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The South High 10.


Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

Bill Muir William "Bill" Muir (born October 26, 1942 in Pittsburgh) is the current offensive coordinator for the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Preceded by
Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive Coordinators
-current Succeeded by
Current Coordinator
 was double-jointed, and he'd bend his arms at odd angles to amaze his boyhood friends.

Bobby Collins Robert "Bobby" Young Collins (born February 16, 1931 in Govanhill, Scotland) was a footballer best known for his successful spells at Celtic F.C., Everton and Leeds United.  was the first in his circle to own a car, and he'd tool around the school parking lot causing an outbreak of envy.

Art Erwin was a varsity wrestler who was classically handsome with a square jaw and a cleft chin A cleft chin, chin cleft, dimple chin, chin dimple, butt chin or booty chin is a dimple on the chin. It is an Y-shaped fissure on the chin with the underlying bony peculiarity. , and he married his girl, Carolyn, when he was home on a furlough fur·lough  
n.
1.
a. A leave of absence or vacation, especially one granted to a member of the armed forces.

b. A usually temporary layoff from work.

c.
.

These are the flesh-and-blood memories conjured Saturday when friends and family of 10 South Eugene High School South Eugene High School is a public high school located in Eugene, Oregon, United States. It was founded as Eugene High School around 1900, and was located at Willamette Street and West 11th Avenue in a brick building that later served as Eugene's city hall.  alumni who died in the Vietnam War Vietnam War, conflict in Southeast Asia, primarily fought in South Vietnam between government forces aided by the United States and guerrilla forces aided by North Vietnam.  gathered to break ground on a modest memorial.

The event was the culmination of a three-year campaign by their 1960s era classmate Adrian Vaaler to convince school officials that the marker was a good idea.

Along the way, school officials suggested that Vaaler should make it a general memorial to the dead of all wars. Vietnam, after all, was 40 years ago.

Sure, 58,000 Americans died in Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, region of Asia (1990 est. pop. 442,500,000), c.1,740,000 sq mi (4,506,600 sq km), bounded roughly by the Indian subcontinent on the west, China on the north, and the Pacific Ocean on the east. , but 2,065 U.S. soldiers have died since then in the Persian Gulf Persian Gulf, arm of the Arabian Sea, 90,000 sq mi (233,100 sq km), between the Arabian peninsula and Iran, extending c.600 mi (970 km) from the Shatt al Arab delta to the Strait of Hormuz, which links it with the Gulf of Oman. , Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and the count continues to grow.

Vietnam was many televised explosions, flag-draped coffins and anguished widows ago. The black-and-white images of that era are literally fading.

The parents of the Vietnam dead are in their 70s, 80s and 90s, now. Their classmates Classmates can refer to either:
  • Classmates.com, a social networking website.
  • Classmates (film), a 2006 Malayalam blockbuster directed by Lal Jose, starring Prithviraj, Jayasurya, Indragith, Sunil, Jagathy, Kavya Madhavan, Balachandra Menon, ...
 are on the brink of collecting Social Security. The memory of those buried so long ago is slipping away - but is not gone yet.

"I didn't want a general memorial. I wanted something more personal. We knew each other," Vaaler said in a recent interview. "Their memories are with me."

Seen too much

They were car crazy then and lived a real "American Graffiti" childhood, said Tom Brett, a now-retired policeman who ran with those boys.

They liked to cruise the gut. They'd hang out at Pop Reynolds' A&W at the intersection of 29th and Willamette. They weren't averse to downing a six-pack when the opportunity arose.

They got dressed up for their South High yearbook pictures. Their hair was clipped, their white shirts crisp and their jackets tugged straight.

Erwin was a heartbreaker heart·break·er  
n.
1. One that causes sorrow, grief, or disappointment: "one young and chaste, the other a dissolute heartbreaker of 48; one prim, the other passionate" 
. He was in the Future Farmers of America and was pictured in the yearbook working a shovel, plaid flannel shirt tied around his waist. And on the wrestling page he was pictured just as he pinned his Springfield High School Springfield High School may refer to:
  • Springfield High School (Colorado) — Springfield, Colorado
  • Springfield High School (Illinois) — Springfield, Illinois
  • Springfield High School (Louisiana) — Springfield, Louisiana
 rival, his shoulder muscles rippled.

