A6 The BulleTin • Sunday, May 30, 2021
EDITORIALS & OPINIONS
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
Heidi Wright
Gerry O’Brien
Richard Coe
Publisher
Editor
Editorial Page Editor
The death of
Captain Waskow
Editor’s note: Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle
wrote the following column after a stay with the 36th Division units near Mi-
gnano and Venafro, Italy. Pyle was later killed on April 18, 1945, by Japanese
forces. The Bulletin runs this column each year near Memorial Day.
I
n this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and
respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed
the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow, of
Belton, Texas.
Capt. Waskow was a company
commander in the 36th Division.
He had led his company since long
before it left the States. He was very
young, only in his mid-20s, but he
carried in him a sincerity and a gen-
tleness that made people want to be
guided by him.
“After my own father, he came
next,” a sergeant told me.
“He always looked after us,” a sol-
dier said. “He’d go to bat for us every
time.”
“I’ve never known him to do any-
thing unfair,” another one said.
I was at the foot of the mule trail
the night they brought Capt. Was-
kow’s body down the mountain. The
moon was nearly full at the time,
and you could see far up the trail
and even partway across the val-
ley. Soldiers made shadows as they
walked.
Dead men had been coming
down the mountain all evening,
lashed onto the backs of mules.
They came lying belly-down across
wooden pack saddles, their heads
hanging down on the left side of the
mule, their stiffened legs sticking
out awkwardly from the other side
bobbing up and down as the mule
walked.
The Italian mule-skinners were
afraid to walk beside dead men, so
Americans had to lead the mules
down that night. Even the Ameri-
cans were reluctant to unlash and lift
off the bodies at the bottom, so an
officer had to do it himself and ask
others to help.
The first one came in early in the
evening. They slid him down from
the mule and stood him on his feet
for a moment.
In the half light, he might have
been merely a sick man standing
there, leaning on the others. Then
they laid him on the ground in the
shadow of the low stone wall along-
side the road.
I don’t know who that first one
was. You feel small in the presence
of the dead men and ashamed of
being alive, and you don’t ask silly
questions.
We left him there beside the road,
that first one, and we all went back
into the cowshed and sat on water
cans or laid on the straw, waiting for
the next batch of mules.
Somebody said the dead soldier
had been dead for four days, and
then nobody said anything more
about it. We talked soldier talk for an
hour or more. The dead man lay all
alone outside, in the shadow of the
stone wall.
Then a soldier came into the dark
cowshed and said there were some
more bodies outside. We went out
into the road.
Four mules stood there, in the
moonlight, in the road where the
trail came down off the mountain.
The soldiers who led them stood
there waiting.
“This one is Capt. Waskow,” one
of them said quietly.
Two men unlashed his body from
the mule and lifted it off and lay it
in the shadow beside the low stone
wall. Other men took the other bod-
ies off.
Finally there were five, lying end
to end in a long row alongside the
road.
You don’t cover up dead men in
the combat zone. They just lie there
in the shadows until somebody else
comes after them.
The unburdened mules moved off
to their olive orchard.
The men in the road seemed re-
luctant to leave.
They stood around, and gradually
one by one you could sense them
moving close to Capt. Waskow’s
body.
One soldier came and looked down
and he said out loud, “Goddammit.”
That was all he said, and then he
walked away. Another one came. He
said “Goddammit to hell anyway.” He
looked down for a few moments, and
then he turned and left.
Another man came; I think he was
an officer. It was hard to tell officers
from men in the half-light, for all
were bearded and grimy dirty. The
man looked down in to the dead cap-
tain’s face, and then he spoke directly
to him, as though he were alive. He
said: “I’m sorry, old man.”
Then a soldier came and stood
beside the officer, and bent over, and
he too spoke to his dead captain, not
in a whisper but awfully tenderly,
and he said: “I sure am sorry, sir.”
Then the first man squatted
down, and he reached down and
took the dead hand, and he sat there
for five full minutes, holding the
dead hand in his own and looking
intently into the dead face, and he
never uttered a sound all the time he
sat there.
