Posted: Saturday, September 9, 2006 7:00 pm
Sue Mueller and her friend ducked into the beer garden at the State Fair to find a place to relax Monday afternoon.
Gene Foreman and his girlfriend were already there, squeezed into a little table in the middle of the room.
They’d each had a margarita but they had some time before the Kansas concert started, so they ordered another round.
Sue spotted a table, the only empty spot in the crowded bar.
She didn’t pay much attention to the couple crowded in beside her.
Then out of the corner of her eye she saw a shiny band on the man’s forearm.
She recognized it: a POW/MIA bracelet.
She had one, too. The 40-year-old cook tapped his arm.
Excuse me. Do you mind telling me whose name is on your bracelet?
Gene swiveled around. No problem, he said.
It’s a guy by the name of Z — I — C — H.
He spelled it out, unsure of the pronunciation. But Sue knew how to say it.
Larry Zich, she told him. He’s my uncle.
Gene couldn’t believe it.
What were the odds?
“I about fell out of my chair,” said the 51-year-old railroad engineer and Vietnam-era vet with gray whiskers and piercing blue eyes.
“We all were convinced if it wasn’t a message it was a sign of some kind to get some sort of closure.“
Closure.
Her family doesn’t know what that is yet, Sue said a few days after the chance meeting.
She was 7 when her uncle’s Huey helicopter disappeared from the sky over the Quang Tri Province.
It was April 3, 1972. Larry’s 24th birthday.
Nobody in the family ever felt like he was dead. Not her grandma, Larry’s mom. Not her mother, Larry’s older sister.
They still don’t. Maybe it seems silly to other people, she says, but they think he’s alive.
“I wish it was like a Chuck Norris movie where I could go find him and bring him home.”
That day she told Gene how they felt.
He didn’t think it was silly.
He went home to his computer and tried to find out what he could about the kid from Lincoln who loved to take apart a car engine and stayed forever young in the cracked plastic window of an embossed Western wallet his mother carried.
“I found out he was born in Sturgis, South Dakota — the biggest biker heaven in the United States.”
He got a hold of his buddies in the state’s chapter of the Vietnam Vets Motorcycle Club.
They had a meeting and decided to do something for Larry’s family.
In the next few weeks they’ll get on their bikes, maybe ask a couple of other motorcycle clubs to join them, and make a pilgrimage.
They’ll take a folded black flag with them. The POW/MIA flag.
They’ll wave American flags from the handlebars of their bikes.
They might ride to Tina’s Cafe, the business Sue’s mother owns.
Or they’ll go somewhere private. Whatever the family wants.
It’s a little thing, Gene says.
“It’s just a gesture to let the family know they’re not forgotten and they never will be.”
Back at the beer garden last Monday, Gene’s girlfriend got out her camera.
Gene and Sue held their glasses out and smiled. They had a little toast.
Rest assured, whether he is still captive or passed, we haven’t forgotten him, the vet told Larry’s niece.
She could tell how sincere he was, Sue remembered.
“It was like Larry was his pen pal. I felt very proud of that. A lot of younger people, they don’t know what a POW is.”
And then he shook her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she says, starting to cry. “He told me to never give up and they’ll always remember. That they won’t rest until they’re all home.”
He meant it, too.
“He was very sincere about it. For being a biker kind of dude, he was really a soft guy.”
It’s the vet in him, Gene says.
Larry is his brother.
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.