BEN STEIN'S DIARY: Col. Dale Denman: My Hero Father-In-Law
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Col. Dale Denman: My Hero Father-In-Law by Benjamin J. Stein FRIDAY ATASTROPHE. Just as I was waiting for a bell-man to take my suitcases and me from my room at the Four...
...I summoned up my courage, drove over there, got my little pass, went down immense, unbelievably big corridors, and went into Col...
...What happened on your 43rd birthday...
...Denman had a beautiful mother, whose name was maybe Ava, or maybe that's Alex's maternal grandmother's name...
...Denman got through West Point and went into the Artillery...
...Alex and I got divorced...
...I was in tails...
...What's the plan...
...He told me—maybe then, maybe later—about how he won his first combat decoration...
...Then we all had cookies and tea in the church and then a reception at the Red Apple Inn...
...I was dressed as a Vietnamese peasant, in pajamas, standing up to my chest in a rice paddy, waiting for the Vietcong to come along so we could ambush them...
...Time passed...
...On that trip, I learned about Dale Denman...
...A detachment from the Veterans of Foreign Wars fired five (or was it four...
...I asked him how the war was going...
...Oneyear when he was a child, he asked his father why he couldn't have fireworks on the 4th of July like other kids...
...What do we save...
...But Col...
...Just as I was waiting for a bell-man to take my suitcases and me from my room at the Four Seasons in Cleveland to the airport so I could go visit my ailing father-in-law, Col...
...None...
...At 3:15 in the morning, in his sleep...
...My next big event with him was in 1967 when I rode with him up to Vassar to visit Alex...
...What a disaster...
...Denman looked like a movie star—a real movie star like Gary Cooper—in his dress whites...
...I went out to Wal-Mart and bought a few items after dinner...
...They were on a road with hills on either side of it...
...and is my wife's sister's son...
...I never thought I would have a worse birthday than my 43rd birthday, but I think this is worse...
...Example: no matter where I took him to dinner when he visited, he would always say, "Ben, I really enjoyed that...
...I fell in love with him immediately...
...I had been up late the night before drinking and probably smoking...
...We had a spectacular dinner in the dining room of one of the great hostelries of America, the Red Apple Inn, and I remembered how often we ate there with the Colonel, and how jovial he always was...
...War hero...
...It's my birthday today, Ben," he told me...
...Denman's ancestor had come from Mississippi because a carpetbagger had ordered him around at a tavern and tried to horsewhip him, and that Denman had shot the man dead, then taken off for Arkansas...
...I would just be an anonymous cinder...
...volleys from M-1's...
...Denman that merits attention: I knew him for 38 years...
...Denman and Alex, I almost passed out...
...Her wedding gown had been bought at J.C...
...you had to kill 'ern...
...But there had to be something to what he said...
...The world's most perfect family man...
...An Army wife who had done her duty to take care of her family while her husband took care of the nation...
...If Vera Wang spent the rest of her life and $10 billion, plus have access to the finest couturiers in Paris, she could not have made a gown as beautiful as that one looked on Alex...
...She's pretty close to perfect," and he would say how grateful he was to have me as his son-in-law, and I would say how grateful I was to have him as my father-in-law...
...I played Army songs and Alex and her sister, Dale, sang along...
...Denman's wonderful widow, a folded flag, "....with the thanks of a grateful nation...
...Well, I'm trained to do it," he said, and then he added the clincher...
...Or maybe this morning...
...In my entire life, I have never 50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2004 seen anyone as beautiful as Alex was that day...
...I had gone to sleep the night before looking out my window at an immense American flag flying over a large office building next to the hotel, waving and flapping in the wind, and praying for the man who epitomized the flag, my hero, my brave war hero father-in-law Col...
...How could we as a nation live without them...
...And off we headed to Heber Springs...
...Southern gentleman...
...I didn't think I would be able to read my little speech without crying, but I did, somehow...
...Daddy died last night," she said...
...We arranged that I would go back to L.A...
...How much I hope I get to see him again...
...THURSDAY 'OW, I'M ON AN AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT from LAX to DFW to get ready to go to Heber...
...Now he is cinders, but far from anonymous...
...Then we both cried...
...The Colonel had a Southern upbringing...
...Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Malibu and Beverly Hills...
...Denman was working as an aide to the Secretary of the Army, and ask for her hand...
...Then we just have a mutual admiration society going," he said, for years or maybe decades, on end...
...He was an elder...
...I asked my wife after about ten minutes of crying and telling her how sorry I was...
...Alex, the easiest woman on earth to get along with, learned it all from her father...
...Well," he said, "you train for it...
...Denman must have had a very deep longing to be a Colonel, to serve his country, to put himself in danger, to watch his friends die and get maimed, to be away from his family for months on end, years on end...
...How blessed we are to have men like him...
...We hate war the most of anyone," he said...
...then Lt...
...Once I said we should look carefully for the cheapest gasoline...
...His family had come from Mississippi, possibly Tallahatchie County, to Arkansas not long after the Civil War...
...His father was an elder...
...Denman's office...
