Charles Edward Peterson

March 21, 2005

Rev. Roland J. Wells, Jr.

The phone calls went like this:

“Good morning Charlie”

“Oh, Roland.”

“How are you this morning?”

“It’s a good day. This is a wonderful world the Good Lord gave us. I love this world. Every morning when I wake up I look out on that beautiful world and I thank God for one more day. It’s a beautiful world out there.”

“Good morning Colonel; how’s my favorite octagenarian curmudgeon this morning?”

“Oh, Roland; Upright, ambulatory, taking nourishment and causing consternation in all quarters.”

“Oh, the usual.”

“Yeah.”

“OK lads, up and attem! Out of the trenches, over the top, onward for glory and after the wily Hun.”

“... ... Uh Roland, wrong war.”

“I know Charlie, but I’m running out of creative ways to start this conversation. I thought it would be a good way to wake you up.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

      And so it went for the last twenty years. The daily call to Charlie. I met Charlie when I was about six. He and my dad had become friends, and they had begun hunting together. Dad talked with great respect about “Colonel Peterson.” “He’s a great woodsman, hunter and shooter.”

      When I was ten, we began the tradition of our yearly “man to man talks in the woods.” Every year we’d stop for 45 minutes or so, at least once during the deer season, maybe build a little fire, eat a couple candy bars, and solve the world’s problems. He always listened to my sophomoric rantings, and calmly taught me to think sense.

      How in the world do I tie Charlie Peterson’s life up into a sermon? He was the precious only son of a father who demanded great things of him. He spent his youth in outdoor adventures that sound like a mixture of Mark Twain meets Boy’s Life. They camped under tarps, hunting and fishing for their summertime meals. They fished and shot game, and gave it to their families in the midst of the Great Depression. Charlie learned to use a rifle the way Artur Rubenstein learned piano. He was given use of the family car, and days after school was a time for him and his buddies, like “old Floyd Sanders” to go out and harvest nature’s plenty. These stories were full of old military rifles with guessed at ammunition, deer shot with .22's, prairie chickens without numbers, and an odd tale he told about a Lake Superior encounter with a little boy ghost. You’ll have to ask about that later.

      From there it was teenage adventures with the National Guard. When he saw war on the horizon, he enlisted before Pearl Harbor. He shot the highest score in the regiment when his unit went to qualify with rifle in basic training. He volunteered for these new things called gliders. When he saw how they functioned, he thought he might be safer jumping out of perfectly good airplanes.

      Those were days when parachutes were very experimental. I remember him telling me that after one jump the authorities collected all the chutes because they had learned that a new design used was a mistake! Every jump they lost a few men. Raise the tail of the plane. Open the door. Wait for the light. Duck your head so the rings don’t take off the back of your skull. Jump out the door, twist a quarter turn. If the chute doesn’t open at “one thousand three” pull the reserve. Sometimes he landed before he got to “one thousand three.” They dropped them pretty low. The prop wash would move the tops of the trees.

      They jumped during the day, they jumped at night. Once the British trained their troopers, they never jumped again until combat. They didn’t want to waste any. Uncle Sam said “You need more practice.”

      They built camps. Charlie, the combat engineer, designed a de-centralized camp. The Commanding Officer said, no, it’s too spread out. Pitch the tents close together. The next day, while they were away, a lone German plane dropped a large bomb right in the middle of the camp, destroying much of it. Then the CO decided to use Charlie’s plan.

      The London blitz- he was there. The long marches in the English countryside. The conditioning. The tiny lanes. The bases being built. He ran the rifle range. Of course.

      Finally came D-Day. They jumped in, and he often mentioned those famous names, Ste. Mer Eglise, Merville. For us, those are names in movies and history books, but our boy was there. He told stories, of the beauty of the anti-aircraft and artillery shells overhead at night. About the gas attack scare. About the traffic congestion, and statues covered with GI phone lines.

      But he’d never talk about the battles. We know he saw plenty. Three bronze stars and one silver star. One website said the Silver Star is “For distinguished gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States. The Silver Star is the third highest military award designated solely for heroism in combat.” 

      But he’d never talk about the combat. He’d never talk about battle. He said he felt funny talking about it; so many talked so much and told so many stories that were exaggerated, that he decided to never talk about it. For over 40 years I bugged him to tell me those stories. In just the last decade I learned about the stars. Then he only admitted a bronze one. He wouldn’t tell me the stories. He didn’t tell the girls. Many of his records burned up years ago in a army base fire- he may have the last laugh. We don’t know why he got these awards. One had something to do with walking out into a live mine field to show the men it could be done. That’s all we know.

      That’s our Charlie. He rose quickly through the ranks. A battlefield promotion. Soon Captain and then Major. He and his driver did solo reconnaissance through the French countryside and had many close calls. Nights alone with a bad back in a huge French villa, with a tin can burglar alarm system. He liked being on his own.

      Then all of a sudden, in December of ‘44 they pulled him out, just before the Battle of the Bulge. They quietly brought him through England and quickly home. He had no idea why. Certain officers were pulled out- to become the backbone of a new Airborne army for the invasion of Japan. Fortunately, they weren’t needed.

