The Washington Post - 03.03.2020

TUESDAy, MARCH 3 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ M2 B3

“I like rhythm and blues from the ’50s and ’60s,” Tildon told Jones. “A nd motown.” The result was “Happy To Be Alive Day,” a sweet, Hammond organ-infused song in the style of Smokey robinson. Jones sings: People ask me all the time about the smile on my face, So I tell them ’bout my time in Vietnam back in ’68. When that Huey dropped me off in a hot LZ, There was angels from heaven watching over me. When that Phantom rained fire on the enemy, That’s why Dec. 23 will always be My happy to be alive day, my lucky that I survived day. Ever since, everything’s going my way... The melody belies the fear Tildon must have felt, but the song’s lyrics take him from the war back home to “the world” and to the woman who would become his wife, and the family they would raise together. “I’m old... and I’m happy to be alive,” Tildon said Saturday. “A nyways, he put it to music.” To hear these songs — and others — go to operationsong1.bandcamp.com. The songs by Tildon and fay are on the album called “Dept. of Veterans Affairs, VISN 5 November 2019.” [email protected] Twitter: @johnkelly

 For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.

Nashville for operation Song. Since it was founded in 2012 by songwriter Bob regan , the charity has worked with veterans from World War II to more recent conflicts to create nearly 750 songs. Tildon, a D.C. native who after the Army rose to oversee personnel for the District government, was paired with songwriter Chuck Jones.

Charles kearney and Samuel Williams. music therapist nicolette rubin oversees multiple creative programs at the m edical center, from choral groups to guitar classes. music, she said, can transport a troubled mind. Said rubin: “music can heal.” Saturday’s event — complete with a red carpet — was to raise funds to send more local vets to

Had some crazy nights in Hong Kong, things I’d never tell my Mom “I really loved the marine Corps,” said fay, 81. “I would go back in a minute if they asked me.” fay met Tildon in a music therapy program at Washington’s VA medical Center. They’re part of Vets in Harmony, a singing quartet that also includes

Hamm. In Nashville, Hamm played a few melodies on a piano and fay picked one. Then fay told his story, about how before joining the marine Corps he’d been a decent but directionless teenager. He enlisted a nd would soon be dispatched to the Suez Crisis, the Philippines, the Straits of formosa, Vietnam... “We’re the tip of the spear,” said fay, who served from 1956 to 1963 and now lives in Alexandria with his wife, Victoria. “We’re always moving around.” After the marines, fay went to college, eventually earning a PhD from Yale and becoming a scientist for the Navy. fay said he was skeptical that a few hours of conversation with a Nashville tunesmith could distill his marine Corps experiences into a three-minute song, but when he heard it he was blown away. The tune, called “Squared me Away,” is a bit Bob Seger , a bit Lee greenwood. Hamm sings: I went in a boy, but the Corps made me a man Everything I thought I couldn’t do, well they taught me that I can Yeah, fall in, snap to, shine those shoes, get stronger every day I wasn’t just marching in circles, it squared me away The song is so stirring, it could be used in a recruiting film — even if the lyrics hint at off-color r & r: I commanded tanks at 18, I advised in Vietnam

for Calvin
Tildon , Dec. 23,
1968, was a day
full of smoke and
fire and blood.
Dec. 23, 1968,
was the day the
young Army
lieutenant
stepped from a
helicopter into a
pitched battle in a Vietnamese
rice paddy. It was the day he
watched his radio operator fall,
wounded, at his side. It was the
day he was close enough to see
enemy soldiers. It was the day he
called in an f-4 Phantom jet to
drop napalm. It was the day his
actions earned him a Bronze
Star.
Dec. 23, 1968, is the day Tildon
calls his “happy to be alive day.”
for years he marked it by getting
drunk.
“If you’re so happy to be alive,”
Tildon’s wife, Shirley , would say,
“why you trying to kill yourself ?”
Every soldier has war stories.
The 75-year-old Tildon has
something else: a war song.
In November, Tildon and John
Fay , a fellow member of
American Legion Post 8 on
Capitol Hill, went to Nashville
for operation Song, a program
that pairs veterans with
songwriters. on Saturday at
Post 8, they described how their
songs were created and
recorded, and debuted them
before their friends and families.
fay, a Boston native who
joined the marine Corps at 17,
worked with songwriter regie

