WW II CORPSMAN HAS STRONG CONNECTIONS TO GUILFORD COLLEGE AND COMMUNITY

James Campbell “J.C.” White entered Guilford College three times: in 1942 after graduating from Curry School; in 1946 following World War II; in 1950 after care-giving his parents through a seize of illnesses. 

Pragmatic beyond his 92 years, “After one year in college, I knew the draft board would be coming for me, so I went to them first.  It was Army-Navy alphabetically, so the W’s went Navy.  One year of pre-med at Guilford placed me in Navy Hospital Corps School.  One autopsy took all plans of medical school off my plate.”

He worked for the Postal Service after dropping out of college to take care of his parents.  “That was a great job, paid well and gave me time to help with my parents.”  It also gave him time and resources to invest in rural family land that was becoming less rural by the moment – it was near the intersection of Friendly Road and Dolley Madison Road.

His third enrollment at Guilford College was more typical – he graduated in 1952 with a degree in history.  He was already aligned with Greensboro history – he was delivered by Dr. Wesley Long. 

In the war zone, it took White a while to find his LST-456 duty station.  “The Navy flew replacement crewmen to their ships wherever they were posted.  Before my ship could be located, dysentery and dengue fever put me in a Brisbane, Australia sick bay.

J. C. WHITE AND FIRST COUSIN DURING WW II

That wasn’t bad duty – major league baseball stars, Phil Rizutto and Johnny Mize were there.  Rizutto’s bunk was next to mine.  When I left for New Guinea, he asked me to send him back some guineas.  Another memory – Rizutto received more letters from more women than anyone I ever knew!”

White caught up with LST-456 in the New Guinea theater, but did not follow through on his bunk-mate’s request.

WHITE'S LST-456 WAS ACTIVE IN PACIFIC THEATER 

As the junior corpsmen aboard ship, he spent much of his time giving shots.  “I know some of those shots were quite painful.  I don’t think I could do that now, at my age.”

With editorial license, I find that strange – As a sea-going Marine 60 years ago, corpsmen uniformly assured me, “This shot won’t hurt a bit!”

White recalls one sailor who wanted to choose his own doctor, “We were off the coast of Borneo.  I was the only corpsman on the ship when two crew-members got in a fight.  One suffered a split scalp but didn’t trust me to fix it.  ‘That’s fine with me, I told him -- go ahead and bleed to death – it’s your call.’ 

He changed his mind and I sutured him up, but he complained afterwards that my stitching left his bald head looking just like the lacing on a baseball.  I told him to grow lots of hair and no one would notice.”

White added, “We had a doctor aboard for a short while – he was a pediatrician – I never could figure that out!”

LST-456 earned eight combat campaign stars during the war, several of them after White came aboard.  He became a golden shellback when his troop carrier crossed both the Equator and International Date Line.

LST-456 EXTRACT SURRENDERED JAPANESE FROM LUZON 

He has indelible memories from the Philippines, “We beached our ship on Luzon to take on Japanese troops as prisoners of war.  A Japanese major went ashore with a bullhorn to coax them out of the jungle and to surrender their arms.”

He well remembers the day the war ended, “We were below deck watching Gone With the Wind for the umpteenth time.  Anti-aircraft guns started firing from all over the place, and the announcement came over the PA system, ‘The war is over.’ “

Memories were also made after sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge, “ Welcome Home, Boys had been painted on the Alcatraz water tank.”

Even then, he wasn’t home free, “Several of us weren’t paying attention and got on the wrong train in Chicago.  The conductor was going to kick us off, but three women passengers talked him out of it.  We got to Atlanta, where we caught another train to Greensboro.”

White traces his Quaker heritage back to Cane Creek’s Simon Dixon.  Late in life, he married Winifred Lincoln, an Englishwoman and daughter of a British engineer working in the U.S.  She had a son and daughter.  Winifred White died in 2014.

The son has also passed away, but his step-daughter, Joan, is around to dote on White, “She is the daughter I never had.” 

J. C. WHITE AND BOB BENBOW -- WW II LST SAILORS IN DIFFERENT THEATERS
BUT TOGETHER AT FRIENDS HOME -- GUILFORD

White spent most of his working career with Dillard Paper Company, “I couldn’t have chosen a better place to work.”  His venture into real estate is a stand-alone story.  Parcels of his land were once owned by a Payne family.  They had a daughter named Dolley.