Erwin graduated with the Class of 1966. In September after graduation, he joined the Army and became a paratrooper.

The February after graduation he sent his girlfriend, Carolyn, a picture of himself in his jumpsuit and holding his parachute pack. A slight smile played on his lips.

On the back, he scrawled "All my love to my one and only Carolyn. Arthur."

One month later, he came home on leave and married the girl. Four months after that, Pfc. Arthur A. Erwin died from bullet wounds in Vietnam.

Erwin was the 17th son of the Emerald Empire - the nickname back then for Lane County - to die in the Vietnam War. The Register-Guard kept a running casualty count.

Bobby Collins, also one of the lost boys, attended Edison Elementary and took Sunday school Sunday school, institution for instruction in religion and morals, usually conducted in churches as part of the church organization but sometimes maintained by other religious or philanthropic bodies.

In England during the 18th cent.
 at the First Congregational Church First Congregational Church may refer to:
  • First Congregational Church (Porterville, California)
  • First Congregational Church (Colorado Springs, Colorado)
  • First Congregational Church (Denver, Colorado)
  • First Congregational Church (Manitou Springs, Colorado)
. He lived just a couple of streets away from Vaaler, and the boys played all the way up through high school.

Collins may not have owned the fastest car at the school, but he had the first. "He could drive around while the rest of us just watched. That was a big deal," Vaaler said.

Collins joined the Marines not long after high school and lived only 1 1/2 years after that. On Dec. 8, 1965, Cpl. Robert K. Collins died on a patrol outside Da Nang Da Nang (dənăng`, dän äng), formerly Tourane (trăn`, –rän`), city (1990 est. pop. .

Vaaler attended the funeral. The Congregational Church was packed. "I stood in the back and wondered what Vietnam was like," he remembered. A little later, he was drafted and found out firsthand.

Collins' mother commissioned an artist to paint a portrait of her son in uniform from a picture he had sent from Southeast Asia. With one modification: She asked the artist to take the eyes from his senior class picture.

She didn't like what she saw in his eyes from Vietnam, Vaaler said. "We call it the 1,000-yard stare: Seen too much."

Not forgotten

Another of the South High 10, Bill Muir, was known as the luckiest kid in the neighborhood, even beyond his gift of double-jointedness.

His father always found the time to be with him. Neil Muir bought a go-cart from Sears and let all the boys ride it out behind Roosevelt Middle School.

When Bill was ready to drive, his dad got him a '49 Ford with a V-8 Oldsmobile engine. Even now, his classmates drool over Verb 1. drool over - envy without restraint
slobber over

hero-worship, idolise, idolize, revere, worship - love unquestioningly and uncritically or to excess; venerate as an idol; "Many teenagers idolized the Beatles"
 the memory of that thing.

Neil Muir said he used to worry about his son tearing around in that car. One time he flew up 30th Street - it was country then - and over the brushy downside of the hill where the road stopped.

"You could hardly not drive (the car) fast. It was a going machine," Neil Muir remembered Saturday.

Bill Muir was the kind of kid who found constant joy in life. He was smiling all the time except when he was laughing, his classmate Tom Brett remembered.

But there was a side to Muir his buddies didn't see so much, an artistic side. He loved to draw and paint.

When Muir was 20, he got his induction notice about the same time his buddy Jimmy Oldaker did. Courtesy of the military, they got a free Greyhound Bus ride to Portland to take a physical.

They arrived the night before and whiled away the nighttime hours climbing the West Hills to see all the lights. At 2 a.m., they were down on the Burnside Bridge The Burnside Bridge is a bascule bridge that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon.