Music that heals: Veterans write experience into songs at Nashville program

John
Kelly's

Washington

joHn Kelly/tHe WAsHIngton Post Veterans Calvin Tildon, left, and John Fay traveled to nashville in november for operation Song, which pairs veterans with songwriters. They debuted their songs Saturday at American Legion Post 8.

mArylAnD

Shooting in Chillum leaves teenager dead

A teenager was fatally shot friday in Prince George’s County, authorities said. N elson Leon-Umana, 19, of Adelphi died in the 6600 block of Chillum manor road, county police said. — Justin Wm. Moyer

Student arrested after anti-Semitic messages

A University of maryland student received anti-Semitic messages on her cellphone late last year, and a man was arrested, campus police said. The student said she was in the mcKeldin Library on D ec. 12 w hen the messages came from an unknown person. Police said they w ere sent “because of her religious beliefs.” U-md. police said muqarrab Ahmed Abdullah, 24, of La Plata, a student at the university, was arrested Thursday and charged with electronic communication harassment, telephone misuse and a race and/or religion crime. — Martin Weil

VIrgInIA

Arlington lawmaker

fighting brain tumor

Arlington County Board
member Erik Gutshall has been
hospitalized for treatment of a
brain tumor, his wife reported
on social media Sunday night.
Gutshall (D), 49, is the
board’s vice chairman and
owner of Clarendon Home
Services, a residential
maintenance company.
He missed the feb. 22 county
board meeting, a rare absence
for him.
Gutshall was elected to the
board in 2017 and has been a
champion of providing
“missing middle” housing.
“Posting this message is
heartbreakingly difficult,”
renee Gutshall wrote on
facebook. “Erik, my sweet and
wonderful husband, is
hospitalized and being treated
for a brain tumor. We hope that
you will keep him in your
thoughts and prayers as he goes
through treatment over the
coming weeks. Words cannot
express how much your
friendship, support and love
mean to me, our children and
Erik right now.”
— Patricia Sullivan

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top doctor in America are saying and let the nation’s paint folks get to the springtime palette and brush techniques they’d rather be talking about. [email protected] Twitter: @petulad

others. The N95 mask will not save you from coronavirus, but it may save the lungs of someone doing dirty, dusty, toxic work. Listen to the information, understand what people like the

weekend, the front desk dude with pink hair wore a mask and chic black gloves. “Everyone’s coughing,” he complained. “I can’t be too careful.” There’s already a mask black market. one Craigslist seller was offering the $23 Home Depot 15- pack of N95 masks for $175. on Amazon, the most popular masks are on back order until mid-April. Workers all over are complaining about difficulty getting the protective gear they need, tying T-shirts or bandannas around their faces to make do. All because of panic. Panic buying is nothing new. We’ve seen it when the forecast calls for four inches of snow, and we’ve seen it when tensions have escalated with foreign countries. But even in an era when we have boundless access to information, we have managed to ignore the facts. It was 20 years ago that people stockpiled canned food because the Y2K bug was coming for everyone. That was followed three years later by a run on the duct tape and plastic sheeting that might save us from terrorists and anthrax. our fears always seem to overtake common sense. Chinese restaurants across the nation have gone quiet. The popular rockville branch of Peter Chang has seen a 50 percent drop in revenue since news of the coronavirus hit last month, a ccording to Washingtonian magazine. Beer drinkers (maybe about 4 percent of those asked in a recent survey) are avoiding Corona beer because of the virus. It shouldn’t have to be said, but for the record, Corona beer can’t give you the coronavirus. Sure, the unknown is scary. one too many zombie virus thrillers and we want to be prepared for any unseen event. But in this case, overpreparedness can hurt

automatic warehouse shipments are also being shut out. This also means that the folks who are truly vulnerable to any kind of flu — let alone the coronavirus — are unprotected, too. “my mother is in a nursing home, and they’re all worried about getting sick all the time,” said Carolyn Williams, who was just turned down at the paint department of her hometown hardware store in Bowie. I visited hardware stores across the region this weekend and found the same thing — empty shelves everywhere.

