The Regenerative American Fabric

By Dean Helmick

This story is written for all those who believe Americas best days still lie ahead. Follow the Walbert family as successive generations of Americans navigate through triumphs and challengesfrom the Great Depression through the modern-day global war on terror.

As members of the World War II generation, John and Margaret Walbert used the advantages of life in a small Montana town to raise their children and prepare them for the future. Despite Johns best efforts, the relationship with his son Billy crumbled. To salvage the deteriorating father-son relationship, the familys minster, Father Alex, used Montanas great outdoors as a leverage point to reconnect father and son. Many of the things Billy learned with his dad and Father Alex served him well as he connected with his own son Luke during Americas fight against global terror.

This is an uplifting story about how one family successfully passed Americas torch of freedom from one generation to the next. It illustrates how the American fabric is truly unique in its ability to continually regenerate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466952140

Dean Helmick

Dean Helmick is a retired Air Force officer who feels his greatest advantage in life was being raised in a small town lying in a picturesque valley cut through Montana’s mountains by the clear flowing Missouri River. Dean is married to his high school sweetheart, and the couple has two sons—one serving as a Marine officer and the other working as a civil engineer. The lessons in this book are some of the things the Helmicks have passed to their sons.

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© Copyright 2012 Dean Helmick.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-5216-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-5215-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-5214-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012919165

Trafford rev. 10/22/2012

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CONTENTS

Prologue Historical Comparisons

Chapter 1 John Walbert

Chapter 2 Weak Knees

Chapter 3 Starting A Family

Chapter 4 Father Alex

Chapter 5 Daddy’s Little Buddy

Chapter 6 Community Service

Chapter 7 Connecting Through The Great Outdoors

Chapter 8 Hunting Follies

Chapter 9 Return To Helena

Chapter 10 Billy’s Family

Chapter 11 Luke Walbert

Chapter 12 A Complex And Dangerous Place

Chapter 13 An American Response

Chapter 14 Global War On Terror

Chapter 15 Returning From War

Epilogue The Regenerative American Fabric

The Walbert-Wilde Way

Special Thanks

For the individual fibers who influenced me the most,

my wife,

Pamela Rose;

my sons,

Tyler and Derek;

my parents,

Troy and Shirley;

and my sisters and brother,

Rhonda, Brent, Leslie, Coleene, and Charmon.

PROLOGUE

HISTORICAL COMPARISONS

Americans living today occupy a somewhat unique place within the continuum of time. Throughout history, relatively few people have the opportunity to watch the sun set on one century as dawn brightens on another. As the day continues to brighten in the twenty-first century, it seems that our political system has disintegrated into a partisan two-party system, where party politics reign supreme. Situations where America’s elected leaders act in a manner best for Lady Liberty seem to have gone the way of T. rex, replaced by a new species known simply as the career politician. This new wilier creature, which is often seen hoisting a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution with a shaky hand or heard denouncing the youth and inexperience of anyone who dare challenge their birthright seat of power, thrives in a partisan environment and is only capable of surviving at opposing poles of the American political ecosystem. This often leaves the common American, those preferring the more temperate equatorial climate, wondering if anyone in Washington is willing to put America’s interests above party politics, earmarks, and self-preservation. How did a nation born in revolution able to produce what Tom Brokaw called The Greatest Generation and capable of such magnificent feats as putting men on the moon become so politically divisive and financially irresponsible?

While it is nearly impossible to counter the statement that we, as a nation, have elected a class of political elites, who have enabled us to become financially reckless and irresponsible, it is much more difficult to defend the position that we have drifted haplessly into a partisan abyss. Throughout our relatively short, albeit tumultuous, history, we have experienced a number of financial crises (including severe recessions and depressions), suffered through difficult and hotly contested presidential elections, witnessed presidential impeachment proceedings, and experienced extreme contrasts of national will. A closer look at each of these situations leads a person of reasonable character to ask: Just how broken is our modern-day political machine?

