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closegenerous people: Remember Eddie Myers
Hans Zeiger / guest columnist
Several years ago, Howard Randall, a World War II veteran from Texas, traveled with Bill Moyers of PBS to visit a grave in a Luxembourg cemetery, the same cemetery in which General George Patton is buried. In front of a white marker, Randall wept as he told of the man he and many others came to love. Few other comrades have made the trip to see Eddie Myers’ marker. As Randall told me, “Most of the people who knew Eddie were killed.”
It says something about the kind of war Eddie Myers fought in, that few of Eddie’s men survived to tell us how he died. Some friends from Puyallup remain to tell us how he lived.
Eddie Myers grew up on the grounds of the Washington State College Experimental Station, where his father worked as the foreman. His mother had two daughters from a previous marriage, one who was much older and the other, Marian, who was five or six years older than Eddie. Next door to the Myers family were the Kinseys. Essey Kinsey and Eddie were the same age, so they grew up together. Because there were no boys in the Kinsey family, Essey recalls, “Eddie was like a brother.” In the evenings after school at Maplewood Elementary, Essey and Eddie, along with Ruthie and Bobby Bigelow and a few other neighborhood kids, played games in the fields.
In the summers, Eddie went to YMCA camp on an island in Lake Tapps, in the days before Lake Tapps was surrounded by homes. In his first year at camp, Eddie was assigned to the same cabin with Frank Hanawalt and six others who were all slightly older. Despite Eddie’s junior status, Hanawalt recalls, “He was the person that added life to our cabin. He was so funny.”
A few years later, Hanawalt would sit in the stands at Viking Field, surrounded by his classmates and most of the town, as Eddie Myers grabbed hold of the punts from fourth down.
“I remember the determination with which he would grab that punt and tuck it away and take off,” he said.
Eddie was only 145 pounds, but as his teammate and friend Don Henderson recalls, “He wasn’t afraid of anything. Eddie Myers was fearless.”
Most mornings, Eddie walked along Pioneer to Puyallup High School, and most afternoons he walked home. On the mornings when Eddie didn’t walk, he and Essey met at the bus stop and sat together on the ride up Pioneer to the high school. Essey and Eddie shared their deepest secrets and consulted each other about their boyfriends and girlfriends. After school and sports, one might have gone to see the other, to chat about Eddie’s upcoming student government election or to review the day’s game.
One thing Essey and Eddie didn’t speak about were their future careers. Rarely did they speculate about college or other aspirations beyond their small-town world. The simple pleasures of living in the present — with the work at hand, school activities, good friends — that was enough for an interesting life on the daffodil frontier. Others saw the star potential in Eddie Myers. The PHS Class of 1940 elected Eddie its president.
“Eddie was just a remarkable guy. You couldn’t find a better guy than that,” said his classmate Manford Hogman. “He was just a natural, I guess,” then adding, with a chuckle, “He probably would have been president.”
Eddie Myers wasn’t a genius. Randall recalls that he was “not very sophisticated.” But he was brimming with character. He was charming as well as gregarious. When Hogman moved with his family from Illinois to join the class of 1940 in its sophomore year, it was Eddie, along with Ray Glaser (later to die in a wartime plane crash) and Glenn Todd, who made him feel welcome. The class voted Eddie “Friendliest Guy” (Essey was “Friendliest Girl”).
And so it is unimaginable that Eddie Myers went to war to kill. Like his quiet friend and neighbor Bobby Bigelow, a medic who was shot and killed in the Philippines while helping a wounded comrade, Eddie went to war to save life.
To be continued on Sept. 4.