There was many a night when Tom Bennett had to sneak back into his house as a teenager growing up in Suncrest.
No, he wasn’t parking with his girlfriend or trying to bluff his way into a Sunnyside bar with a fake I.D.
He was in church.
Bennett, who would be recognized posthumously with the country’s highest military honor, was in a lot of ecumenical study groups.
Most of them went well into the evening.
Sitting in those discussion groups, he absorbed the discourse that swirled around God, the Golden Rule and the mystery and ethics of faith.
Life was strictly regimented in his two-story house on tree-lined Junior Avenue, however.
And a young man residing there didn’t bust curfew.
Not even for the Bible.
This particular young man got around that, with an agile mind and agile body.
He would shimmy up the side and perch himself on the porch roof. Then, he’d rap on his big brother’s window and crawl in.
Nothing to it.
Except, there was everything to it.
Because while Tommy Bennett was going vertical in Suncrest, America was getting in deep in Southeast Asia.
Vietnam.
His classmates from Morgantown High School were already off fighting in the jungle.
And Bennett, whose patriotism marched in lockstep with his moral convictions about weaponry and war, was going to have to make some decisions.
‘She’s exactly who I want to be’
Monday was Veterans Day, the day America honors its men and women who have worn the uniform in war zones and peacetime postings, alike.
Some were drafted.
Others enlisted.
They became soldiers by way of patriotism, ambition, obligation and even a sense of adventure.
At the Erickson Alumni Center that morning, the brigade commander of the West Virginia National Guard told an audience in the Ruby Grand Hall that it’s now up to the rest of us to make a positive legacy — for those who kept us safe under their watch.
The brigade commander is also a literal pioneering officer in the Mountain State.
Lt. Col. Tanya McGonegal is the first woman of color to lead to guard in West Virginia.
She was on campus as a guest of WVU’s Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and its Center for Veteran, Military and Family Programs.
McGonegal took command this summer, putting a new set of bars on a career that began after her commissioning as an officer 10 years before.
Before that, she was a police officer in Fairfax County, Va., trying to decide if she wanted a career there or in military police.
And before that, she was a military kid.
The New Jersey native spent her childhood on bases in California and Germany, before her parents resettled in the Garden State.
McGonegal’s mother is Italian and her father, who was in the service, is black.
“That was kind of a big deal in the 1970s in small-town New Jersey,” their daughter said.
Her dad, in particular, though, told her to not let people trip her up on labels.
Sept. 11 tripped everyone up, she said.
She did two deployments to war zones after the terror attacks.
“The world changed,” she said. “All at once. And then it was like, ‘We can’t let something like this happen again.’ ”
And, those same parents always told her she could make her life happen exactly the way she wanted, if she worked hard.
That’s what she told the WVU cadets who came up to her after her prepared remarks Monday.
“To see a woman of color succeed like she has is an inspiration to all of us,” Alicia Michel said.
Michel is a WVU ROTC cadet and junior psychology major from Bowie, Md., who plans on going on active duty after her commissioning.
She’ll use her academic training, she said, to help soldiers battle their wartime trauma back home.
McGonegal, the officer-to-be said, is her new role model.
“She’s exactly who I want to be.”
‘Your brother saved my life’
A future Medal of Honor recipient, meanwhile, was grappling with who he wanted be, as Vietnam roiled in the jungle.
Bennett was attending WVU on a student deferment, but that was dicey.
He spent more time as an activist rather than actually attending classes.
He was placed on academic probation, then lost his deferment, altogether.
One of his best friends from MHS had enlisted in the Marines and was already dead — caught in the crossfire of an ambush.
Bennett didn’t want to dishonor a buddy’s memory or disappoint his own family by going to Canada.
And while he was morally opposed to killing someone in war, when he found out he could register as a conscientious objector, and train as a medic, he willingly reported to the induction center.
He’d rather save lives on the battlefield, he said, rather than take lives.
Feb. 11, 1969: Second Platoon, Company B, was on patrol in Chu Pa Region of Pleiku Province, when lights again exploded from the tree line and bullets snapped the air. Again.
It was the third day in a row the platoon was hit, and just as the previous times, its medic didn’t hesitate.
Bennett was only 5-foot-6, a pipe-cleaner of a kid, but he was wiry and carried himself bigger.
He went headlong into the hail like a pulling guard at Pony Lewis Field, tugging guys to safety.
Morphine and bandages, while he hugged the dirt.
Feb. 11 was even worse, and a sergeant and others screamed at him to wait, because the incoming was too heavy.
Bennett rescued one guy and was going for another who was probably dead when the bullets tore into him.
He stiffened, staggered, and his war story was over. Just like that. He was 21.
A year later, his family was at the White House, where Richard Nixon presented posthumously to the medic the military’s highest recognition for combat valor.
Also in attendance were many of the soldiers he rescued.
George Bennett, who hoisted his window in Suncrest so his little brother could get around curfew, couldn’t have been more moved.
He talked about it previously with The Dominion Post.
“I can’t describe to you how it feels when somebody looks you right in the eye and says, ‘Your brother saved my life.’ ”
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