And then finally he put the hand
down, and then reached up and gen-
tly straightened the points of the
captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort
of rearranged the tattered edges of
his uniform around the wound.
And then he got up and walked
away down the road in the moon-
light, all alone.
Editorials reflect the views of The Bulletin’s editorial board, Publisher Heidi Wright, Editor
Gerry O’Brien and Editorial Page Editor Richard Coe. They are written by Richard Coe.
123RF
Invest in solving the child care crisis
BY KELLY SPARKS AND KATY BROOKS
C
entral Oregon’s dire short-
age of child care openings has
reached crisis proportions. As
far back as 2017, child care operators
had waiting lists hundreds of names
long. A new report shows conditions
worsened across the state during the
pandemic, with our region designated
a child care “desert.” The shortage’s
effect on our community stretches
beyond families.
Reliable child care
provides relief to
working and stu-
dent parents, and
supports businesses
and community
members who count
Brooks
on a dependable
workforce. It also
supports the future
of our youngest res-
idents.
With federal
funding available
to Central Oregon
through the Ameri-
Sparks
can Rescue Plan Act
of 2021 (or ARPA)
to support pandemic relief and eco-
nomic recovery, we have an opportu-
nity to turn our child care desert into
an oasis, creating quality, affordable
and scalable child care throughout
Central Oregon.
Already, Sen. Tim Knopp has
demonstrated leadership on this issue,
proposing $1 million in state ARPA
funds to support such an effort. Our
hope is that in the coming days, De-
schutes County will match that $1
million commitment through its local
ARPA funding.
That funding can support an in-
novative child care solution that
Oregon State University-Cascades,
GUEST COLUMN
Central Oregon Community Col-
lege and other community partners
have long been working toward. With
stable child care contributing to em-
ployee retention, the Bend Chamber
has been key to this effort. Chamber
representatives have met with state
and local legislators to ensure the crit-
ical need is understood, and raised
$130,000 for a child care accelerator,
most notably including support from
businesses who have lost talented em-
ployees due to the lack of area child
care.
Called Little Kits Early Learn-
ing & Child Care Center (kits being
the young of both beavers and bob-
cats), this child care solution builds
on a successful program piloted at
OSU-Cascades in response to the
pandemic and the urgent child care
needs of student and employee par-
ents.
With COCC as a committed part-
ner we have at hand an opportunity to
expand the pilot child care program,
initially opening spaces for up to 100
infant-to-pre-K children.
Little Kits can leverage assets of
both institutions: our early childhood
academic expertise, programs fo-
cused on nurturing resilience in chil-
dren, education programs that give
child care staff and early childhood
educators opportunities to pursue
associate or bachelor’s degrees, and
students seeking practical experience
like internships and apprenticeships
in preparation for careers in the early
childhood field.
Little Kits can also capitalize on
OSU-Cascades’ and COCC’s shared
operations, reducing start-up and
overhead costs, and allowing the
center to attract talented staff with
pay and benefits they deserve. And
while Little Kits will initially serve
OSU-Cascades and COCC employee
and student parents, as it grows, it
will increasingly accommodate other
community member parents.
Little Kits can be sited on land
available at either or both campuses
— a site on OSU-Cascades’ expanding
campus is designated for such a facil-
ity and COCC leaders have identified
a potential site — and housed in ef-
ficiently constructed modular build-
ings. It is a model that is planned to be
replicated across the region to support
our community. Already, Redmond
is under consideration as a next loca-
tion.
Little Kits has the support of ad-
ditional organizations who are each
vested in expanding child care options
in the region: Better Together, the City
of Bend, East Cascades Works, the
High Desert Education Service Dis-
trict and NeighborImpact.
For the first time in nearly five
years, we are hopeful for our region’s
families. Together, we have designed
a solution that is backed by the exper-
tise and resources of Central Oregon’s
higher education institutions, sup-
ported by expert community collabo-
rators and that can serve hundreds of
local families
Deschutes County Commission-
ers can amplify federal ARPA dol-
lars coming into our region to solve
a problem that reaches beyond the
pandemic into families’ everyday lives
and the future economic health of our
community. We think that’s a good re-
turn on investment.
e e
Kelly Sparks is associate vice president for
finance and strategic planning at Oregon State
University-Cascades. Katy Brooks is CEO of the
Bend Chamber.
