VETERAN
continued from page 1
reminders of veterans in their families
to fill the display. Musgrove says he
will probably bring in his drill ser
geant hat.
He also plans on traveling to Al
bany today with his wife, Robin, to
watch the Veterans Day parade.
Robin Musgrove says she spent a to
tal of 12 years in Germany, helping to
raise their three daughters while her
husband served. Going to the parade
reminds her of the lifestyle they once
had, she says.
She also wants to go to the parade
to honor her husband for the years he
spent serving the country, she says,
adding that today will be the fourth
time they've attended together.
But he won't be participating in the
parade; he already spent years march
ing in drill teams and on flag teams.
"I'm a spectator now," he says, "so
I'll just be watching it."
Joining the Army
Musgrove's father, Bill, ap
proached his son and told him it
was time to leave.
Musgrove was bewildered. He was
n't sure what his dad meant by that.
He was enjoying his senior year at
Ihurston I ligh School, and he'd com
pletely forgotten about enlisting in
the Army the previous September.
The day after his graduation in June
1977, Musgrove left his home in
Springfield for life in the Army. When
he joined, he decided he was going to
make a long-term commitment to the
service. His father had fought in
World War 11 and spent 11 years in the
Army, crawling his way up Omaha
Beach during the D-Day invasion and
fighting in the Battle of the Bulge,
where he was wounded.
But Bill Musgrove never told his son
about having to run away from advanc
ing German Panzer tanks, Musgrove
says, adding that he was left trying to
follow his father's legacy — almost.
"My dad wanted me to be a cook,"
Musgrove says. "And that's what 1
signed up for. But 1 changed it without
him knowing to artillery because I
wanted to fire the big guns. To me,
that's exciting. Until I went to Ger
many and it was 20 below, and 1 said,
'Oh, 1 made a mistake.'"
Musgrove says he was sent to dusty,
dirty, snake-ridden Fort Sill, Okla., to
get his basic and artillery training. It
was at Fort Sill that Musgrove, a huge
music fan, first got word that Elvis
Presley had died.
"They stopped the rifle range to tell
us that" he recalls. "It was big news... it
was like the president dying back then."
Fighting the Cold War
Musgrove trained in Oklahoma un
til September 1977 when he was sent
to a West German town called I lanau,
outside Frankfurt.
In I lanau, Musgrove says he did
everything from working with radar
to doing administrative work for the
company commander and even deci
phering potential orders for the de
ployment of nuclear weapons.
It was an anxious time to be in Ger
many, he says. It was during the Cold
War, and Russian forces occupied East
Germany and much of Berlin. The
Berlin Wall still divided East from
West and would continue to stand for
more than a decade.
"It was very tense all of the time,"
he says. "We had to watch out for the
terrorists because they were trying to
get in and blow up our ammunition
dumps, which they did if they could
catch people asleep. 1 didn't sleep; I
was too scared."
He described one night when he
and some friends went to see a "new
group" called Van Halen playing in
Frankfurt. While they were at the con
cert, an alert erupted designed to test
American response to a hypothetical
Russian attack. Musgrove and his
friends had to ditch most of Black
Sabbath's set to get back to the post,
and by the time they got back the
whole post was gone, he remembers.
"We really got into trouble because
we didn't tell anybody where we
went," he says.
Despite the tense conflicts of the
Cold War, Musgrove says, living in
Germany had its good points. He
used to go on hiking trips through the
countryside and go sightseeing in
cities with his German friends. He
bought them cigarettes and Jack
Daniel's and, in exchange, they took
him everywhere, he says.
Musgrove also remembers hearing
about the eruption of Mount St. He
lens. Shortly after, one of his friends
from school sent him an envelope
with a bunch of "white stuff' in it.
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"I threw it away because I was like
'Oh crap, it's drugs,'" he says. "I wrote
him back and said, 'Don't send that
crap.' We were more naive than kids
now. It was ash; 1 thought it was co
caine. "
Musgrove also remembers how
close he and his fellow soldiers were.
He still keeps in contact with 10 to 12
of them today.
"I still talk to those guys now that
we're all older and our chests have
sagged some," he says. "One of them
traveled through here last summer
and stopped in Gateway (Mall) and
called me, and I ran out there and had
lunch with him. That's what I'd like to
do — just go traveling and stop at
somebody's house."
Serving on American soil
In 1980, at the end of his three
years in the service, Musgrove re
turned to the United States. But that
didn't mean his military days were
over; he decided to stay in the Army.
A couple of factors kept him in, he
says. One was his boss — a man Mus
grove greatly respected — who con
vinced him to stay and advance in
rank. Another was the bad economy,
which convinced him not to abandon
the financial security of military life.
