October 13, 1943 - June 28, 2024
I lost a beloved friend, Harry Parent, on the 28th of June, the second Viet Nam Vet to grace my life, who died of Agent Orange, soaring away eight minutes before I could get to the hospital to say “goodbye;” both men so alienated by war they never married, never settled down, and lived a little bit wary.
Harry stood 5’10” and stocky. He had topaz-colored eyes and a hound-dog expression, Italian and sun-browned skin, and - for most of his life - thick dark hair he cut himself and slicked back with Brylcreem, and that perpetual cigarette hanging off his lower lip no matter what he was doing.
He was by trade a carpenter but came west out of New Hampshire upon discharge to mine for gold. He’d been a crew chief on several “cussed” Hueys, spraying Agent Orange over the jungle…and shooting elephants, the order he abhorred the most. He survived three “hard landings” in Nam because of failed “Jesus Nuts,” the thing that attached the main propeller to the helicopter. And, like most of the several Viet Nam Vets I knew - now dead, he wanted to get as far away from man as possible.
Sadly, Mother Nature never yielded all of her golden heart to him, no matter his relentless faith in that possibility. And yet, in his last weeks, Harry “escaped” the Northern Nevada Veteran’s Home to run back to Buffalo Canyon to a mine where he was working before his right leg had to be amputated, one he returned to oh-so-briefly on a specialized hydraulic prosthetic he had made so he could keep mining…before his heart gave out.
Harry’s way of life is long gone those 30 years on either side of the 1849 Gold Rush. That was how he was determined to live it. We take solace in the hope that he is still living that dream on the streets of gold we are promised in Heaven.
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