The old saying that where you stand depends largely upon where you sit is particularly applicable to partisan politics. For example, take a look at two of our recent Speakers of the House of Representatives. When conservative Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich championed what he called the Contract with America, he was summarily demonized by the Left for being mean-spirited and anti-middle class. When liberal Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi used her power and influence to champion repeated economic stimulus packages and a nationalized healthcare system, she was demonized by the Right for tripling our national debt and infringing on individual rights. While acknowledging that this is a simplistic view, the fundamental political positions of the Right and the Left are clearly contrasted by the work of Gingrich and Pelosi. One used his power and influence to cut spending and force a balanced budget by reducing or eliminating a wide variety of programs and individual entitlements. The other sought to provide governmental financial support and services to a wide array of people, regardless of the effect on the national budget and debt. But this isn’t a new argument. Americans’ disagreement about the government’s role in every aspect of our lives dates back to the earliest days of our republic. Before the end of President Washington’s first term, Jefferson and Hamilton were at complete odds about the correct role of American banks and their influence on the proper economic balance between an agrarian and industrial society for our fledgling nation. By the end of President Adams’s first term, his relationship with founding brothers Jefferson and Madison had disintegrated. Even members of what Jefferson called the greatest collection of demigods ever assembled could not completely agree on how our system should operate. Said differently, the people who wrote our nation’s core documents did not completely agree on their precise application. Accepting that our political system is designed to allow, and perhaps even inspire differing opinions, in no way intimates acceptance of the concept of relativism. The world is still comprised of good and evil, there is a definite divide between right and wrong, and individuals must be held accountable for their own actions—regardless of any personal trials and experiences. So with all this in mind, it is worth reflecting upon comparisons between our recent experiences and similar historical instances of financial crises, contested elections, impeachments, conflicts of national will, and extreme political disagreements.

FINANCIAL CRISES

It is often said that extraordinary events produce extraordinary leaders. After taking office, President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi didn’t have to wait long for their extraordinary event to surface. In October 2008, the United States economy experienced what many have called the most significant downturn since the Great Depression. Only an in-depth forensic investigation will tell for sure, but it seems that the critical element in the economic blunders leading to this disaster was greed. The main venues to execute this greed appeared in the housing and insurance markets. For over ten years leading up to the economic crash, the American real estate, banking, and insurance businesses enjoyed a sort of drunken debauchery. In most cases, Congress either stood idly by and watched the festivities or joined in for personal aggrandizement or to amass great personal wealth. As a result, banks lent money to people for houses they couldn’t afford, while insurance companies guaranteed the loans. Basically, everyone was getting rich on make-believe money. When former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was called to testify before Congress after the market crash, individual members of Congress feigned naivety and demanded that Greenspan explain what happened. Greenspan said, in essence, despite 40 years of evidence to the contrary, he had learned the banking system was not capable of regulating itself. Perhaps the data point Mr. Greenspan missed is that most of today’s top banking and insurance executives did not personally endure the Great Depression. Thus, their personal behavior was not checked or regulated by firsthand experience of the economic pain and loss of personal fortunes caused by the unregulated markets and greed of the roaring 1920s. An equally important point that receives very little open discussion is the fact that never before has the federal government stepped in and guaranteed multimillion-dollar annual salaries for executives that run their company into bankruptcy. From the common American’s perspective, it’s easy to see that there is plenty of blame to go around for the economic crisis which began in 2008. The bailout packages (e.g., American taxpayer’s bill) to cover this bad behavior are unimaginable to the point of being obscene, and the government’s willingness to finance such gross misdeeds has certainly kept America’s top executives from learning anything.

