An Ode to Paul C Diegel

One hundred years ago this week – on March 31, 1920, to be exact – a notable figure was brought into this world:  Paul C. Diegel was born in Atchison, Kansas.  Though he ultimately achieved the most acclaim for being the father of two amazing sons 😜 he also led a fascinating and exemplary life that warrants a tellin'.  

P.C (as he would later be mostly known) was the 5^th son of Henry Diegel, who  -by his own account – had led a life unfortunately marred by tragedy: young Paul turned out to be the only son who outlived his father, who in turn had outlived three wives and four other children who were lost to various maladies.  As a result, Henry was a strapping 60 years old when Paul was born (yes indeed, if one does the math, our grandfather was born in 1859, and thus lived through the Civil War.  And no, unfortunately I didn’t get to hang out with my grandpa too much...).  Our grandpa owned a bridle factory that had been relatively successful being deep in the farm belt, and one of our dad’s earliest memories is sitting on the porch on one of the long, warm Kansas evenings and listening to his dad tell his buddies  - between puffs on his cigar – “The tractor may be good, but it’ll never be able to replace the horse!”  Fortunately he retired before the vast workhorse bridle business faded as John Deere rose. 

Even as old as he was as a father, Henry wasn’t done; Paul got a younger brother named George.  But tragedy continued to dog the family; young George died in a sledding accident at maybe around 11 years old (one of the reasons I have many times declared sledding one of the most dangerous activities known to man) and it was our understanding that their father at least partially blamed his older brother for the accident.  However, this was only part of family lore that my mom remembered from meeting other family members, because our stoic dad never mentioned his little brother. 

Only a couple of years later PC’s mother also died of cancer, and  a couple of years after that his father – 80, by now – also passed away.  Thus PC’s later reputation for stoicism was built upon forging onward with these tragedies in his wake. 

College at the University of Kansas (“High atop mighty Mount Oread!”) with a degree in history was relatively uneventful, until one day in December when he was at a movie on a double date and the movie stopped, the lights came up, and the theater manager rushed in and exclaimed “The Japanese just bombed Pearl Harbor!”  At that moment 22 year old Paul Diegel knew his life was changed.  He and his buddy immediately went to enlist, but not – as he emphasized later in admonishing us to do whatever we could to stay out of any war – out of a sense of patriotism, but to try to look like he wanted in and do so quickly so he’d have a better shot at being an officer and a worser shot at being shot as an infantryman. 

 

Fresh faced and ready to go

And thus he embarked on a 4 year tour of the Pacific as a Lieutenant on an LST ship, which transported troops around to various theaters of conflict.  Like a lot of vets, our dad didn’t like to talk much about the war, but he did tell us one memorable story.  It was very near the end, and it was pretty clear what the outcome was going to be.  At one point they were tasked with delivering a load of soldiers to a random island beach, and after they dropped off their “cargo” were going full steam ahead back out to rendezvous with their fleet; spirits were high since it was likely going to be one of their last missions, it was a beautiful day, and they could smell the barn.  

That’s when they heard the whine of a far-off engine, and someone yelled “Zero!”  It was one of the dreaded kamikaze pilots who – in the Japanese force’s final throes – were creating devastating results; their super small profile (looking straight on at them) made them nearly impossible to hit with a gun mounted on a rolling ship, and the pilots were on suicide missions to put their planes into the sides of the ships and sink them. 

As Paul C stared through these binoculars:

 at the oncoming plane, standing next to a gunner firing madly in vain at the 11 foot-tall missile coming straight at the ship he thought “Well, shit!  I’ve survived out here for four goddam years, the war’s pretty much over, and this asshole is going to the one to take me out!” But suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere in the cloudless sky, two American planes dove at the Zero with guns a’blazin', and it went into the water with a flame blast that rolled over the deck of the boat.  The boys on that boat looked up from cowering from the blast to see their angels of deliverance dipping their wings in salute as they flew off back to their carrier. 

A far more sophisticated - with that sick 'stache - veteran of 4 years at sea. 

Not long after this incident the war did indeed end, and Lieutenant PC Diegel was discharged, and it happened to happen in Portland, Oregon.  Seeing the nice coastline, the snowcapped mountains in the distance, and the verdant Willamette River valley he realized that there wasn’t much to go back to in Kansas and Oregon seemed like a nice place (the Japanese surrender was on September 2, 1945, and like a lot of places, Oregon typically has perfect September weather; if he’d have arrived a few months later for the long, dreary, rainy winter his impression would no doubt have been different!). He spent some time there getting to know the place, then wisely decided to take advantage of the recently-passed GI Bill that  - according to Wikipedia – had “Benefits that included low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business or farm, one year of unemployment compensation, and dedicated payments of tuition and living expenses to attend high school, college, or vocational school.”  A pretty sweet deal for a relatively young lad who’s psyched to be alive and spent four years “earning” the ability to take advantage of this opportunity (which was not accorded to returned Black servicemen, which many feel was a big initial contributor to the ongoing deep wealth divide between blacks and whites; yes, FDR was a great president, but this was a huge failure).  Paul decided to go as big as he could and got into Harvard to get an MBA, so the next coupla years were pretty uneventful doing the Hahvahd thing in Boston. 

That stint in Portland remained in his mind, however, and as soon as he was finished in Boston he rattled on back to Portland, where he pretty much embarked on a life of recreation punctuated by a career.  The Pacific Northwest had enough mountains to climb, lakes to hike to and fish, and grasslands to hunt game birds to keep him busy for a lifetime, so he stayed put and made a life, of business:

Sweet cars:

 and loose women!

my mom

To be continued.....