...He was always eager to please...
...Denman were plenty of company...
...It may seem like a trivial story, but it's not...
...A long time...
...NOVEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49 BEN STEIN'S DIARY He loved Dixieland...
...I was surprised to hear this revelation from a military man but it immediately made sense...
...I knew him to be a thorough Southerner and a small-town Presbyterian...
...He's about 27, I think, and a perfect companion...
...What happened...
...Not long afterwards, Mrs...
...I told him how surprised I was to hear him speak so negatively about the war since he was a career Army officer...
...We were apart for only a little while and then we started dating again, and soon we were remarried...
...DENMAN in the summer of 1966, when I first started dating his daughter, the beauteous Miss Alex...
...He belongs to the ages...
...I think there should be a monument to military wives...
...The Rage of the Left, the Truth, and What to Do About It (New Beginnings...
...I never in my life heard him say a derisive word about blacks, Jews, Catholics, anyone at all...
...It was not to be dreary...
...I liked it...
...EARS LATER, I asked him what he was thinking the night before he first went into combat...
...He and his company were pinned down by dug-in German infantry with mortars...
...I really cannot begin to tell you what a great place that is...
...I was working for a year between college and law school, as an economist...
...Denman's father was a small businessman, in fact a Ford dealer, in Prescott, Arkansas, Nevada County, and then a judge...
...SHE WAS SO BEAUTIFUL YOU CANNOT IMAGINE...
...And I do it so you and Sandy won't have to...
...I'm just so glad to have you back in the family," he said...
...Then he wanted the congregation to hope that, in the words of the West Point hymn, when Col...
...The man could get along with anyone...
...What will we do without him...
...That's the Denmans...
...His students and student activities council and choral gospel group are darned lucky to have him...
...He was tall and straight and covered with medals...
...Springs...
...Denman cried when he said it, out of love and memory for his father...
...Denman lived when he first got to Heber Springs and moved into the community of Eden Isle...
...I had developed the custom of calling him on weekends to talk about football and golf—he was an avid golfer and watcher of golf on TV—and I also called him on the 4th of July and also on Memorial Day and also on my birthday and on major Jewish holidays to thank him...
...He almost failed out, but a Jewish math tutor in the Bronx got him through math...
...I waited a short while, then got on my plane...
...I never shopped for the cheapest gasoline again...
...he asked...
...I am traveling with my cousin Matt, a stupendously fit young man who is a writer here in L.A...
...Professor Hairston, as fine a man as I have met in the last 20 years, was immediately and thoroughly sympathetic...
...He told me—and I mean he told me after I pried it out of him—about fighting the SS hand to hand, about how they were "just plain mean...
...Penney for $99...
...That was what Alexandra used to be called...
...Bob has a great sense of humor...
...There he became a farmer, small businessman, and a judge...
...Denman at a pre-engagement event, I said, "You must be pretty angry at me for the anguish I caused your family...
...FRIDAY COL...
...I did not need to read anything...
...Denman went to a boarding school in Arkansas called Subiaco, run by Catholic priests, even though he was a Presbyterian, and then for a year to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, and then to West Point...
...I went to sleep but I could hear Alex crying late into the night...
...Now I have to pray in a different way...
...She had died young...
...No reading of the 23rd Psalm...
...Denman was in the late part of 1967...
...God bless him and all like him...
...They never showed up or else I would probably be dead...
...Denman and the manner of his memorial...
...I will never forget how straight he stood at the funeral...
...Now he's gone...
...Then he wanted me to talk about his service to the nation under the motto, Duty, Honor, Country...
...I guess Alex learned that from her father: a big perspective...
...He simply never was negative...
...And Col...
...Denman died soon thereafter...
...If I remember this right, it was the second time I came over to Alex's large apartment in Arlington to pick her up...
...He loved Bix and Glenn and Tommy and Jimmy and Doc...
...Yes, definitely for Alex...
...They had originally been from England long before the Revolution and there are still a lot of Denmans in the New Jersey area...
...He was a big, bluff, powerfully built man with an open, intelligent, handsome face and a thick Southern accent...
...But how he loathed the SS...
...Denman was desperately sick, incoherent, and he was exhausted and scared...
...I was terrified...
...Her dark auburn hair was perfect...
...Our driver picked us up at Little Rock airport, expressed his sympathies because he had also known and often driven Col...
...Dale Denman, I got a telephone call from my wife, who was with him in Arkansas...
...Also not suspicious about anything...
...He held himself amazingly straight and tall...
...I can vividly recall one night when I called him, as I often did, and Mrs...
...The world's most perfect father-in-law...
...It's so lonely...
...Her face was perfect...
...Here it might be a nice idea to mention something about Col...
...His father-in-law was an elder...
...He had just lost close family and knew the feeling well...
...The next big moment I had with Col...
...When my father died, Col...
...We're the ones who get killed in the wars...
...So, let me tell you about Col...
...Alex was there...
...The day was stupendously hot, as Washington tends to be (but, wow, do I LOVE that area—the most beautiful city on the earth...