In spite of all this, the political parties have circled their wagons and fully engaged in a blame campaign, instead of rolling up their sleeves and getting to work doing America’s business of looking for the root causes and solutions to this financial disaster. Speaker Pelosi dutifully served as the Left’s Field Marshal in their crusade against the Right. During debate surrounding the 2008 financial crisis, Speaker Pelosi delivered the following remarks to the House of Representatives:

When was the last time someone asked you for $700 billion? It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush Administration’s failed economic policies—policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system. Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth, and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos…

It seemed that the primary objective of Speaker Pelosi’s partisan speech on the floor of the House was to shift blame away from her party and onto the former occupant of the executive branch. She appeared more concerned with rallying forces against the Right than with attacking the looming threat to the foundation of American greatness.

It should come as no surprise that our current economic crisis is not a new event in the history of American economic cycles. Regardless of the source cited or definition used, most economists agree that the United States has experienced dozens of recessions and perhaps six full-blown depressions, including The Great Depression which lasted roughly from 1929 through the early 1940s. President Herbert Hoover gave an unsuccessful shot at lead-turning the pending economic disaster with his version of economic stimulus packages, but the economy still tanked following the market crash of 1929. President Roosevelt’s New Deal program, which is often credited with steering our great nation toward the end of the depression, cannot be fairly evaluated without considering the economic influences of World War II. So where does it leave us if we say that President Hoover couldn’t lead-turn the economy with federal stimulus money, and we’re unsure if President Roosevelt’s New Deal would have worked without a world war?

While the Great Depression remains one of the most poorly understood events in American history, its impact on the common American was staggering. During the depths of this crisis, nearly one of two American family breadwinners was either unemployed or underemployed. Even with the bleak economic situation and high unemployment rates we are experiencing today, it’s difficult to grasp the stark realities and daily difficulties endured by the average American family during the 1930s when nearly half of Americans were living from meal to meal.

Economists’ views on the causes and corresponding solutions to the business cycles surrounding American recessions and depressions are largely ideologically aligned. That being, if an economist believes in an unregulated free market system, then that individual likely believes and can find supporting data to show that the role of the government in business is too significant and thus suppresses the markets and causes downward cycles. On the other hand, if an economist believes that the government’s role is regulating business, then that individual likely believes government regulations are simply too laissez-faire, allowing too much power in the hands of greedy businessmen, who readily squander investors’ money to maximize their personal gain. Either way, it is the American worker (i.e., the individual American) that remains the indisputable constant in every economic equation. From the CEO and board of directors, down through middle management, and onto the workshop floor, Americans have always had the intelligence, ingenuity, and work ethic to lift themselves out of economic hard times. As push comes to shove, there is no reason to believe that the same won’t be true in our current economic crisis.

The future of our economy is in the hands of the individual American, and this should make everyone breathe a sigh of relief. President Hoover couldn’t inspire greatness through government stimulus and neither will President Obama. We won’t find national greatness in offshore companies that are focused primarily at profits nor will we recapture greatness within unrealistically generous union contract negotiations. Nobody is going to hand America a ticket to the next generation of greatness. We will have to put on our work clothes and earn it—just like past generations have done.

CONTESTED ELECTIONS

Through the fall of 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore squared off as their parties’ nominee for president. Everyone knew that the race for the requisite 270 Electoral College votes was going to be close, but nobody knew exactly how close until election night, when it all came down to Florida’s 25 electoral votes. At the end of the night, it was apparent that the winner of Florida would be our next president. The debacle that followed would have been humorous if it wasn’t so sad.

Following an election night filled with news anchor miscues and false starts, Governor Bush was finally projected to win Florida. However, before Vice President Gore could concede the election, it was reported that there might be counting errors in certain heavily Democratic areas of the state. Bad as that sounds on the surface, things went steadily downhill from there. Neither party wanted all the votes recounted. They just wanted the votes recounted that would provide them with a higher number. This is partisanship at its very core, meaning my guy should win, regardless of how we have to count the votes.