      He came home and went to work for GM, and learned the insurance side of things. He made good money, was given brand new cars and had the foresight to invest in old rifles. He hunted the canoe country, sometimes hiking miles in, using those paratrooper skills.

      Then he met a certain stunning redhead, and soon his “most-eligible-but-hardest-to-catch”- bachelor status was in danger. Pretty soon wedding bells, and two beautiful babies filled the one house they’d always live in.

      Then the unthinkable happened; Eileen needed emergency heart surgery. Eileen died. December 7, 1970. That was a sad day. It got worse; Charlie had just changed jobs, and it turned out this wasn’t covered by insurance. He owed about the cost of a house. He paid every dime.

      A few years ago, I called him to ask if he was going goose hunting that year. He said, no, he shot one last year, and he wasn’t going to do that again. After he shot the goose, its partner circled and circled the lake, calling for its mate. “They mate for life, you know. I don’t want to cause that much pain again.” He had known that pain.

      He raised two fantastic girls. He raised them right. They both shone in high school, college and beyond. The Olympics. Fixing up the house in Mahtomedi. Making Major. Two great husbands, a Frazer and a Foley. Holy Hannah! And they took wonderful care of their daddy. No daddy, ever, felt more love.

      In between there were road trips. Trips to Aunties’ houses. Trips to Superior. Trips to the range. Daddy’s fried chicken. Hiding in the little maple tree to “surprise” Daddy when he came home.

      How do we describe Charlie? A man who was the greatest story-teller I’ve ever known. A man who talked in paragraphs, not sentences. Nobody could write a letter like Charlie. A man who knew more history than any prof I’ve ever had. A casual discussion might move from Viet Nam to the War of the Roses, to the English longbowmen at Agincourt to German mine-laying patterns to the next great war with China. Perfect recall. Oh, then there was the stuff he was good at, like the Revolutionary war campaigns. Want to know what battles were fought with rifles, versus those fought with muskets? Then there were the little one liners that can’t be forgotten, like “Unguarded wealth is the cause of all wars.” In high school I wanted to run him for president.

      In his work, he was a master of details. In his last insurance job, he did “subrogation.” That’s a great word to sneak into a Scrabble game. “Subrogation” is the last stop in the insurance company, where one really knowledgeable person sits down with all the closed, finished files, and looks for things everybody else missed. He’s looking for sources of money for the company. Charlie’s mastery of the highway laws of 50 states gave him the ability to look at these claims and recover hundreds of thousands of dollars every year- millions for a company, which helped keep their rates low and affordable. One guy, one head, and a bunch of wonderful letters. Charlie!

      This is what he called semi-retirement. Then he started lobbying at the Capitol, and loved every minute of it. And he had two seasons, deer hunting, and getting ready for deer hunting. The week after the season ended, the conversation would begin, “Well Charlie, only 11 months and one week until deer season...” and the next long talk in the woods.

      In those long talks in the woods, we often talked about faith. He talked about how his mother read him the Bible. He talked about Confirmation classes. Over the decades he’d get stuck there. “Roland, I don’t have a problem with the God of the Old Testament. He’s a war-like God, and I understand that. Sometimes there has to be justice.” We talked about the justice of God and the love of God. We talked about Jesus many times. He had trouble with Jesus, this God of love and forgiveness. He had a hard time seeing the connection.

      Charlie had a good hunger for spiritual things. He bought and read some good books. He started reading his Bible. He attended Al-Anon and began to deal with some of these issues. He learned a lot. I think it was hard at first, but I think he came to really grow by it. We talked more about this God of love, in small doses. The timing had to be right.

      About a month ago, Charlie said he wasn’t feeling well. He said he thought something was changing inside. Of all things, I was on my way to an interment at Ft. Snelling, and as I drove, I called Charlie for our daily chat. “Howdy Charlie. How are you today?” “It’s not a bad day.” We began to talk.

       I told him where I was going. He said that pretty soon we needed to sit down and talk. I said, “Charlie, have you finally gotten it straightened out with God? Where are you at with Jesus?” He said “We need to talk.” I said, “Charlie, how about now? All you need to say is, ‘Jesus, come into my heart.’” He said, “Jesus, come into my heart.” I said, “That’s it Charlie.” He said, “Yeah.” A couple times afterward, we talked a little bit more, but I think he had finally worked it out.

      At his bedside, several times I read those Scriptures that were read earlier in the service.

      It finally comes down to those words Jesus said in the first Holy Week, “I go to prepare a place for you.” Jesus meant what he said. Thomas said, “Lord, we don’t know the way,” Jesus said to him, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father but by me.”

      Christianity isn’t about religion. It’s about a relationship with a living God. One who had nails driven through his hands so that you can live. It’s about a Lord who raises those nail-scarred hands out to you in embrace. He calls you to trust him; to receive him. That’s all Christianity is. Anything beyond that is secondary. It’s simply to say, “Jesus, come into my heart.”

      Invitation.

      About a month ago, Charlie and I sat down to have another talk. He asked, “Roland, you’re not going to forget me now, are you?” I said, “Charlie, if I live to be a thousand years old, I’ll think of you every day.” Afterward, I realized that I guess I will live to be a thousand years old, and I’ll spend those days with him. That makes me happy. Amen.