Vets gather to remember a calling
Lunchtime get-togethers fade as fewer follow military life
Every first Monday of the month, a group of gray- and white-haired men can be found seated in the banquet room at Corky’s BBQ , swapping war stories and other military tales while catching up on each others’ lives. It’s a tradition that started at least half a century ago, but one that participants say is dwindling fast.
This lot of mostly retired military men call themselves the Hank’s Dog House group, a name referring to the roots of this makeshift club that first met at the former Hank’s Dog House restaurant on Roosevelt Road in Little Rock.
“It goes way back. Forty, 50, 60 years. We don’t really know,” said retired Col. Dave Beranek, 69, who has been part of the group for about a year.
The people and location have changed, but the concept remains: veterans socializing about a common interest, and past, in the armed forces.
Retired Maj. John Parker, 80, has attended the monthly get-together the longest, starting as one of the younger members more than 30 years ago and now becoming one of the group’s only ties to its own history.
“I came here in 1976, and it was well-organized and had been running for years prior to that,” Parker said of the lunches. “I don’t know. It seemed to me that the individuals that started it were all veterans of World War II. I would think that maybe it started, oh, in the 1950s, the early 1950s.”
When Hank’s Dog House closed sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, the veterans-group lunch moved to a hotel restaurant. Meetings at other restaurants followed until about five years ago when a decision was made to meet at Corky’s, where the men’s chatter of wars past still fills the banquet room today.
There was a female member not too long ago — a retired lieutenant colonel who was an Air Force nurse — but she’s since relocated to Hot Springs and no longer attends the gatherings. Any given month there could be as few as 10 men or as many as 30 who show up for the lunch. They’ve come from Louisiana, New York, California and all over, eventually settling in
Little Rock — likely at one point having been stationed at the Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville. The membership spans across all branches of the military and covers World War II to the first Persian Gulf War.
“It’s a brotherhood, I guess,” Beranek said.
“Yeah,” added retired Lt. Col. Ralph Boatman, 70. “We understand the language and the conversation. It’s drifted to more worrying about the future — aches and pains of being a veteran — instead of talking about the past, though.”
A typical lunch starts midday with prayer and a pledge of allegiance to the American flag. Then they talk about the latest news that may affect them. Recently it was the health-care law, then it was what new airplane the Little Rock Air Force Base would get. But somewhere in between the cracks of all the talk on the state of military affairs, an aged story of their time as servicemen slips into the conversation.
Retired Lt. Col. Bob Buchanan, 83, tells the one of how he was in a meeting with a brigadier general at the Pentagon when he learned of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. And his main regret to this day is not saluting his fallen commander when Kennedy’s hearse was within feet of him at Andrew’s Air Force Base in Maryland.
Beranek remembers returning home after Vietnam and having a layover in San Francisco. Soldiers were required to fly in uniform, and he was spit on as he walked through Fisherman’s Wharf. Retired Lt. Col. Bill Warren’s most distinct memory is when his unit was in DEFCON 2 mode — the highest level of preparedness before entering a war stage — during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But mostly they just talk about each other.
There’s retired Col. Bill Ramsey, who was a pilot in World War II and flew 69 missions. And Cmdr. Wesley Crook, also retired, who was a personal Navy pilot for Adm. Chester Nimitz, the commander in chief over all Navy forces in the Pacific Ocean Theater during World War II.
Retired Capt. Buddy Spivey was blinded during combat in Vietnam and went on to counsel other blind veterans during his work for the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs. Everyone still describes retired Col. Conrad Beggs, who died last year, as the one who made it his duty to tell at least one good joke at each lunch. And who could forget about retired 1st Lt. John Quackenbush, who’s still a regular attendee?
“Quackenbush. He’s a weird character, that one,” Buchanan said. “He just don’t give a d***. He’s a Marine, of course.”
“Oh, he gives a d***,” Beranek countered. “He just has a Marine way of saying it.”
What’s missing at these monthly meetings, they say, is the younger generation. It’s not a social military anymore, Boatman said.
“We are losing more [in the Hank’s Dog House group] than we’re gaining. The younger generation doesn’t go for stuff like this. They’re five-year guys,” he said. They don’t make a career out of the military.”
“Well, you can’t blame them,” replied Warren, 83.
The group reminisces on the time when military clubs were the place to be. After work, they and their families would meet at the local club, and that’s where the greatest bonds and the best of friends were made.
“That’s what’s missing so desperately in the current force,” Beranek said. “They go home. They don’t share stories. That’s the same as a civilian job. But this is a calling, not a job. They need to know all of us were in this boat … your military future is formed in those formative years.”
The Hank’s Dog House group hopes today’s activepersonnel will one day be getting together to talk about their time in the military.
But for now, they are happy with telling their own stories about back when men were trained to win — when they were drafted into the service and they left it as members of a brotherhood.
“Now days they aren’t fostering the old ideas,” Buchanan said. “These organizations like Hank’s Dog House are dying.”
The future generation’s interest in these groups that foster community may be in doubt, but Buchanan said the future of Hank’s Dog House is certain for at least as long as its current members are alive.
“Yep,” he said with a knowing, matter-of-fact smile. “We will be here until we expire.”