jima. Bish, the man with the shrapnel in his hand and hip, is an Iwo Jima survivor.

These World War vets cover all four branches of the military. Their ranks vary. A few had stints in the Merchant Marines and Naval Armed Guard during the war.

At one end of the table, Lewis Welcker (Marines) and Keith Dangerfield (Navy) sat across from each other, recalling how the communities of Garfield and Magna used to be, about starting out in life after the war working for Kennecott.

The Garfield homes in which many of the men sitting at the table lived after the war are now gone. Which leads to another joke about how all the places they lived, worked and went to school when they were younger have vanished.

Once in a while, a quick war vignette is slipped in the mix, such as how the ring Jack Bowers (Naval Armed Guard) wears on his right hand was made from metal off of a kamikaze plane. Or how Hales spent three years aboard a destroyer and how his ship survived the Japanese bombing of Okinawa.

A reason to meet

Not many of these men miss too many Wednesdays at the truck stop.

Nielsen's brother, Eldon, and his friend Ed Slater (Navy) showed up for breakfast on another Wednesday. Slater, a hiker and mountain climber even in his 80s, is clearly the most fit among a table filled with frail or failing bodies.

Their voices are weathered by age.

Chatter drifts in and out of weather, politics, current events and that obituary sitting next to Bob Davis' glasses.

Coon picks up the obit for Ruth Hickman Coon, a relative by marriage. "She was a jolly woman," he says to himself, staring at her photo.

But loss isn't something dwelled on here. A few words are spoken about Gale Westerman's brother, Jack, a Marine who used to join this group before he died.

The same amount of table talk is allotted for Dangerfield's brother, Harold, a World War II veteran who passed away at age 87. Somewhere, Dangerfield isn't sure where, there is a written log of his brother's wartime experience.

Suddenly, without warning, two men at the table shoot off a snippet about how ships Westerman crewed were torpedoed. Westerman (Naval Armed Guard) says it was two ships that went down -- others at the table say it was three.

If there's a far-away look in someone's eyes, it's gone in the next breath as a joke flies through the air, twice if someone didn't hear it the first time. Westerman's brother Gene, who drives them to the truck stop, has one about a "cereal" killer that gets a few chuckles.

A conversation about the Iraq war lasts less than a minute, with a few bursts about how the United States shouldn't have attacked in the first place. Coincidentally, President Bush is on a television nearby, which prompts two men in the group to snap about how few people in Congress have a son who has served in Iraq.

Even as they leave, it's an opportunity for one more joke about how they hope to see one another next week and not before then in the obituaries. Or, as Coon likes to say, "God willing and the creek don't rise."

E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com