Ode to PC Diegel, Part II

So PC Diegel found himself in Portland with a degree, ambition, and  - for a returned sailor -a fair bit of money.  Turns out that his history degree was either the result of or a catalyst for a remarkable memory, and while at sea on the LST to pass the many hours of non-action he and his shipmates played a lot of cards:  mostly poker and bridge.  And playing cards for fun isn’t nearly as much fun as playing cards for money, and he played a lot, and won a lot.  Combined with spending no money for years on the ship he ended up being discharged with a lot of his mates’ cash and then some.  Which enabled him to fairly quickly get the sweet cars of the day and a nice apartment above downtown Portland.  He got some sort of job, and indeed proceeded to start partaking in the peaks, lakes, and grasslands of Oregon I mentioned in the last post.

Fairly quickly Paul found himself in the middle of a community of young folks who worked hard and played hard, and they spent their weekends climbing the local peaks like Hood, 3 Fingered Jack, Washington, Adams, St Helens (in its previous 10,000 foot conical glory), and others.  

Coincidentally – or not – he later saw me living with a bunch of fun folks in a big old house in Northwest Portland post-college that was a virtual hub of funhoggin’ and pointed out that our lives were very similar, just 45 years apart.  Paul C was an active member of the venerable Cascade Ski Club and despite growing up in Kansas quickly became a good skier (on 9’ long hickory skis with non-releasable cable bindings)

that is art in motion. 

and it didn’t take long for his climbing experience to get him to the point where he was a trip leader for the Mazamas. 

Being a strapping young, confident guy he attracted plenty of lady admirers, and – just like his son who lived in pretty much the same ‘hood 45 years later – there was a fair bit of dancin’ around in the community.  But one cute woman who had also moved from the Midwest seeking out fun and adventure seemed to keep herself quite available to him while simultaneously working the field, and they grew pretty close.  

who wouldn't be smitten?

She too was keen to ski, so they did a lot of funhoggin':

Again his stoic nature kept him from being much of a romantic, but when Ginny Denecke kinda threw down and said “Look, I like you a lot, but I’m not waiting around here forever, and I got a bunch of guys – most of whom are your friends – that suit me almost as well” he got the cue that he needed to sort of step up.  Part of the formal courtship was a trip out to Kansas in the ’49 Ford (or somesuch) and this apparently raised some eyebrows when they showed up back in town; an unmarried couple going on a road trip at that time was considered to be a bit risqué.  But they didn’t care and carried on their merry way.  But his conservative relatives needn’t have been concerned; Paul C proposed over the phone with barely-intelligible laryngitis, and Paul and Gin were married in 1954. 

they inexplicably honeymooned in SoCal:

suckin' in that gut!

pensive guy

cracking himself up; a trait his sons picked up....

As mentioned earlier, PC was a big climber guy, and like a lot of climbers in the Northwest 9and around the world) he was lured to the famed Tetons.  One trip was to climb the Grand in 1953, and this photo of him:

Was ultimately a big influencer on the lives of both Paul D and me; our dad looked so badass on top of such an iconic peak, that we wanted to be mountain badasses as well. 

But we didn’t really get encouraged by him to do so.  A year later he and his buddy went to climb the Grand’s little brother Mt Owen, and while I never could really get the details, they got into a bad thunderstorm cycle and stumbled back into camp soggy and still terrified by their ordeal, and when Dad the Alpine Badass got home he literally hung up his axe and said “Never Again.” And he didn’t.  Skiing, hunting, fishing; all fine, but mountaineering was too much.  Ultimately Paul D and I did climb a few of the Northwest’s volcanoes and have dabbled a bit in rock climbing, but ultimately we too really became skiers vs mountaineers.

We did finally become the 2^nd and 3^rd Diegels to reach the summit of The Grand, coincidentally almost 60 years to the day after our dad did:

I tried to assume The Look:

But my attempt at badassery fell woefully short!

Our dad generally had pretty boundless energy and was a bit obsessive, and needed other things to channel his enthusiasm, so he got into…bird dogs.  

Of course; why not?  For some reason he and Gin were drawn to English Springer Spaniel field trials, which is basically judged hunting, and they went big.  Part of field trialing is shooting, and he became a pretty good shot, and was certainly not above holding his wife hostage with his gun if the need arose:

He and Gin gallivanted all over the Northwest to field trials, and their infatuation for the dogs and the sport led them to buy a hobby farm surrounded by fields on the west side of Portland so that they could have plenty of acres to not only have kennels but also to train the dogs, hunt at their leisure, and even raise pheasants and pigeons for the training and the trials.  Their love of all things English Springer Spaniel field trials led them to do a big trip back to ye olde country of England, where they met one of the English legends of field trialing and bought a couple of puppies from them.  One of the puppies (Gin’s) made it home just fine, but inexplicably the other (“Willie”, Paul’s no-doubt, top-breeded champion to be) got lost in the airlines and spent a week flying around the world.   Though Willie was no doubt PC’s favorite dog, he was the only springer I’ve ever seen that had a pretty mean temper, and he chewed up Paul Jr. pretty hard a couple of times; I seem to remember that I was able to avoid the dog’s wrath. 

Ultimately PC’s infatuation with the dog thing resulted in having a handful of American Kennel Club champions and he was awarded the high honor of being asked to be a judge at the national championships in the mid-70’s:

Many years later I met a New England kayaker who was (still is) famous for his gun nuttery (he packed heat in his boat!) and generally-abrasive (but endearing) personality, and his reputation preceded him.  So when we shook hands he surprised the hell out of me by saying (in a thick Mass accent) "oh yeah, Tom Diegel...I knew yo dad.  Good man.  I had a lotta respect fo him."  Turns out JJ was also a springer spaniel guy, and had been a young upstart at that nationals that my dad judged; JJ and his dog didn't do very well there, but my dad did give him a few pointers....

The field trial deal not only was an activity/obsession and an excuse to live out in the country, it was also not surprisingly the center of their social lives.  Since we had fields aplenty and lots of birds in coops right there, our place was always full in the summer months with pickups, barking dogs, and gunshots.  And most days ended with the boys having a gin and tonic with a crushed sprig of mint, but only after gently turning down his enthusiastic offer of Boones Farm Strawberry Hill wine (“it’s really refreshing!”).   And it wasn’t just the boys; Gin and her friend broke into the old boys’ club in the early ‘70’s with dogs of their own, and their friend Janet Christensen is by far, no question the winning-est, most successful springer field trialer in history, with her most recent win coming…last October, so she’s still crushing it in her late ‘80’s! 

Like Janet, PC kept up his enthusiasm for dogs to the end: 

With "Hardy", whom he had to admit after training, judging, and handling dogs was the best dog he'd ever seen (and fortunately for me, also the most loveable!). 

No story about PC Diegel would be complete without, of course, the Triumphs:

But that's another story unto itself, to be continued....

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.....