You Are Not Forgotten Page 3

  His parents were wary of his newfound independence but could clearly see his love for lacrosse and didn’t want to hold him back. But his wider berth soon proved too much for George to handle. He was drinking alcohol after lacrosse games, he grew more boastful and even bullying to his middle-school friends, and his grades sank. He acted out in other ways, growing his hair long like some of the other lacrosse players. In eighth grade he pierced his left ear with a safety pin.

  George tried to hide the piercing from his parents, knowing that his buttoned-down father would be furious. He kept his head turned ever so slightly to shield the still-bleeding piercing when Ann picked him up from school that day. She took him to the mall, where they were to meet Big George for a treat of Boardwalk Fries in the food court. As soon as Big George arrived from work in his Army uniform, however, the game was up.

  “What’s happened to your ear?” Big George demanded as he sat down at the table.

  Over the next year George’s behavior only grew more troubling to his parents. He was punished, his after-school activities curtailed, and his participation in lacrosse limited to practices and games. Nothing seemed to work. It came to a head one day in the ninth grade when George was confronted in school by another kid whose girlfriend George had been flirting with. George head-butted the kid in the hallway and broke his nose. He was summarily expelled.

  If the Eysters considered any place home, it was, as for many Army families, Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They had been stationed there several times, and it was only a morning’s drive to Grandma Harriet in Beaufort, South Carolina.

  After George was expelled from school in Maryland, his father enrolled him on the sprawling Army base, and the two of them moved back to Fayetteville, in advance of Big George’s next assignment. Ann stayed behind in Maryland until Scott and Teri finished the school year. George was now fifteen, and his parents hoped that Fort Bragg’s more familiar environment would keep him out of trouble.

  Before long, George’s grades began to improve, and his parents were eager to continue encouraging his love for lacrosse. Because the sport was less prevalent in Fayetteville, it meant driving several hours to play in a league in Raleigh. After school Ann picked him up, plopped a TV dinner on his lap, and drove George the two hours each way for practice. After completing his homework in the car, he would climb into bed exhausted late in the evening.

  George’s interests were also beginning to broaden. He mostly viewed himself—as did most of his friends—as a jock: blond, brawny, and better suited for the ball field than the library. But as he prepared to enter the eleventh grade, he discovered that he had a more intellectual side, an impulse to draw deeper meaning from his experiences and a better understanding of the wider world. His mother and Grandma Harriet encouraged it, recommending various books for him to read. He got hooked on the novels of Pat Conroy, who captured the quaint exterior and inner demons of southern life in his acclaimed novels such as The Prince of Tides and The Lords of Discipline, which chronicled the Citadel military academy in Charleston. George not only was captivated by the stories but identified with the writer himself. Conroy was the son of a Marine who decided to become a teacher instead of following in his father’s footsteps. One of George’s favorite Conroy novels was The Great Santini. George saw some of himself in the fictional Ben, the eighteen-year-old son of a fighter pilot who is a born athlete but finds it hard to contend with the expectations of his overbearing father—the story, as Conroy described it, “of a boy’s determination to be himself, whatever that may be.”

  George had not completely tamed his rebellious streak. The run-ins with his own father continued, like when he was caught sneaking out of the house when everyone was asleep to drink beer with his friends in the back fields of Fayetteville. One night he awakened Big George when he broke a window screen while gingerly climbing from the porch roof back through his bedroom window. After a middle-of-the-night confrontation that woke up the whole house, George found himself assigned to yard work and other heavy chores under the watchful eye of a stern Colonel Eyster.

  But any resentment he felt toward Big George melted away in a flash on August 2, 1990, when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Kuwait.

  Within days Operation Desert Storm began, and George’s father, who was now commanding the First Battalion of the 159th Aviation Regiment, received orders that his unit would soon be leaving for the Persian Gulf. The outlook was troubling. To build support for liberating the oil-rich kingdom, President George H. W. Bush took to the airwaves and likened the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, to Adolf Hitler. Iraq, listeners were told, also had one of the largest armies in the world. Unlike the conflicts in Grenada in 1983 or Panama in 1989, which only lasted a few days, this one looked as if it might drag on for months and be far more dangerous for Big George and his soldiers. The Eysters soon learned that two of George’s uncles were also being deployed. George’s stepbrother, Scott, was summoned home to help look after Ann and George—and to bid a tearful good-bye on the front porch of their house in Fayetteville.

  Within weeks Big George was in Saudi Arabia. No one could say when he might return. The fall months dragged on. The nonstop news about the massive American buildup, broadcast from the front lines by CNN, only ratcheted up the anxiety of soldiers and loved ones alike. Would the Iraqi strongman back down, or would the United States and its allies have to go to war with the elite Iraqi Republican Guard? Their worries only grew deeper with reports of Hussein’s stockpiles of chemical weapons and the grisly images flashed on TV of the Kurdish civilians he had ordered gassed a few years earlier. It was the longest that Big George had been away from the family, and they did their best to stay connected. George’s father mailed home upbeat video greetings on VHS tapes, relaying how morale was high and his troops were ready for what might lie ahead. For Halloween 1990 he donned a bedsheet and dressed up as a cot, one of the goofy antics he and his men performed before the camera to keep up spirits on the home front.