To make the Florida election debacle even worse, the concepts of hanging chads and confusing ballots were introduced. In the case of the hanging chad, it was purported that some voters did not press their stylus completely through the ballot. So the perforated square (a.k.a. chad) on the ballot did not completely detach and was thus not counted by the ballot-counting machines. So the party that needed more votes wanted election boards to examine each ballot by hand to determine voter intent. The ridiculous images of dedicated Florida partisans looking cross-eyed through a magnifying class to determine voter intent will forever be burned in America’s political landscape. To add even more doubt, the party needing additional votes contested that the ballots were simply too complex for the average voter to understand. You had to read the name on one side of the page and punch a chad on the facing page. Said differently, Vice President Gore was hanging his election hopes on the concept that Floridians were either too weak to punch a chad or too stupid to read a ballot.

After weeks of formal bickering in the court system, the U.S. Supreme Court finally demonstrated some mature leadership and said enough and ended the recounts. Despite contrary results based on total recount numbers following the election, Vice President Gore still claims the election was awarded by the court. In the end, Al Gore lost, and the Supreme Court simply said there were no grounds for continuing creative recounts.

Like economic woes, contested elections are nothing new in America. President George Washington was unanimously elected during both his first and second terms. According to many historians, President Washington would have likely received unanimous support had he run for a third term. Our second president, Federalist John Adams, did not fare nearly as well in his first election and his second election proved one of historical significance. In the election of 1800, John Adams of Massachusetts, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Aaron Burr of New York, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, and John Jay of New York stood for election. While political parties were in their infancy, the election of 1800 managed to become extremely partisan. Adams, the sitting president (a Federalist) and Jefferson the sitting vice president (a Democratic-Republican) seemed to be the front-runners in the election. Supporters of both men believed that election of the other would certainly destroy our fledgling nation. In the end, the Democratic-Republicans erred by evenly splitting their Electoral College votes between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson, creating a tie vote. The framers of the U.S. Constitution foresaw this circumstance and thus included procedures for breaking a tie. Basically, in the case of an Electoral College tie, the U.S. House of Representatives elects the winner, with each state casting a single vote. In the Jefferson-Burr tie, the House held 36 separate votes that each resulted in a tie. Finally, through some skillful political-wrangling, the Delaware delegation was persuaded not to vote, thus tipping the scale in Jefferson’s favor.

History shows that both Federalist John Adams and Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson were great men in their own right. Each man was keenly focused on American goodness yet divergent upon what they viewed as the best route to success. For years following Jefferson’s victory, these two stalwarts of American greatness refused to speak. Only through the mellowing of time and continual work of friends did they once again begin to exchange letters. Their relationship eventually warmed again and lasted until their deaths. Perhaps there is a message in the fact that both men died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, the 50th birthday of the country both men dearly loved.

IMPEACHMENT

Examples of partisan bickering are not limited to times when one party or individual takes power from another. Another blatant example of the partisan nature of our political system is when it becomes necessary to impeach and possibly remove a president from office. Our nation’s founding fathers foresaw instances where elected officials would require discipline and possibly even removal from office. Impeachment procedures, which begin in the House of Representatives and end in the Senate, are clearly defined in Article 2 Section 4 of the Constitution.

In December 1998, the House of Representatives voted to impeach President William Jefferson Clinton for perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The charges mainly stemmed from President Clinton’s testimony under oath about his conduct as it related to physical (a.k.a. sexual) activities with a young female Whitehouse intern and with another young female state employee in Arkansas. While testifying under oath, the president coyly said that his conduct largely depended upon what the definition of the word is . . . is? Unfortunately for the president, the intern had kept her now famous blue dress that proved beyond a doubt what the president had been up to and perhaps even where his is . . . was. The impeachment proceedings lasted until February 1999, when the Senate cast its final vote and acquitted the president of all charges. While the process unfolded exactly as prescribed by the founding fathers, there was one looming fact: The final Senate vote on each charge was cast largely along party lines. So regardless of which way an individual American believed the final verdict in this trial should have gone, it appears that party politics were more important than adherence to the Constitution and legal standards. Whether or not the president lied under oath seemed inconsequential to the proceedings. That being, in the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton, if you were a Republican, you wanted him removed from office; and if you were a Democrat, you wanted him retained—regardless of whether he had perjured himself. Party politics ruled the day. It is interesting to note that this was not the first impeachment where members of Congress went to their respective corners and took a standing eight-count for the good of their party.