Some of the hardware store folks I talked to said it began with Chinese Americans buying up huge lots of the masks to send to families in China last month. “Then, when it happened in Italy, I had Italians coming in to buy them. Now it’s folks who want masks to send back to families in Africa,” moore said. It’s not just masks that people are stockpiling. Costco was a demolition derby of carts loaded with food, toilet paper, hand sanitizer and bleach. “Gloves. They’re even buying all the rubber gloves,” one clerk at the D.C. Costco told me, her head shaking in disbelief. When my son got his hair cut in a downtown D.C. salon this

dVorAk from B1

PetUlA DVorAK

Amid coronavirus frenzy, don’t mask the problem

“My mother is in a

nursing home, and

they’re all worried

about getting sick

a ll the time.” carolyn Williams, who was unable to buy masks for a vulnerable relative at a hardware store in Bowie

tony dejAK/AssocIAted Press ohio department of Health director Amy Acton, discussing coronavirus preparedness and education efforts last week in Cleveland, said, “It’s vitally important that we keep [masks] f or medical professionals and patients who need them.”

deserves pride and the absence of shame.” Hope’s bill passed the House 66 to 27, with every Democrat and 11 republicans in favor. An- other seven republicans did not vote. The Senate passed it 22 to 18, with all Democrats and Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel (r-fauquier) in support. The General Assembly has also passed an identical Senate bill, proposed by Sen. Scott A. Surov- ell (D-fairfax). Northam is also expected to sign t hat measure but was under time pressure to sign Hope’s bill because it had passed earlier in the session. The governor is likely to do a ceremonial signing of all LGBT rights bills sometime after the General Assembly gavels out of its 60-day session on Saturday. [email protected]

of an “overbearing” mother and emotionally distant father, something that he said “wrecked our relationship.”

“Throughout all of it, I was still gay,” he said. “I felt like I did something wrong. And it was years afterward that I still experi- enced shame.... our community

land, according to the movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBT legislation. North Carolina prohibits only the use of taxpayer dollars for the therapy. Under the bill p roposed by Del. Patrick A. Hope (D-Arlington), therapists cannot attempt conversion therapy with anyone under the age of 18. Violation of the ban would be grounds for disci- plinary action by state health regulators. Adam Trimmer, who lives in the richmond area, came out as gay as a teenager and underwent conversion therapy. Now he is Virginia ambassador for Born Perfect, a national campaign to end the practice. Trimmer, 30, said the sessions convinced him for some time that his homosexuality was the result

modations. With republicans in control of at least one chamber for the past quarter-century, such legislation has been blocked in past years. A few Senate republicans were willing to team up with the Democratic minority on mea- sures such as banning discrimi- nation against LGBT people in housing and public employment. But those bills never got to the floor of the House of Delegates, where republicans were also in charge. The landscape changed sud- denly after Democrats flipped both chambers in November elec- tions. Conversion therapy for minors is already banned in the District and 19 states, including mary-

VIrgInIA from B1

Va. to be 20th state to ban m inor conversion therapy

“No one should be made

to feel wrong for who

they are — especially

not a child. I’m proud to

sign this ban into law.” Virginia gov. ralph northam

BY MARTIN WEIL AND JUSTIN WM. MOYER

four pedestrians were killed
over the weekend in separate hit-
and-run incidents in the Washing-
ton area, authorities said.
Earl L. rogers Sr., 74, of Largo
was hit by as many as two cars as
he crossed route 4 about
8:30 p.m. Sunday in forestville,
the maryland State Police said.
Earlier Sunday, a man was
struck by two vehicles about
2:40 a.m. in the Sterling area of

Loudoun County as he reportedly ran across route 7 at Dranesville road, the county s heriff ’s office said. one driver fled, the sheriff’s office said. The victim’s name was not available. on Saturday afternoon, Joseph Lanza, 28, of Lorton was killed in fairfax County, police there said. Earlier Saturday, a man was killed along Interstate 495 in Adelphi, maryland State Police said. He has not been identified. [email protected] [email protected]

tHe regIon

Hit-and-runs kill four

over the weekend

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The Washington Post - 03.03.2020

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