   

   

  

CHUCKS I'VE KNOWN

My wife and I have been blessed with good neighbors.  As the years turned, I intended to write about two of them.  Both had morphed from good neighbors to good friends.  Both were sailors of Korean War vintage.  Both were named Charles.  Both were known by everyone as “Chuck.”

I am sorry to report, both are being written about in the past tense.

NAVY SEABEE -- CHUCK LEIPHAM

Chuck Leipham, the Seabee, lived 177 feet across the street from our front door.  Chuck Kasai, the Corpsman, lived 210 feet around the corner from our front door.  No, we don’t feel cramped at all – our prior home was a 35’ motor home. 

CHUCK & GLORIA LEIPHAM

The two Chucks were perfect neighbors.  The Seabee was a master carpenter.  Among other things, he walked me through the installation of a life-saving stairway rail.  The Corpsman was a retired IBM engineer.  He coached me in keeping our amps, ohms, pixels, and bytes going in the right direction.

NAVY CORPSMAN -- CHUCK KASAI

Leipham and Kasai had similarities beyond their names.  Both were Northerners.  Both re- retired to Greensboro because they had a daughter who lived here.  Leipham has another daughter who lives in New York – Kasai has a son who lives in Raleigh.  Jane and Chuck, Gloria and Chuck -- childhood sweethearts -- had been married for a cumulative 124 years.

CHUCK & JANE KASAI

The two sailors and I did not talk a lot about military service, although the three of us hit many of the same ports around the world.  Leipham much preferred to talk about his two grand-sons and what talented prodigies they were.  Kasai’s Navy stories were usually centered around his Navy grandson, a senior chief petty officer of the submarine force.  “He’s the real sailor in our family,” the grandfather insisted.

While I missed a lot about how they had lived on this earth for over eight decades, I was more privy to their eleventh hour feelings about how they would leave this earth.  Facing end of life issues, both men were brave, analytical and fiercely independent.  Neither intended to be a family burden – but neither wanted to spend their last days belted in a nursing home wheelchair lane.

During these times a friend loaned us her copy of “Being Mortal,” by Dr. Atul Gawandi, Medicine and What Matters at the End.  It read like Dr. Gawandi had been inside the minds of Chuck Leipham and Chuck Kasai – or vice versa.

The good doctor marveled at the medical paradigms available to stave off death for the terminally ill, such as $12,000 per month chemotherapy, $4,000 per day intensive care, ventilators, defibrillators, and thousands of dollars in endless surgeries – often with unintended circumstances. 

From a perspective he did not learn in medical school, the doctor writes that some terminally ill patients might have lived better, and possibly longer, had they opted for more conservative care.  That is not a new perspective – hind sight remains 20/20.

Since our neighbors were blessed with excellent insurance and full VA benefits, financial ramifications were not significant.  Neither were medical wonders that might stave off death. 

Leipham realized he had passed the point of too many damaged joints and failed organs.  Kasai realized cancer had raged in vital organs too long and too far.  They spoke with authority that their bodies were wearing out and concurred with Dr. Gawandi, “Aging isn’t an appealing prospect.”

The doctor, Leipham, Kasai and I all went to different churches.  They did not hear our pastor proclaim, “God realizes the aging process that takes our bodies away doesn’t have a lot of appeal, but can be fixed in one heartbeat.” 

       

Secure in their faith, my two friends chose to let God have His way.  Obliging and loving families, caring doctors, and Hospice helped ease the process.  Both men were ever so grateful for the small amount of autonomy that existed into their last days – remember, they were “fiercely independent.” 

Dr. Gawandi admits he doesn’t have all the answers, as evidenced by the case study of his own father, also a doctor, during his last days.  He is even quicker to admit that his profession has a lot to learn when it comes to counseling and treating patients at the end of their lives.

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed “Being Mortal.”  The book changed our thinking on some issues and led us to tweak a few of our plans.  A chapter on my two friends called Chuck would have made his book even better. 

Charles T. (Chuck) Leipham passed away March 18, 2016 – he was 83.  Charles (Chuck) Frank Kasai passed away November 3, 2016 – he was 84.

