These three White Bear Lake men stand at attention for the United States of America. One served in the Army, one in the Marine Corps, one in the Navy. One was in World War II; one now works for the Department of Veterans Affairs; one has watched his sons serve in Afghanistan. All salute their country, and in this month honoring Veterans, all share stories of their service here:
BOB KREUGER
As a teenager, Bob Kreuger says he went out of his way to wear tattered clothes. He wore his hair on the long side, his bedroom a mess. Then, in August 1978, he joined the Marine Corps. His head was soon shaved, his crisp uniform issued, his bunk orderly. “You are standing in line in your skivvies,” Kreuger recalls of boot camp. “They tell you to hold up a pair of clean socks in each hand, and you are scrambling to find that. You are going, ‘What in the heck am I doing here?’ ”
He didn’t know it at the time, but he was starting a 20-year career in the military that would teach him to be self-motivated, organized and not to take no for an answer, he says. His career would inspire his two sons, Bobby and Bradley, to follow him into the Marine Corps.
As an administrative clerk, Bob Kreuger was stationed in California, Kansas, Minnesota and North Carolina as he earned a commission as a chief warrant officer. His hardest assignment was a year in Japan in 1986. “I was separated from everybody,” says Kreuger, who returned to meet Brandi, his newborn daughter.
When he retired in 1998, he credits self-sufficiency learned in the military with his ability to soon find a job. He has been operations manager at Haas Collision and Glass in St. Paul for the last seven years.
He has watched Bobby serve tours in Iraq. “The first deployment with Bobby was the hardest,” the 52-year-old says. “Don’t have any control over the situation. You really couldn’t communicate with them like we can now, with email and other digital advancements. That puts you on edge.”
When Bobby and Bradley served in Afghanistan last year, Kreuger found solace in knowing they were trained, capable and available to Skype. While both saw combat, neither were injured. “We’ve been very fortunate that our sons have been unscathed,” he says. “Far too many people have been hurt in the wars in the last 10 years.”
GUS HELLZEN
Curfew had passed, but Gus Hellzen III, then 15 years old, was awake and listening to a Boys State counselor share stories of West Point. Hellzen would graduate from high school in Mora, Minnesota, in 1974; that earlier conversation made him decide the Army was for him. His father, Gus Hellzen Jr., served in the Korean war and told his son, “If that’s what you want to do, go for it, and give them hell,” Hellzen recalls.
Nearly 40 years later, Hellzen is still giving it his all. He graduated from West Point in 1978 and served in the military police. He served in Alabama, Germany, Virginia, Minnesota and Panama until he retired in 1994. He currently works with the Department of Veterans Affairs and works as a admissions officer for West Point. “I’m glad I went through it and met the different challenges in my life,” says Hellzen, 56. “I was proud to serve my country.”
Hellzen can relate to current military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Panama, he was involved in similar efforts in training police forces. “The difference there was that Panama wanted us there,” he says, whereas the reaction among Iraqis and Afghans is much more complex, and sometimes hostile, Hellzen says. “The Panamanians would much rather have us there.”
Hellzen’s wife, Janice, and their two children, Eric and Jenna, lived in Panama as well. The children, now 32 and 29, remember seeing boa constrictors, sloths and iguanas around their home near the jungle. “Our kids really enjoyed that,” Hellzen says.
Hellzen, however, said he always remained alert. “We watched where we went,” he says. “We would pick restaurants based on the number of guards outside.”
He later served under generals with a number of stars on their jackets, including Gen. Barry McCaffrey and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf. “They are very caring for the people who work for them,” Hellzen says. “People don’t often see that or think about that with them. They also wanted them to be trained and ready and, of course, to be tough, too.”
Service taught Hellzen candor, courage, confidence, commitment and ubiquity, he says: candor to speak freely; courage to speak up and to go into battle; confidence to know what you’re doing; commitment to do it; and ubiquity to have a presence when you can’t be physically present.
KEN PETERSON
World War II veteran Ken Peterson was honorably discharged after four years in the Navy in January 1946. Peterson and his wife, Bernice, had started a family with two young girls, Patricia and Victoria, when he was called back to serve in the Korean war in 1952. “I wasn’t too happy,” says Peterson, now 87. “But I signed up into the reserves. That was my obligation and I fulfilled it.”
In World War II, Peterson helped escort oil tankers across the eastern U.S. seaboard, wary of possible attacks from German U-boats. Fortunately, “nothing happened,” Peterson says. “It was monotonous—very much so.”
In Korea, Peterson helped escort U.S. aircraft carriers as they bombarded the shores of Korea. “That was more exciting,” Peterson says. “We would watch carriers as planes landed, and some had damage and needed repairs before going back out. We helped stop communism,” Peterson adds. “It was an important job.”
He had left a job as a truck driver for Ramsey County to go to war. The job was waiting for him when he came back.
Meanwhile, he would honor his monthly commitment to the Navy reserves until 1985. “I felt very patriotic, and I still do,” Peterson says. “This was my country, and it was good to me. I needed to be good to it.”
Peterson spent the early part of his childhood in Le Sueur, Minnesota, before graduating from White Bear Lake High School in 1942. His older friends were being drafted at age 18. Peterson was 17. “I wanted to get into a branch that I liked and my friends were going into the Navy,” Peterson says. “I liked the uniforms to begin with. I volunteered for the Navy.”
Now with six grown children, Peterson looks back at his time in the Navy and says, “It was good experience, a good education. It’s a good deal as far as I’m concerned.”