Most Americans would find it difficult to name the two presidents who have been impeached during our 200+ year history. The first impeachment involved President Andrew Johnson in May 1868. While there are several underlying causes for Johnson’s impeachment, it was first and foremost a politically motivated event. Senator Andrew Johnson’s (Democrat Tennessee) openly pro-Union position earned him a spot on the ticket as Abe Lincoln’s vice president. Not long after being sworn in as Lincoln’s VP, an assassin’s bullet made Andrew Johnson the 17th president of the United States. Johnson’s assent to presidency was originally met with optimism by politicians who believed Lincoln’s Civil War Reconstruction policies were too lenient on the South. However, all hopes were quickly dashed as Johnson proved to be very pro-Southern in his postwar views. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a disagreement with Congress about the removal of federal employees. President Johnson exercised what he viewed as his clear authority when he removed Secretary of War Edward Stanton and replaced him with Ulysses S. Grant. Congress, on the other hand, felt this was a clear violation of the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited the president from dismissing any cabinet member confirmed by the Senate without Senate approval. This act was passed primarily to keep cabinet members appointed by President Lincoln in place through the end of Johnson’s term. When President Johnson dismissed Stanton, the House of Representatives approved 11 articles of impeachment against the president by a vote of 127 - 47. After deliberations, the Senate failed to uphold the impeachment with 35 senators voting to convict and 19 voting to acquit. This fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority required to convict the president. Perhaps most noteworthy is that the vote was largely along party lines—as was the case with President Clinton. Thus, the political die for impeaching President Clinton was actually cast in 1868.

CONTRASTS OF NATIONAL WILL

In our history, we have experienced periods of time where examples of American greatness have played out nearly simultaneously with examples of extreme conflict and ugliness. The years around 1969 provide one such example.

A shining example of America’s ability to succeed in areas where others dared not dream came on July 20, 1969 when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully landed the American spacecraft module Eagle in Mare Tranquillitatis, while astronaut Michael Collins remained in orbit overhead. As Neil Armstrong stepped off the Eagle’s ladder, his words were prophetic: That’s one small step for man, one great leap for mankind. As these three American heroes with the direct support of thousands of Americans back on Earth entered the moon’s orbit and successfully landed on the moon’s surface, there was great tension within the American public back on the blue-green marble peacefully suspended in space.

During what is arguably one of our greatest achievements, America was fully engaged against the Soviet Union in an unpopular war that was being hosted by the tiny Southeast Asian country of Vietnam. Opposition to the war, coupled with racial tensions, a series of political assignations, and active counter cultural movements, threatened to tatter our American fabric—yet we persevered. Despite the continual destructive behaviors of the late ’60s and early ’70s that occurred all across America, we were able to send three of our finest citizens over two hundred thousand miles through space, successfully land on the moon, and then safely return home. This monumental feat has not yet been matched by any other nation. Said differently, our nation is big enough, diverse enough, and great enough to perform unimaginable feats of greatness, despite the best efforts of individual segments of our society focused on dragging our nation into chaos.

POLITICAL DISAGREEMENTS

In today’s political environment, it seems that civility is a thing of the past. It also seems that we may never see politicians linked in unison for the common good of our nation. Those on the Left demonized Speaker Gingrich. A handful of years later, those on the Right did the same to Speaker Pelosi. The Left professes that President Bush intentionally and recklessly destroyed our economy. The Right implies that President Obama is not even an American citizen. Members of Congress make speeches saying that individuals in an opposing party can go straight to hell! Of all the noteworthy examples we’ve seen before, this one is undoubtedly the most dangerous to our nation. History provides stark reminders of just how dangerous this type of inflammatory political rhetoric and nonsense can become.

