It’s almost as if that old engine was saying, “Sir, yes, sir!”
All Charlie McEwuen had to do was crank it a couple of times.
Then the 1965 Jeep, restored lovingly to Army glory by the Tanner’s Alley owner and former member of the 101st Airborne, stood at attention.
He did everything himself, he said, last week at his Morgantown home.
The Jeep, plus two other Vietnam-vintage military vehicles — a truck and an ambulance, and all three period-correct — reside in his driveway.
All carry current West Virginia state inspection stickers, also.
That’s for a reason.
It’s a matter of marital rank.
Which we’ll get to in due time, soldier.
First, McEwuen’s military story: He grew up in Brookhaven and was a teenager as the war in Vietnam was appearing to draw down.
The draft, at least.
Even so, in 1972, young men were still getting their greetings from Uncle Sam.
And the fall of Saigon was still three years away.
McEwuen, who is now 65 and can still shimmy into his dress uniform, had some things to think about.
He could wait to be drafted, or he could enlist and have a say over his destiny.
“At least for a little while,” he said. “It was rolling the dice either way.”
He ended up as a sergeant in the 101st at Fort Benning, which, more often than not, meant he was staring down at the Georgia countryside from the open hatch of a C-130 transport plane, waiting for his turn to jump.
“We were a combat unit,” he said. “All the time training, all the time parachuting.”
McEwuen’s unit missed Vietnam, which suited him just fine.
Along the way, he kept the home fires burning for his first vehicular crush: The all-purpose, utilitarian Jeep.
Restoring memories (and making them, too)
He’s a gearhead from way back. His first car, in fact, was a 1946 Willys Jeep.
“I loved it,” he said.
“Still do. They’re fun to drive and easy to work on. In the Army, they’re made for 18-year-old kids turning wrenches on them in the field.”
In the military, McEuwen found time to work on what would become his career.
He carried a hunting knife with him on maneuvers and decided he needed a new sheaf for it.
So he crafted one out of leather.
His fellow soldiers loved it.
“Hey, man — where’d you get that?”
“I made it.”
“Make one for me.”
Thus, the enterprising sergeant’s first leather tannery was born.
“Yeah, it turned into this little side business at Benning,” he said. “I kept thinking about that when we moved to Morgantown.”
“We,” as in McEwuen and his wife, Sylvia, a former Army nurse. They met on base at Fort Campbell, Ky., and were both still in the service when they married.
They moved to Morgantown and the so-called “mountain” state (so-called, in Sylvia’s initial view) in 1976.
She hails from Colorado and, as her husband deadpans, began her tour of duty in West Virginia a little on the geological-snobbish side.
It was hard at first to not keep comparing the towering Rockies of her home state with the humble, humped Appalachians of her husband’s.
A year later, in 1977, McEwuen founded Tanner’s Alley, known for its handcrafted leather finery.
“Morgantown’s been good to us,” he said.
The couple has two grown children, who were both born and raised here.
This is also were McEwuen, the military vehicle-restorer, was born.
‘I rode in one of those’
A few years back, he bought “the remains of an Army Jeep,” which is the one he now drives every day in the warm months.
He tinkered away every chance he got.
“It started out as therapy,” he said. “Then, the olive-drab bug bit me.”
From the Jeep, he happened upon his second vehicle, the Army truck, and then the ambulance.
“The idea was to make them exactly as they were,” he said.
He motors the ambulance in parades and for other special events. He drives the go-anywhere truck in the winter.
As said, that came by marital order.
“Sylvia said I could have them, but that I had to drive them. And I had to listen, because she outranks me.”
It’s true: While he mustered out as a sergeant, she was a captain.
At the request of The Dominion Post photographer Ron Rittenhouse, McEwuen put on his uniform for the photographs accompanying this feature.
“It still fits, but it is tight,” he said, chuckling and standing (unconsciously) at parade rest in front of the Jeep. “I’m not gonna lie.”
What especially fits, he said, is his appreciation for the men and women who have worn the uniform in harm’s way.
For him, every day is Veterans Day, he said.
He just has to turn the key and back out of his driveway.
McEwuen was unexpectedly moved, he said, by a passing remark a few years ago when he had the ambulance downtown.
“I think it was Kid’s Day,” he remembered.
“This older gentleman walked by. He had what looked to be his grandchildren with him.”
His one sentence, McEuwen said, was worth a whole war movie.
“He said, ‘I rode in one of those one time.’ It was pretty clear what he meant.”
