The last two days have been exciting in terms of finding old friends. Yesterday while I was sitting in my living room chair watching English football, or soccer, my phone rang. It was an unknown caller, the address was Glen Bernie, MD. Usually, when I get an unknown number I ignore it. I don't know why I didn't this time, but I answered it. A man responded to my "Hello" with "Could I speak to Ron Grandel?". I replied, "This is he". He said, "This is Rich Morseburger, your driver from Vietnam".
I couldn't believe it. When I first on Facebook in 2010, Rich was one of the very first people I looked for, but couldn't find him. Turns out, that he doesn't have a social presence online. Anyhow, we chatted for almost an hour trading stories, mentioning common friends from Vietnam, and each other up-to-date to some degree. We left our phone call of almost an hour promising to each other some photos we had each taken.
About two hours later, I got another call from a northern Virginia area code. I didn't recognize it, but feeling good about my earlier call with Rich I answered. It was Cordell Burch, my 3rd platoon leader from Vietnam. Rich had called him and gave him my phone number. Once again we reminisced about 1969 Vietnam and brought each other somewhat up-to-date.
It was a very gratifying afternoon.
Then this morning I FB message from one of my Xavier ex-cadets, Mike Patti. He found a favorite teacher of his, Al Nilles, who lived in Lexington, Virginia. He sent me the address and I am going to try to look Al up (Al and I would run the annual school walkathon instead of walking it).
All in all, it was a good last two days.