...She would go back to L.A., we would console each other, and then she would take our son back to school, and then we would meet in Heber Springs for the memorial...
...No freedom, no law, no life...
...I asked...
...No matter what friend of mine he met, he always enjoyed that person...
...His most recent book, coauthored with Phil DeMuth, is Can America Survive...
...Alex and I had decided we wanted to get married...
...How cruel it will be to miss him...
...I'm crying a lot as I write this, so I think I'll just stop for a moment...
...We drove up in his huge Buick and he was in a cheery, great mood the whole time...
...After the service, we went out to the yard of the church, under the tall pine trees...
...48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2004 "We want to make it a day that's convenient for you, because Daddy wanted you to speak at the service and so you have to be there...
...When I first sneaked a peek at Col...
...A dollar...
...Denman entered immortality, he would hear, "Well done, now be thou at peace...
...She sounded eerily subdued...
...It's a meat grinder," he said...
...A rock we could all rally around...
...Then he saluted very slowly...
...But this is worse...
...After that, Dale always wanted to be a Colonel...
...For this he won either the Silver Star or the Bronze Star, I am not sure which...
...I thought then and I think now that I never deserved—never even remotely deserved—to be married to anyone EVEN CLOSE to as beautiful as Alex and I never even remotely deserved to be married into a family as perfect, as perfectly brave and modest and all American, as Alex's...
...Army did...
...I have always hated cheapness and so did the Denmans...
...I asked him...
...I was reeling...
...It epitomized the way the Denmans, especially Alex and her father, are not small minded about anything...
...Without you, I always would tell him, we would have nothing...
...Norma Jean Denman, Alex's mother, got very sick...
...Denman took care of her in her every misery and disability...
...He's sleeping now, and I am remembering Alex's and my wedding, on June 23, 1968...
...That was Col...
...He had surprising respect for the Wehrmacht, who he said fought fairly and often treated prisoners better than the U.S...
...He had commanded all kinds, especially seen lives saved by Jewish combat doctors, and he simply had no anger in him at all—except for the SS...
...Once when one did surrender, Col...
...Denman's war hero brother, Bob...
...When I told him what I was there for, he cried, but he said he would be delighted to have me in the family...
...When I greeted Col...
...Courteous, eager to please under any circumstances, even in extremis...
...His answer to a lot of questions I asked him, and the answer to a lot of life's questions...
...From Cadet gray to Army blue to the sky blue of eternity...
...When is the memorial service...
...Well, there will never be another like him, except maybe for Alex...
...Then someone played Taps and we all cried, and then someone handed Sue, Col...
...Denman got up at two in the morning to get to Washington in time for the funeral and he was already in his mid-seventies...
...Anyway, as we would talk, I always would say, "You did such a beautiful job with Alex...
...I was far from perfect myself...
...I sat for a long time with Col...
...I got a superbly timed flight on Continental, went downstairs, and drove to the airport with my friend and confidant, Professor Jay T. Hairston of Baldwin-Wallace College, where I had spoken last night...
...Just a short walk from the Inn is the house BENJAMIN STEIN where Col...
...He was back only a few months from Vietnam...
...He loved Big Bands...
...Why, Dale," his father said to him, "that's the day Vicksburg fell...
...they wouldn't surrender...
...Mrs...
...You never get over that...
...What's the matter...
...I am sure we talked about a lot more on that trip...
...He wanted the part of Corinthians about Love read...
...BENJAMIN J. STEIN IFIRST MET COL...
...But Alex wanted me to go to the Pentagon, where Col...
...When I think of the loneliness, fear, worry, and frustration they put up with, it is breathtaking...
...The night before we were committed to combat," he said, "I prayed that I would not be a coward...
...Then he added, "It's frightening and it's terrible to see your friends killed...
...He said it with a straightforward, grand Arkansas accent I hope I never forget...
...He had no racial animosity at all...
...I wouldn't miss it for anything," I said...
...Denman's ashes were in a brass urn in front of me, and that helped...
...What a loss...
...NOVEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 51...
...DENMAN had left instructions for his service...
...Once an elder, always an elder...
...I think Dale wanted to be a Colonel ever since we went to a base near Prescott and he saw how neat the men on the base, maybe they were prisoners in the post jail, kept the flowers around the Colonel's house...
...I knew he was sick and I knew his days were numbered, but I had hoped to get down there to Heber Springs that night to pray with him and say good-bye...
...Then I played the CD player Alex had bought there for me...
...Denman said, "He was just so arrogant you wanted to kill him...
...He simply never gave offense...
...I asked him what combat was like...
...I guess I was frivolous and possibly rude, but I asked, "Then why do you do it...
...After graduation in June of 1944, he married his sweetheart, Norma Jean Warmack, of Idabel, Oklahoma, and then went to training camp, and then to war...
...It had to be bright and cheerful...
...It was at Fort Myer, in Virginia...
...Denman carried a very heavy radio at a run down the road to a farm house, climbed up to the second floor where he could see the German positions, then called in artillery to get his men free...
...My thoughts about Col...
Vol. 37 • November 2004 • No. 9