  Not to be outdone, Ann and the kids videotaped a series of skits they put together in the basement, staying up until dawn one night to complete the first of what they coined “Purple Heart Productions.” In one sequence, George, displaying the awkward earnestness that would come to define him later, was dressed in a blue blazer and ascot, feigning an aristocratic accent. In another, he played a comical character named Commander Seagull. He took the roles seriously, almost too seriously. He insisted on shooting multiple takes before he felt the skits were just right, revealing a perfectionist streak like his father’s.

  The holidays were especially difficult without Dad. Saddam was refusing to back down, and as war seemed more likely, the tenor of Big George’s video greetings changed. The one he taped on December 12, 1990, troubled the family greatly. His usually sunny and upbeat outlook had turned decidedly dark. They had never seen him so taciturn, almost melancholy. Looking somber in his flight suit and sitting behind a metal desk in an aircraft hangar, Big George shifted uncomfortably in his chair as he spoke in a low voice into the camera.

  “Things are going fairly well here,” he began, “but we are beginning to have a great deal of loneliness and some despair over how long this affair is going to take place. It seems that now staring us in the face is the reality that we are in fact going to war.… It may be a long time until you hear from me, but each and every one of you will be within my thoughts and in my heart.”

  He spoke movingly to his beloved Ann. “You have been the one thing in my life that has pushed me along to achieve bigger and better things,” he told his wife of nineteen years. “I feel extremely lost and lonely when I don’t have you there.”

  He then addressed each of his children individually, thanking his stepson, Scott, for coming home to help look after George and expressing his pride in his stepdaughter, Teri, who now had two young children. He then singled out George for praise but, as was his nature, also gave him a bit of advice.

  “I am really proud of your academ
ic work in school.… I got your report card, and you are doing, in fact, pretty doggone good,” he told his namesake. “I still think you can do better.”

  Big George wanted to do something his own father never had a chance to do: tell them all how much they meant to him, in case he never saw them again.

  “While I hope that nothing will happen, I am not above believing that there is always that possibility,” he intoned. “If it does, I want you all to know … that I have loved each of you very much.”

  Watching the video message back at Fort Bragg, George couldn’t help but think that he had not been the best son to his father and desperately wanted him back so that he could make it up to him.

  When the Persian Gulf War finally commenced in the New Year, the United States scored a stunning victory over Iraq, and Big George returned home safely. His actions flying troops into heated battle further burnished the Eyster reputation for bravery in the face of danger, earning him a Bronze Star.

  As George neared his high school graduation, the question was rarely uttered but hung over the Eyster household: What would Little George decide to do? Would he, too, go into the Eyster family business? A generation earlier Big George felt he had little choice in the matter and now seemed determined to let his own son decide for himself the path he would choose. He knew from his own experience the enormous pressure that came with the name George Senseny Eyster. In some ways, Little George’s burden was even heavier than his own. Big George had a brother. George was the only Eyster heir.

  For George, there were constant reminders of what so many expected of him—his family, his friends, his peers, and of course Grandma Harriet. As a favored guest at his grandmother’s house, he sometimes felt as if he were being watched by all those photographs of George Eysters in their Army uniforms. Sometimes it even felt as though they were mocking him. The hallmarks of the family business—the Silver Star Grandpa George had earned in Vietnam, the endless citations and awards of his own father—were on display virtually everywhere. Even his step-grandfather, Frank Linnell, Harriet’s second husband, who had become an influential presence in his life, was a retired Army general who had received the Distinguished Service Medal in Vietnam and had been one of the pioneers of Army aviation in the 1960s. Nearly everyone in his family was in the Army or had married into it, including most of his cousins.

  One photograph in particular haunted him. Even as George was drawn to its almost Hollywood mystique, it conjured up painful memories of those violent images he had seen on television as an impressionable fifth grader. It was a picture of a grinning Grandpa George, one of the last ever taken of him. Standing in the tall grass of a Vietnamese rubber plantation, he was primed for combat, his weapon slung over his shoulder, a canister for launching smoke grenades tucked under one arm. Jutting from his lips was his ever-present cigar. The framed copy was inscribed by one of his beloved soldiers:

  When we were needed; we were there;

  When the call came out for freedom; we were there.

  Well it wasn’t always easy, it wasn’t always fair;

  But when freedom called we answered; we were there.

  Part of George had always aspired to be the man in that black-and-white photograph. But he had privately decided after Dad returned from the Gulf War that whatever his future held, it was not to be a soldier. For starters, he didn’t have the academic record to tackle the demands of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, even if he could manage to get an appointment. He might not even qualify for an ROTC scholarship. In the end, it didn’t really matter. There were too many things about the Army he found unappealing—the rootless existence, the need to constantly follow orders and bow to authority, and, yes, the prospect of real danger. It was an honorable calling, he knew, just not for him. And while Big George never said it in so many words, George had the distinct feeling that his father didn’t think he should do it, either. It was too hard. And maybe he just wasn’t cut out for it.