Code Duello: To say that Alexander Hamilton was an impressive man is an understatement. He was born to a single mother in Saint Croix and was brought to the United States by his employer, where he attended Kings College in New York City. Hamilton served as General Washington’s military aide during the Revolutionary War and later became President Washington’s secretary of the treasury. In this position, Alexander Hamilton established the foundation upon which the American economy still rests. Today, his portrait occupies the center of our $20 bill. Another Revolutionary War veteran, Aaron Burr, was also active in early American politics. Burr and Hamilton had known each other for years and both men were active members in the New York political machine. Hamilton openly disliked Burr and, in 1802, made disparaging comments about him in the company of friends. When news of these comments leaked out, Burr felt that his honor had been challenged by a man he did not like. In the ensuing weeks, friends of both men exchanged correspondence saying Hamilton should either deny the comments or make an apology. When it became evident that Hamilton was unwilling to do either, Burr invoked the Code Duello. As such, the two men would meet at a prearranged location and solve their disagreement with pistols. By 1802, duels were illegal, so the event was planned and carried out in secret. Great measures were taken to protect the identities of all parties involved and to provide plausible deniability after the event. On the morning of July 11, 1804, Secretary Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Aaron Burr met in a secluded area above the Hudson River outside New York City. There are numerous accounts of exactly what happened, but in the end, Alexander Hamilton lay mortally wounded on the bluffs above the Hudson and Vice President Aaron Burr became a fugitive charged with murder. On that fateful day, Burr entered an ever-tightening political death spiral that put him on the run for the remainder of his life.

Boil Over: It is easy to imagine how pressure must have continually increased between political rivalries in the years leading up to our Civil War. One situation where the pressure boiled over was in May 1856, when antislavery Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts presented a fiery speech entitled Crime against Kansas. During this speech, Sumner called the character of fellow senators Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina into question. Douglas was present to hear the tirade but Butler was not. As a result, South Carolina representative Preston Brooks felt it was his duty to protect the honor of his fellow statesman. One afternoon, as the Senate adjourned for the day, Representative Brooks entered the Senate chamber where he found Sumner at his desk. Without warning, Brooks beat Sumner on the head with his metal-tipped cane. The beating continued until Sumner lay unconscious and bleeding on the Senate floor. With his duties complete, Sumner walked unmolested from the Senate chamber. As a result of this event, both Sumner and Brooks became heroes for their respective camps in the slavery debate. This debate was ultimately settled on battlefields scattered across America.

OUR AMAZING ABILITY TO

CONTINUALLY REBOUND

Several politicians have quoted or paraphrased Matthew 5:14-16 in reference to America’s overall goodness and place on the world stage. In one version, this full passage reads: You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Men do not light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket. They set it on a stand where it gives light to all in the house. In the same way your light must shine before men so that they may see goodness in your acts and give praise to your heavenly father. Throughout history, in good times and bad, America has continually found ways to be the shining light on the hill.

To understand how America continues to excel in the face of conflicting interests and repeated adversity, one must consider both the macro- and microstructures within our society. At both levels, you could easily say that Americans are represented by a common fabric. Like all fabrics, the American fabric has variations, imperfections, and even visible stains—and that’s all right because it represents who we are as a nation. The strengths (or weaknesses) of all fabrics can only be truly understood by a micro level examination of the individual fibers within the whole. The American Fiber gets its overall strength and flexibility from the thousands of individual fibers within the overall fabric. The individual fibers, in turn, derive their strength from bonds and interactions between groups in neighboring fibers. At the macro level, the American Fabric can at times and in certain places be aesthetically pleasing to the eye. At the micro level (the true source of our strength), the fibers aren’t pretty and may even appear chaotic.

