Kris Blumer of Albany, Wisconsin, holds an orphan child in Vietnam a few months before he dies from a combat wound in June 1969.
Judy Blumer Sepsey, who lived 1939-2021, is the sister of Kris Blumer who died in 1969 in Vietnam. Empd Washers
Judy Sepsey came into my office one day in 2010, when I was pastor of Our Lord’s United Methodist Church in New Berlin, Wisconsin. She told me a heart-wrenching story about her brother Kris Blumer from Albany, Wisconsin, who died in 1969 in the Vietnam War. Judy, who passed in 2021 at the age of 81, was a gifted writer and a woman of great faith. Her poignant telling of what happened to her brother and their family, who still feel the pain of his loss 54 years later, resonates with hundreds of thousands of Americans and Vietnamese who were forever marked by that war.
After suffering for years with debilitating grief and anger concerning her brother’s tragic and untimely death, Judy had an astounding vision of him.
“My brother, Kris, was 19 when we took him to the airport,” she said. “It was just after Thanksgiving 1968, and he was on his way to Vietnam. Most of our large family had said their goodbyes earlier. Now only a small group of us – numb, sick and scared – walked through O’Hare Airport toward his gate. The airport was packed with uniformed boys. Even to the most unobservant, it must have been obvious that this war was eating up the better part of our country’s children.
“We didn’t speak much or show emotions as we walked through the crowds. We are a family of stoics; it’s our way of life, the way we get through things, so I hid my conviction that he wouldn’t be coming home – ever. I held it so deep inside me that my soul started rotting as we walked away, leaving him there at his gate, leaving him there to face his fears alone.
“The next six months were black and frightening, a time we couldn’t bear hearing the news on television each night. But we couldn’t bear to turn it off either. We shared the letters we received from Kris. They contained light-hearted stories of his daily life with the other men-boys in the camp, and the not-so-light-hearted stories of his night patrols in the jungles. He called the enemy ‘gooks’ in some letters. Then in others he would say how they were much like us, just trying to get through life. He told about the orphanage where he helped sometimes; he sent us pictures of him holding the children of his enemies.
“Then in May 1969 came the first telegram – night patrol, a mine exploding, ripping into his gut. Too ill to move to a hospital, he lay in a field hospital for six weeks – and we waited. In the end the mine shrapnel rotted his life away. He died June 24, 1969.
“Shortly before he died Kris went into a coma. I know because I felt it happen to him, felt him calling me as it happened. It was midnight. I had been asleep; I woke suddenly and sat straight up in bed. The room, usually lit by a street light, was totally dark and though it was June, I was ice-cold. Then I felt utter emptiness, and fear so deep, dark and cold. I knew I was feeling his fear and that he was telling me he was leaving us. I knew it as I had known six months earlier that he would never return.
“During the next six months, though, Kris did return to several of my family – just quick little visions of him as he tried to let us know he was okay. My sister, Renee, saw him walking up from the barn, a bucket of feed in each hand. One evening she felt his presence and asked him if he was at peace. Immediately the first words of the song, ‘Yes, Renee,’ played on the radio. My aunt, not a fanciful person, saw him in the high school room where she had been his teacher.
“I did not hear from Kris that way; I didn’t know about those messages to others. I just let anger fester in my body – anger at a God who had let this happen, anger at the world, and anger at everything and everyone. I was so angry that attending church was almost impossible for me. If I could force myself to attend I would sit through the service crying inside, never on the outside.
“I don’t even know how long my life went on this way. It might have been six months or six years. I just existed. Then one Sunday, as I resolutely stayed in my pew while everyone else received communion, I heard the message I had ignored for so long. God had given us His beloved Son and that He missed Him, felt sorrow and anger – all the human emotions I had been feeling. And then I had a vision, something that I had never really believed existed. There was Mary, in the classic Pieta form, cradling not her son but my brother Kris. Kris, his skinny body clad in his army fatigues and his face forever boyish, was held in the arms of love.”
This is an original article written for Agri-View, a Lee Enterprises agricultural publication based in Madison, Wisconsin. Visit AgriView.com for more information.
John Sumwalt is a retired pastor and the author of “Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives.” Email johnsumwalt@gmail.com or call 414-339-0676 to reach him.
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Kris Blumer of Albany, Wisconsin, holds an orphan child in Vietnam a few months before he dies from a combat wound in June 1969.
Judy Blumer Sepsey, who lived 1939-2021, is the sister of Kris Blumer who died in 1969 in Vietnam.
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