  After the Gulf War, Big George was assigned to Army headquarters in the Pentagon, and the family moved again. This time they chose to live in the nearby Virginia suburb of Springfield so George could enroll for his senior year at Springfield High School, which had a top-notch lacrosse program. Fate would have it that the decision about his future was soon made for him when he was offered a scholarship to play lacrosse at Towson State University.

  Towson State had one of the best collegiate lacrosse teams in the country, and George’s scholarship to play for the Tigers was a true achievement that made his parents immensely proud. By the fall of 1992, Big George had retired from the Army after a career of more than twenty years. For the first time since Woodrow Wilson was president, there was no George Senseny Eyster wearing an Army uniform. By the looks of it, there probably never would be.

  By the middle of his junior year at Towson State, George had already changed majors four times. First it was animal behavior, then mass communication, followed by zoology. He even toyed briefly with chemistry. As for lacrosse, for the first time he didn’t enjoy it; being on the team felt too much like a chore. Many of his teammates were hooligans who seemed more interested in boozing than playing lacrosse. He decided he had had enough after a close game against the Naval Academy. Towson lost in the last minute when a goal was disallowed because of unsportsmanlike conduct; one of his teammates tried to attack a referee. In search of a new compass, George decided to drop out and go home to his parents to figure things out. Maybe, he thought, he could take a few classes at Florida State and then try to walk on at another lacrosse powerhouse like the University of North Carolina.

  When he moved in with his parents in Tallahassee in early 1995, it seemed everyone else in the family was on a steady path but him. Big George, now out of the Army several years, was working as the chief of general services for the Florida Department of Agriculture. George’s mom, Ann, had a job at the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, building on all her years as an Army wife and the director of community services during their posting to Maryland. Meanwhile, George’s stepbrother, Scott, had been accepted into the Florida Highway Patrol, and his stepsister, Teri, was married and busy raising her two kids.

  One weekend, as George was preparing to enroll in classes at Florida State, he and his father went to a baseball game on campus. As they were walking back to the car, Big George pointed out one of the campus buildings.

  “That’s where I did ROTC. Want to see it?”

  It was Big George’s not-so-sly way of giving his son a glimpse of what the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps might offer—the same scholarship program he graduated from more than two decades earlier after he had opted out of West Point.

  Inside the ROTC office, they were greeted by an Army major who hit it off famously with George’s dad when he learned he was a retired colonel and a distinguished graduate of FSU’s Seminole Battalion. The major warily eyed George, with his long hair. The officer’s demeanor said it all. George was probably not what they were looking for. But outside, George noticed a rappelling tower that had been erected for the ROTC cadets. He was intrigued; it looked as if it might be fun. He turned to his father and asked him what type of commitment he would be making if he took one of the ROTC courses at the university.

  “No commitment,” Big George told him.

  George went back to the ROTC office that fall. The colonel in charge was a gifted talker and charmed him. He highlighted the fun he would have—there were cadet challenges like “adventure training,” he informed him—and skimmed over some of the other stuff, like ROTC boot camp in the summers. The athlete in George was drawn to the physical stamina ROTC would require. He was also attracted to the more regimented existence of the cadet, a far cry from his college experience to date. Besides, it was still an elective, and for the first two years he could participate “without incurring any obligation to serve in the military,” as the promotional packet pointed out. George decided to give it a shot. He signed up for Military Science I: An Introduction
to Military Arts. He also started attending weekly drill. Soon he was approved for an ROTC scholarship.

  As he settled into FSU, George was pleasantly surprised that ROTC wasn’t an all-encompassing experience. He had plenty of time to enjoy himself. He joined the fraternity Sigma Chi. He also met Vivian, a curvaceous dark-skinned Colombian girl from Miami. He was enthralled by her from the moment she walked into his Brazilian history class. He finally got up the courage to talk to her at a frat party. After that George and Viv were inseparable.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A TRUE CHARLESTONIAN

  April 24, 1942, was a fragrant spring evening, with the bold scent of the tidal marshes carried on the breeze and the azaleas in full bloom. Wearing his freshly pressed dress blue uniform, Ryan parked Ma’s car and walked down Meeting Street. He was exhilarated to be home on leave in his beloved Charleston. Its narrow streets, lined with centuries-old oaks, swaying palmettos, and colonial-era steeples, held a thousand cherished memories. Just a few yards away his mother, Grace, bought fresh flowers—two bundles for twenty-five cents—from the black ladies balancing baskets on their heads. One block south on King Street the shrimp man used to push his cart, shouting in a barely discernible twang, “Shrimp-de-rah, shrimp-de-raw.” Just around the corner from there, on Queen Street, he had thrilled as a boy to the singing Irishmen, the street performers who outdid virtually every act he had seen since.