CORPSMAN WITH A HEART FOR THE HEART

Please feel free to be surprised that I am writing about a veteran holding a patent for “The integrated bandage and electrical stimulation transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) device.”  

In veterans-speak, Kent Riddle is a surprise-mill.  From, “My military roots go back to the Revolutionary War,” he fast forwards to World War II, “My dad went down on the USS Yorktown during the Battle of Midway – he was in the water 13 hours before being rescued.”

Evidently, that was enough Navy for his father -- he joined the Air Force and retired as a master sergeant.

The Riddle military roots did not stop with Kent Riddle or his father, “My son, Jeff has a degree in criminal justice from Appalachian State University and did counter-terrorism operations in the Coast Guard.  My other son, Ben was a combat engineer in the Marine Corps and deployed to Iraq two times.”

As an Eastern Tennessee teenager, Kent Riddle enlisted in the Navy in 1966 – think Vietnam War, “I wanted to be a submariner – they wanted me to be a corpsman.”  Marines consider Navy corpsmen as Marines, and Riddle’s career path reflected as much – Camp Lejeune, the Philippines and Vietnam.

CORPSMAN KENT RIDDLE IN VIETNAM

“Serving as a corpsman taught me God’s will for my life – I felt destined to take care of other people.”  Riddle earned a nursing degree from East Tennessee State University in 1973.  Much like his father had done after leaving the Navy, Kent Riddle joined the Air Force – as a member of the Nurse Corps.“

RIDDLE LEFT U.S. AIR FORCE AS MAJOR

“After Flight Nursing School, I served in aeromedical evacuation.  We were more like flying hospitals.  In flight, it’s you and the patient -- you are called upon to perform diversified medical procedures.  I learned that performing intensive care and emergency room procedures at 30,000 feet in altitude is quite different from land-based operations.

I have always been attracted to treatment of the heart.  When the discovery and advancement of interventional heart procedures such as coronary angioplasty came along, I knew I had to be a part of it.”

Given the opportunity to supervise the Cardiology Department of Madison General Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin, Riddle left the Air Force as a major.  

After a few years, Riddle went with a California firm which developed many of the early breakthroughs in heart treatment and the use of medical devices.  He traveled all over the country and Europe, making suggestions for device improvements and enhanced treatment techniques.

Riddle became the California firm’s first product manager, but was attracted to another California start-up which dealt with a different cutting edge treatment of the heart – stents.  

“In the early days, angioplasty worked for a while, but the arteries often tightened up again.  Early stents saved lives by keeping arteries open longer, and as the industry improved, the success rate grew exponentially.”

Working during the frontier days of interventional cardiology and over the next 25 years, Riddle constantly sought ways to improve heart treatment and medical devices.  He ultimately earned two medical device patents – one pertaining to filtering blood clots and the second, which was mentioned in the first paragraph, which dealt with pain management.

“One day I realized my heart wasn’t in sales, stock prices, inventory levels, or return on investment – my heart was still in nursing.  I walked away from private enterprise, took a year off, rode my motorcycle across country, cleared my mind, and came back to Greensboro to resume my nursing career.”

RIDDLE SERVES AS RN/NURSING SUPERVISOR
FOR THE SERVANT CENTER

Two years ago, Riddle found The Servant Center.  Or vice versa.  “Serving as nursing supervisor at the Servant House has brought me full circle in nursing.  My duties now are similar to what I did in the military, except I do sick call for a barracks filled with homeless veterans instead of Marines.

“While the veterans under my care will not deploy to the Persian Gulf after their time at the Servant House, they will face significant obstacles transitioning from homelessness back into society.  Given that some of them have multiple medical issues, it is my job to help them make this challenging re-entry as seamless as possible.”

Kent Riddle and his son, Ben helped each other cope with their memories of war.  “Ben kept a small potted sugar maple tree in his barracks at Camp Lejeune.  He asked me to care for it when he deployed.  I planted it in our back yard and prayed over it each night until Ben came back home – it is now over 25 feet tall!”

Riddle chairs the Americanism Committee of the Greensboro Elks Club and was recently named 2016 Veteran of the Year. He has lived in Greensboro since 2005.

KENT RIDDLE MOMENTS AFTER BEING NAMED
ELKS CLUB VETERAN OF THE YEAR -- 2016

Visit www.theservantcenter.org to learn how you might serve alongside Kent Riddle.