On Humility and Cajones

A Celebration of My Favorite U.S. Armed Services Veteran on Memorial Day

My annual Memorial Day post is always the same story but I happen to love the story and I miss this man terribly.

My stepfather, John Werline (1919 - 2008), who was born and raised and lived most of his life in tiny Independence, Oregon, accomplished so many incredible things in his life but you'd never know any of it unless you asked. And kept asking.

It just wasn't his style to boast about anything.

But over the years, that budding newspaper reporter in me learned that he was an all-state halfback on a state-championship football team, one of the top sprinters in the state, a state-champion skeet shooter, a scratch golfer, and he carried a 200 average in the local men's bowling leagues (while refusing to play with the seniors even long after he was a senior). He was the town’s police commissioner in the late 1960s and was the town barber for 30 years.

But my favorite story is about his service in the US Army during World War II. He shared his hilarious perspectives of the US Army as somebody who clearly was wayyyyyy smarter than Army leadership. When I first read Catch-22, I remember thinking Yossarian surely was based on my stepfather's time in the Army.