"I think I was too chicken to get out
because every time I'd come home
there was a recession," he says. "The
one tiling about being in the military
is you get fed, paid and you get a place
to stay."
But Musgrove decided to look for a
different job. He was asked if he want
ed to be a recruiter, but he said he did
n't like people telling him "no." He
was asked if he wanted to be an air
borne ranger, but he replied he was
too "chicken" to jump out of a plane.
"I got a wild hair up my butt to be a
drill sergeant," he says.
After two years in Fort Lewis, Wash.,
where he worked in promotions and
doing other administrative work, he
traveled to Fort Jackson, S.C. He
served there for three years as a drill
sergeant.
But Musgrove says he wasn't like
the stereotypical drill sergeants that
Hollywood presents, although he did
force the recruits from Springfield
High School — a rival of Thurston —
to do more pushups.
"It wouldn't be vindictive, mean,
scary crap," he says. "I would say really
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funny stuff, like 'Remember when we
dumped that horse poop all over your
commons?' And they'd be like, 'How
did you know that?'"
Civilian life
As a kid in high school, Musgrove
worked at a gas station where the
Burger King on Franklin Boulevard
now sits, right across the street from
Oregon Hall.
Now, when he's not attending mul
timedia classes, he works in Oregon
Hall.
"1 just think that's wild," he says.
Musgrove's father helped build Ore
gon Hall. As a construction worker, Bill
Musgrove helped construct numerous
buildings on campus including the
Onyx Bridge and Klamath Hall.
Musgrove remembers visiting Ore
gon Hall while it was under construc
tion. Standing on the first floor and
looking up, he could see only beams,
he recalls.
But, ironically, Musgrove had a
hard time getting hired at the Univer
sity. After he got out of the Army in
1997, he turned in applications at sev
eral departments within the Universi
ty but kept getting rejected. Depart
mental staffs were reluctant to hire
him because he was once a drill ser
geant, he says.
"Sometimes I'd hand (applica
tions) in and they'd go, 'Oh, we really
need a drill sergeant. We'll call you.'"
he says. "And I'd be like, 'I don't just
yell at people.'"
Then, a group of fellow veterans
called him and told him to try the
Business Affairs Office. He turned in
his application for a receptionist po
sition at 5 p.m. on the last day appli
cations were being accepted.
They called him in for an interview,
and things went well.
"She liked my humor and the way
I was laid back because I'm nothing
like you see on TV," he says.
But, not everybody understood his
sense of humor.
'They said, 'Well, you were artillery.
What can you do for us?'" Musgrove
says. "I said, 'I can hit OSU from here.' I
took that for a laugh. One person
laughed. Two people went 'Oh, god!'"
Contact the people/culture/faith
reporter
atjaredpaben@dailyemeraid.com.
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activist
continued from page 1
of his role in the struggle for civil
rights.
"We got in trouble, we got in the
way,* Lewis said. "It was good trouble. *
Lewis also discussed his humble
beginnings in rural southeast Alaba
ma, where his sharecropper father
tended to 110 acres.
"I didn't grow up in a big city like
Eugene," Lewis said.
Lewis first took an active role in the
civil rights struggle after he was denied
admission to a college near his home.
"As a young child, 1 tasted the bitter
fruits of segregation and racial discrimi
nation, and I did not like it" Lewis said.
Lewis wrote to Martin Luther King
Jr. and was soon invited to Mont
gomery, Ala., to meet King and fellow
civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy.
On his trip to Montgomery, Lewis
said he encountered numerous signs
that enforced segregation.
Now, Lewis said, '"1116/re gone and
America is a better place and a better
country."
As the 40th anniversary of the March
on Washington approaches, Lewis
holds steadfast to the non-violent ideals
at the heart of the civil rights snuggle.
"(Non-violence) is not simply a
technique, not simply a tactic, but a
way of life," Lewis said.
Melnick praised the congressman
for sticking to his ideals.
"In many ways he hasn't changed,
and that's what's so wonderful about
him," Melnick said. "He still holds
strongly on to those values."
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., said
Lewis is a good friend to have in
Congress.
"He's a living inspiration," De
Fazio said.
Moe Spencer, a second-year law
student, had similar sentiments.
"It is good to hear someone who is
living, breathing history in the flesh,"
Spencer said.
University President Dave Frohn
mayer said Lewis' visit was an honor
to the LIniversity.
"It's a chance to bring alive a period
of history that seems to have fled too
quickly from our memory," he said.
Contact the campus/federal politics
reporter
atchuckslothower@dailyemerald.com.
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