Memories from Memorial Day
May 31st, 2010 by David Svet
One Memorial Day weekend in Dayton, Ohio during the mid 1960’s my entrepreneurial older brother conscripted my younger sister and I to assist him with one of his many get rich projects. We had yet to learn that we were not included on the list of potential beneficiaries. This particular endeavor involved creating a haunted house in our basement, marketing the amusement to our neighborhood friends, and bilking them out of a quarter to tour the facilities.
It went relatively well. We had a steady stream of kids wandering around squealing. Then an older boy showed up. He was Gordie Dadisman, my classmate Lisa Dadisman’s big brother. He took the tour and was fairly impressed, so much so that he volunteered to help. His job was to hide behind a door and jump out scaring people. Gordie was great. He was bigger than everyone else and very scary. We all had a great time and were very pleased that a big kid thought we were cool enough to help.
My summers continued as a little warmonger who wandered the neighborhood with my Mattel submachine gun and Green Beret. Occasionally I would see Gordie and he would wave. It was cool to be acknowledged by the big kids.
By 1970 I was in the seventh grade, no longer playing soldier. Gordie was drafted and went to Vietnam with the army. It was a strange time. Every night the news played out the war in our living room with Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite reporting. It was much grimmer than the stories my dad told me about his time in the army. Now it was very real because I knew somebody who was really there.
One day in August, later that year, I walked around the corner to tell a friend the grim news that I was moving away. For some reason there were a lot of people outside in the neighborhood, but no one was talking to one another and none of the kids were playing. When I walked up to my friend, he blurted out that Gordie Dadisman had been killed in Vietnam. We both stood there a long time with everyone else in the neighborhood, saying nothing.
Gordon Alan Dadisman, Private First Class, C Company, 1st Battalion, 52nd Infantry Regiment, 198th Infantry Brigade, United States Army was killed by enemy small arms fire on August 7, 1970 in Quang Tin, South Vietnam.
This is in remembrance of Gordie.
Photo graciously provided by paul goyette, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
Thanks for this remembrance David. Gordie would think you were cool for doing this! More importantly, though, we should all reflect on how cool it is that Gordie and so many others have shed their blood and maimed their bodies in order to preserve the freedoms that we enjoy.
Thanks Eric. I think he’d be happy that we remember.
Dave, we grew up at an odd time - war-wise - I think. I had a “draft number” as I recall in 1975 when I turned 18 - I think it was “3.” But the draft stopped and Vietnam ended before folks my age got pulled in… then things were “quiet” on the war front for quite a while it seemed, as we sailed through college and graduate/law schools. I don’t think we were worried too much by “The Falklands.” For many folks my age, knowing kids in Vietnam, or hearing dads talk of WWII was as close as we got to “war.” Your memory is particularly poignant as an early age entry wound into the realities of these conflicts…
I was never a particularly rah-rah military guy although I did try to get into the Air Force JAG - flunked the hearing test… who knew you had to have two good ears to be a military lawyer!? When my dad came out of h.s., though, he signed up for the Navy, becoming the 4th Magas boy in the service… when his younger brother followed a bit later, that Magas family became a “Five Star Family” - with 5 boys serving at the same time… made the papers and everything. Thankfully, even though 3 were in heavy fighting, they all came back safe and sound.
Steve Magas