The original Burnside Bridge was a swing span bridge that opened in 1894. The replacement was part of a $4.
 looking south into the inky waters.

They got more serious, then, than they'd been in their lives, Oldaker said.

They discussed what they should do - join up, or be drafted. Volunteer for six years in the National Guard or let Uncle Sam Uncle Sam, name used to designate the U.S. government. The term arose in the War of 1812 and seems at first to have been used derisively by those opposed to the war. Possibly it was an expansion of the letters "U.S.  nab them for two.

The moment has stuck with Oldaker for four decades.

"Two of us made a choice," he said. "I'm here, and he's not. ... I never saw Bill after that night on the bridge."

Muir wrote letters home from his post in a forward position in the Central Highlands Central Highlands is the name for several mountainous regions located in the center of the nations or geographical regions.
  • Central Highlands (Central America)
  • Central Highland (France)
  • Central Highlands (Iceland)
 of Vietnam.

In letters to his parents, Muir made it sound like the biggest problem to befall be·fall  
v. be·fell , be·fall·en , be·fall·ing, be·falls

v.intr.
To come to pass; happen.

v.tr.
To happen to. See Synonyms at happen.
 him was the mosquitoes, which he said were lunching on his fingers and arms. He thanked his parents for a care package of Kool-Aid and said he liked the Goofy Grape flavor the best.

He described the scenery from his mountain perch with a painter's eye: "It's really a pretty sight with all the rice paddies set in rows. It's almost like a checkerboard checkerboard

the pattern of a chess or draft board; used in many circumstances to display the results of mixing a specific number of variables. The variables are listed in columns designated along the horizontal border and the same or different variables in lines along the vertical
 with each rice paddy a different shade of green," he wrote.

But in letters to his brother, Bob, he described a whole different kind of landscape.

He said he was tired and depressed, according to according to
prep.
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.

2. In keeping with: according to instructions.

3.
 a Register-Guard article from the time: "I sure wish I was out of this hell hole, you sweat all day and freeze at night. You don't get out of the field until you're dead," he wrote in the letter to his brother.

Pfc. William Guy Muir died of multiple fragment wounds. He was on point security, charged with firing a shot to alert his unit should the enemy attack. His family believes the shot probably brought the enemy mortar down on him. Muir was the 25th Emerald Empire death.

Before Saturday's ceremony, Neil Muir, 83, steadied himself by holding onto the flagpole before the groundbreaking ceremony began. The flagpole was curiously bare.

Bill Muir's graying childhood friends stepped up one by one to regale his father with memories.

Oldaker told Muir about the night on the Burnside Bridge when the friends made their decisions. Both men's eyes brimmed with tears.

"I want you to know you're not the only one who misses him," Oldaker said. "I miss him so much."

Class of 1955

William R. Andrews Died Oct. 5, 1966

Class of 1963

Robert K. Collins Died Dec. 8, 1965

James W. Cartwright Died May 23, 1967

William G. Muir Died Nov. 11, 1967

Class of 1965

Carl F. Louvring Died May 13, 1967

William A. Beckwith Died July 4, 1968

Class of 1966

Arthur A. Erwin (pictured in his battle gear, at left) Died July 10, 1967

Class of 1967

Kreg A. Viestenz Died Sept. 18, 1968

Class of 1968

Dennis E. Mickelson Died Dec. 28, 1968

Carlton "Coe" Gray Died May 18, 1970

MEMORIAL DEDICATION

Wreath laying: May 28 at 11 a.m. in front of South Eugene High School, followed at 2 p.m. by an official dedication

Learn more: For information on the alumni who gave their lives, go to www.virtualwall.org and type in soldier's last name

Searching: Organizers are looking for Looking for

In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with.
 relatives of William R. Andrews and William A. Beckwith. Call (541) 344-2113
COPYRIGHT 2005 The Register Guard
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2005, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Title Annotation:Schools; Memorial will honor alumni who paid ultimate price in Vietnam
Publication:The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)
Date:May 8, 2005
Words:1525
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