MANKATO — It’s on display in red, white and blue across the balconies, gathering spaces and corridors of Willow Brook Senior Cooperative. The residents are proud to be citizens of the United States, and they see it as an honor to be present for the nation’s 250th birthday.
The most authentic patriotism, though, is showcased when the Willow Brook residents begin to speak.
“My father was on the fifth wave at Omaha Beach,” said Lois Cheever, 84, when asked what first comes to mind when she thinks about America. “He survived. He never talked anything about the war.”
And the first thought from Linda Larson?
“I would say our freedoms and everyone who fought to protect our freedoms,” said Larson, 79. “We have so many opportunities here that we kind of forget we are privileged.”
For Bruno Gad, America is the land of opportunity.
“My mother’s parents came from Russia. My father’s parents came from Poland about the same time,” said Gad, 86. “I know what this country meant to my grandparents, and I know what my grandparents made of themselves.”
There’s a diversity of perspectives and political beliefs at Willow Brook, and Gad and neighbor Paul Goodrich exist across that divide. That’s OK, they say.
There’s also at least five different faiths in the housing complex just off of Victory Drive, said Goodrich, 80: “But when we have a meal, we say a prayer together.”
Lois Cheever’s husband, Walt, was just 4 years old when his father was drafted at the tail end of World War II. His father was not thrilled to leave his family, and the young Cheever remembers all the work left for his mother to do alone. Cheever shared his father’s lack of enthusiasm about the military, but he served in the compulsory ROTC program in college, then signed up for the voluntary advanced ROTC and ended up serving in Europe. Years later, he and his wife watched their son join the Army and spend 18 years in the military, including fighting in Afghanistan.
They’re now a Gold Star family after 1st Sgt. Robert Cheever died of pancreatic cancer at age 37. Walt Cheever said his son was very proud of his service to his country.
“Yes, he was,” Cheever said before a long pause as he contemplated the loss. “I don’t usually speak about that.”
Showing the colors
Gad called The Free Press in late June to suggest some photos of the star-spangled decorations on the building: “Do you know of anywhere else in Mankato that’s displaying its patriotism like this place?”
When the newspaper suggested a conversation — about the United States at age 250 — to go with the pictures, Gad rounded up some neighbors and didn’t necessarily look only for ones who echoed his personal opinions. If someone wondered what Gad thinks about the fitness of America’s current president, the Chicago native would probably be willing to share. And Goodrich would likely offer some contrasting opinions.
With a momentous Independence Day approaching, however, neither was motivated to have that sort of debate.
“Paul and I may not agree politically, but we both care about this country and we both care about the people who live here,” Gad said.
The key to peace at Willow Brook mostly involves staying away from the Red vs. Blue partisan stuff, recognizing there are plenty of shared connections despite philosophical divisions.
“We see everybody as a person,” Goodrich said, although he adds that identifying like-minded people can occasionally be cathartic. “When you know somebody else’s color, then you can (talk politics). You gotta let it out sometime.”
With the United States hitting its semiquincentennial — a quarter of a millennium — Larson wonders if the absence of patriotic displays around Mankato might be a sign that people are fearful of the divisiveness in the country.
“I think the rest of the town is afraid to show its colors because it might be vandalized or marched against,” she said.
Remembering service
Goodrich figures Willow Brook — in showing the colors so exuberantly — is also showing its age.
“We’re sons and daughters of the Greatest Generation, and we grew up during the war,” he said.
They were just kids, but World War II was a total team effort.
“Everybody was involved — the soldiers oversees, and the kids and everybody at home doing the rations and gathering up the items that were needed for the war,” he said. “And they fought for our freedom overseas. I had uncles in World War II. I’m the oldest of eight, and I went into the Air Force when I was 19, and I served 21 years.”
A jet engine mechanic, Goodrich served during the Cold War and in Southeast Asia in support of American forces fighting in Vietnam.
“I had three brothers and a sister follow me into the Air Force,” he said. “So the patriotism has been in my blood since I was born.”
Larson was born just after the war, but her late husband — Berton Larson — was more than two decades older than her and served in non-combat training roles late in the war. After her husband died, she had a partner — Jeff Perkins of Henderson — who had two daughters and a son in the Marine Corps.
“They’re pretty tough kids,” she said. “The younger generation is still willing to serve.”
The Cheevers know that well.
“I’m just not sure why our son wanted to go into the service, but he did,” Walt Cheever said.
“He flourished,” Lois said. “He grew up in the military.”
Robert Cheever was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne until he broke a leg — then broke it again in the same place. He was willing to try another paratrooper comeback, but his superiors decided he was better off staying on the ground and he ended up firing Howitzers, including in the mountains of Afghanistan.
His parents back in Mankato honored his service even while they worried. They recalled traveling in Turkey when the tour bus stopped at a war memorial and military cemetery at the site of a World War I battle that involved a bloody beach landing. Lois was thinking of her father on Omaha Beach, and they were both thinking of their son in Afghanistan.
“We just got back on the bus,” Lois said.
It was cancer rather than enemy fire that ended their son’s life at 37. He was sent from Afghanistan to Walter Reed Army Medical Center after the diagnosis. Even then, he asked to return to duty.
“He wanted to go back to work at Fort Drum in New York,” she said. “But they flew him home, and he passed away 37 days later.”
Land of hope and dreams
Gad’s thoughts about America focus on perseverance.
There was his Russian grandfather.
“He managed to live something of the American dream because he managed to get a job as a janitor at what was Chicago’s tallest building at the time,” Gad said.
He never owned a car, but he learned to read, write and speak English. So did the Polish father of Gad’s father. Both of his grandmothers never learned the language, marking an “X” when they needed to provide a signature.
But the Russian immigrant grandparents had a son — Gad’s uncle and godfather — who fought for America in some of the worst battles in the European Theater of Operations in World War II. And they had two daughters, one of whom was Gad’s mother.
Gad grew up on Chicago’s Near West Side, a neighborhood of immigrants who were sometimes called DPs — and it didn’t stand for displaced persons.
“DP was ‘dumb Polack,’” he said.
The family scrimped to get by, and Gad remembers the butcher who would set aside the chicken pieces that he couldn’t sell — including chicken feet — to give to Mrs. Gad: “She would make the most delicious chicken soup that you could ever have.”
Even in a low-income neighborhood filled with people sometimes subjected to ethnic slurs, there was patriotism. As Christmas approached one year during the Vietnam War, Gad was working as a maintenance machinist at a Chicago factory and decided to organize a fundraiser for the injured soldiers at the Great Lakes Naval Station hospital. The factory workers filled four large station wagons with Christmas gifts for the wounded Vietnam vets.
It was a gesture of gratitude — gratitude for the opportunity to live in America and gratitude for those willing to serve their country. More than 60 years later, he and his neighbors feel it still.
“We have a good life,” Gad said. “And a lot of us don’t realize what a good life we have.”