While serving as a U.S. Army engineer in the Korean War, Curtis Reel had to watch his step while using a mine sweeper — as well as utilize his eyesight — to detect land mines and booby traps. A decade later as foster parents, he and his late wife Elda began guiding the steps and keeping their eyes on more than 350 foster children over a 40-year span.
How did that work out each year at Christmastime?
“We took family movies during the Christmas season,” he replied. “They were just like our own kids — we were just a big family.”
After Elda passed away in 2021, Reel moved to Chatsworth from Woodbridge, Virginia, last year. He’s been a regular at the “Judy Poag” Murray County Senior Center, where he reflected recently on 44-1/2 years of military service and his time as a foster parent.
It all began when he joined the Army at age 17 in 1949. In 1951 he would be “spearheading” in Korea, preparing the way for armor and infantry units.
“We landed at Inchon after leaving from Japan,” said Reel, 92, of the 32nd Infantry Division. “We cleared mine fields for the tanks, and anti-personnel mines, too. We’d deactivate them or blow them in place.”
He called it “pretty serious” work that sometimes caused casualties.
“As we cleared an area, we had to put up yellow tape for them to stay inside those lines,” he explained. “One guy got outside the line and hit an anti-personnel mine. He activated that when he stepped on it and it blew his leg off and his body went flying. So I had to stop our previous operation there and clear all that. We would write on the bridges to tell if they’d been cleared … we had to watch for trip wires, too. We’d miss some (mines) once in a while, and it’d blow the tracks off a tank.”
Engineer units had to keep their distance from the tanks since armor units were sometimes bombarded by North Korean artillery, said Reel. Being out front, engineers also had to keep an eye out for snipers.
“We had our own artillery behind us firing over our heads, too,” he added of the tension in a war zone.
After Korea, Reel landed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and taught aircraft loading and chute packing to Officer Candidate School aspirants. Later while in Germany, engineers built expedient pontoon bridges across the Rhine River during training exercises, and also took part in contests to see who could build an effective bridge the fastest. Elda gave birth to one of their daughters (they also have a son and another daughter) while there.
Back stateside at Fort Mead, Maryland, Reel processed out of active duty into the West Virginia Army Reserves where he attended monthly weekend drills, went to some schools during the year and also trained during summer camps. Eventually he transferred to a National Guard unit in Moorefield, Virginia, specializing in artillery.
In 1959, Reel went into the guided missile program and worked on the Ajax missile, which could fire in ground-to-air or ground-to-ground capacity. Later, the nuclear-armed Nike Hercules missile was phased in. Reel went into the National Guard on a full-time basis and was a security and safety NCO (noncommissioned officer). With that background, he exited the service in 1974 and became a policeman in Washington, D.C. He stayed with the force until retiring in 1992.
Kids and more kids
The back story, and what Curtis Reel came home to beginning in 1962, were foster children in addition to his and Elda’s three birth children. Incredibly, they hosted more than 350 foster children in their home, and eventually adopted three.
“Our oldest foster child is now 66 years old,” Reel said. “Elda started an ‘adopt a child’ Christmas tree at our Methodist church where the preacher had been for 37 years. He was a big help to us with the foster children. The church people bought gifts based on what they found on the Christmas tree. We also worked with foster children who were handicapped in some way.”
Reel confided someone asked him not long ago if he was going to remarry.
“I’m gonna get married when I turn 100 years old!” he said with a laugh. “My secret to a long life? Try to live a Christian life and help as many people as you can.”
Joan Dooley, the former director of the senior center, said she appreciates Curtis Reel for his service to country and hundreds of children in need of parents.
“He’s very unassuming and mannerly, and is just the sweetest man,” she said. “Everybody at the senior center loves him. I think it was remarkable he was in the military that long and then he had all the foster children — that’s amazing! I admire him so much.”