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The military did not acknowledge they were a couple
BY PETULA DVORAK
The Washington Post
R
uthie the black lab knows her
mom and dad.
Last month was the first time
that Kathleen Bourque took Ruthie
to the beach after their whole world
changed — after dad didn’t come
home from Marine Corps training,
after the U.S. government packed up
all their belongings and shipped them
across the country, after she had to
insist that she was family, that she be-
longed right there, next to Conor Mc-
Dowell’s casket at the funeral.
Bourque, 24, was McDowell’s fian-
cee when he was killed in a training
mission two years ago. And in her
grief, she’s also had to fight for what
even the dog knew all along — that
Kathleen and Conor were a couple.
Their life together was just about
perfect. He was 24, handsome, a child
of Capitol Hill and Washington, D.C.’s
intellectual class who decided to join
the Marines. She was 22, a recent col-
lege graduate and looking for a life
outside her small North Carolina
town.
They had a cute apartment in Cal-
ifornia, wedding plans, two cats and
Ruthie, the floppy puppy who loved
running on the beach with them.
McDowell, a troop commander
with the 1st Light Armored Recon-
naissance Battalion, was supposed to
pick up the engagement ring he or-
dered as soon as he got back from a
10-day training mission.
But on May 9, 2019, he was crushed
to death when his light armored vehi-
cle rolled over after it fell into a weed-
choked abyss at Camp Pendleton near
San Diego. He saved his men, warning
them and pushing them to safety. But
he couldn’t save himself.
Bourque didn’t learn from the mil-
itary that her fiance had died. The
news came from three friends who
came to their apartment the next day.
She wasn’t his wife yet, so she wasn’t
entitled to an official notification.
Then she couldn’t get the govern-
ment to include her belongings with
his when they cleared out their apart-
ment, because she wasn’t a wife.
And when the funeral procession
began through Arlington National
Cemetery, one of the officials asked
her to stand back because she wasn’t
immediate family.
“Excuse me, sir. I am Conor Mc-
Dowell’s fiancee,” she said she told
him. “I might not have had the chance
to take his last name, but I am his
family. I am going to walk beside his
parents and there is nothing you can
do to stop me from doing so.”
Bourque went to live with McDow-
ell’s parents in Maryland, sleeping in
his old bedroom.
And she found other fiancees who
equally struggled with their marginal-
ized roles after a death.
The betrothed don’t get invited to
Gold Star events or grief groups or to
apply for scholarships or programs to
help them piece their lives together af-
ter they lost everything.
She found other fiancees like her,
women who insisted they be called
widows. Seven of them formed a group
— the Wids — and they gathered for
support, visited their loved ones in
Arlington en masse, mourned for the
weddings and the lives they never had.
In New Jersey, Chelsea Todd wore
her wedding dress to visit her fiance’s
grave on their planned wedding day
— Nov. 20 — after he died of cancer
two weeks earlier.
“As time starts to pass, I sit here re-
alizing that it’s now my turn to fight,”
Todd told Connecting Vets after vis-
iting Marine veteran Patrick Duva’s
grave. She and Duva’s family believe
his cancer was linked to the burn pits
in Afghanistan he was around during
his deployment.
Todd joins a gathering movement
of lawmakers, families and even Jon
Stewart who are urging Congress to
recognize the long-term impact of
those burn pits.
Bourque drives McDowell’s pickup
truck, with Ruthie by her side. They
went to the beach recently, this time
the Atlantic.
As soon as Ruthie smelled the salt
air and heard the waves, she began
frantically searching, running in cir-
cles, sniffing the sand for McDowell’s
familiar trail.
“Are you looking for Daddy?”
Bourque had asked. “She knew. She
knew he was always at the beach with
her.” Even the dog knew they be-
longed together.
e e
Petula Dvorak is a columnist
for The Washington Post.