It is the American fabric that supports our Beacon on the Hill and enables America’s ability to dream and achieve unbelievable feats. With this in mind, it’s important to acknowledge and understand that the overall strength of this fabric comes from within its individual groups of fibers—the individuals, neighborhoods, communities, and small towns all across our great nation.

This brief walk through history was not intended to be an academic lesson. Rather, it’s intended to be a good news story about the places we’ve been, the things we’ve achieved and our potential for future greatness. In the upcoming chapters, this book presents a series of interrelated short stories about individual fibers within our American Fabric. Each story tells how members of our Greatest Generation living in small-town America passed their life lessons to subsequent generations and thus helped prepare us to meet the many challenges and turmoil certain to arise as America charts her course through the 21st century.

1

JOHN WALBERT

If ever there was an occasion to celebrate a life well-lived, it was when John Walbert passed away in the early hours of July 1, 2005. While traditions of the Irish wake have changed and perhaps even mellowed over time, friends and family of the Walberts traveled from near and far to share in the sorrow of those left behind, to celebrate John’s life, and to reaffirm faith in the life ahead. The funeral service at Saint John’s Episcopal Parish was packed to overflowing with people whose lives John had touched and the graveside service at Deep Creek Cemetery was attended by an even larger crowd. Conditions on that July afternoon were as beautiful as Montana offers. In the warm breeze, Mount Baldy with its blue-timbered slopes and snow-covered peaks, rose up from the brown foothills and towered supreme over the Deep Creek Valley. On this day, one could certainly feel the presence of the Lord and imagine the chorus of angels welcoming John home.

On November 25, 1924, John Walbert was the sixth of seven children born to Irish immigrants on the family homestead outside Townsend, Montana, in the shadow of the Big Belt Mountains. Like most children born shortly before the Great Depression, much of John’s childhood lacked what today we consider the most rudimentary creature comforts, such as running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity. His father expected him to work hard on the family farm and spend any extra time on the studies handed out initially by the schoolmarm at the nearby one-room schoolhouse and later by the high school officials in the nearby town. When John attended high school, he would leave the farm on Sunday afternoon and stay with family in town through Friday afternoon. The 17-mile drive from the farm to town was simply too far and too expensive to travel each day. While in high school, John’s father had little tolerance for extracurricular athletics and felt that such programs were intended solely for kids who lived in town and had nothing better to do with their time. Despite being a standout athlete and three-sport varsity letterman, John’s father seldom attended any of his son’s athletic events.

Perhaps the fulcrum point in John’s life occurred on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and thrust the United States headlong into World War II. Over the years, John would recall that he clearly remembered that fateful day. He and his older brother Brent had been out feeding cattle in their horse-drawn sled. The ground was frozen solid and the wind blowing off the snow-packed slopes of the Big Belt Mountains was biting. When the boys returned home, removed their heavy clothes and attempted to shake off the cold in the warm kitchen of their small farm house, their mother told them what she had heard on the radio. From the frozen Montana foothills, John and his brother responded in a fashion true to their Irish heritage—their blood boiled. On December 8, John was ready to drop out of high school, leave the family farm, and head off to the Pacific to fight the Japanese aggressors. The only thing holding John back was his father, who refused to give John his blessing in joining the military before he successfully completed high school. Chaffing within this restraint, John begrudgingly finished high school. But immediately after graduation in May 1941, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and was on his way to basic training.

The pride flowing in John’s veins, as he headed to basic training at Paris Island, most likely created the same euphoric feeling that his great-great-great-granddaddy (also named John Walbert) had when he enlisted in the Wisconsin Twentieth Regiment and headed off to fight the rebels in America’s Civil War. John’s great-granddaddy, an illiterate Irishman and first generation American, was part of the Irish Iron Brigade. Fighting to preserve the Union provided John’s granddaddy with something he so badly sought—the opportunity to call himself an American. The senior John Walbert fought in seven major engagements prior to being badly wounded on July 3, 1863, at Gettysburg Pennsylvania. After convalescing in a makeshift hospital near Gettysburg for nearly a year, John Walbert headed to the Montana Territory, where he laid claim to a soldier’s land grant and a new life. The limp he picked up at Gettysburg and the accompanying need to walk with a cane would never leave him.

Like his great-grandfather before him, John got everything he bargained for as he fought his way across the Pacific. After fighting at both Iwo Jima and Okinawa, he found himself sitting on a tiny Japanese island, waiting for what seemed to be the inevitable invasion of the Japanese mainland. Regardless of the emotional debate that unfolded in ensuing decades, John always remained soft spoken and quietly thankful that President Truman had approved the use of atomic weapons against Japan in August 1945. John felt that Truman’s decision had most certainly averted the certain and indiscriminate bloodbath awaiting Americans and Japanese alike on the beaches of Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu. By the time the war ended, John found himself longing to leave the destruction and violence he had witnessed during the past three years and return to the shadows of the Big Belt Mountains.

When John stepped off the bus onto the frozen mud in front of the Mint Café in January 1946, he assumed that the war would be just a bad memory from over five thousand miles away that could be neatly filed in the deep recesses of his memory. Little did he realize, just as his great-granddaddy before him, John’s generation had forever changed the world, and his role had not yet begun to unfurl before him.

SMALL TOWN

How an individual defines small town largely rests in the size of his or her hometown. That being a person from New York City might call Denver a small town. In turn, someone from Denver could call Omaha a small town. And people living in Omaha would certainly consider Helena, Montana, small. Hard as it is to believe, the diminutive delineation doesn’t stop with towns sporting a population of thirty thousand people. The place that John Walbert continually dreamed about while trudging through the steamy south pacific jungles was significantly smaller than thirty thousand. In fact, John’s favorite place was located two miles from the closest paved road and over 30 miles from the closest stop light.

With this in mind, take a minute and think about the term small town. It could easily be identified as any place where there is a group of people who are dependent upon each other; a place where families know each other and where people know the first names of their police officers, business leaders, clergy, and teachers. Such a place could be found in a New York City borough or in a place like Townsend, Montana. Small town is as much an attitude and a way of life as it is a physical location or number recorded in census ledgers. America’s small towns and communities serve a function similar to a cloth loom—holding the American Fabric in place while individual fibers are interwoven to provide form, function and, beauty. Unlike any other cloth, individual American fibers ensure our national fabric continually regenerates—remaining fresh, un-tattered, and strong.

Small towns, like the one John Walbert always dreamed of, can be found all across the United States. They include a downtown area that is 3-5 blocks long. Both sides of the street are lined with two-story brick buildings. The first floor of most buildings houses businesses such as hardware stores, law offices, insurance companies, or grocery stores. The second story is often either living quarters or abandoned. Somewhere along the main drive are the county courthouse, jail, and a veterans memorial. The courthouse is generally one of the oldest and most impressive structures on Main Street. The veterans memorials range from individual monuments to full-sized parks; each intended to pay homage to the men and women who’ve paid the ultimate price in America’s wars. A glance down Main Street shows that the building’s owners take care and maintain their facilities but don’t have the resources required for total retrofit; so broken sidewalks and weathered bricks are the norm. In much of America, one end of Main Street includes grain bins and elevators, which are built between the street and the railroad tracks. This structure provides the connective tissue between an agrarian society and distant markets, a connection between what President Jefferson viewed as the most important aspect of the American economy (the grain bins) and what Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton viewed as most important (commerce gained through shipping to distant markets). It would be easy for a casual observer to drive down Main Street America, and mistakenly deduce that life is simply less complex in small towns. Perhaps a more correct assessment is that life in small towns and communities is not less complex but it is inherently more stable. Small towns exude individual responsibility, a sense of belonging, and a common identity. While places like Townsend Montana include one Main Street (complete with grain bins and railroad