Posted by William (Bill) H.Hoffmann on June 22, 2006:

Larry's Funeral Comments After graduation in 1949 I guess that Larry was my best West Point friend. (I may not have been his best friend though. I'm not a golfer.) Naturally I knew of him during our cadet days. Larry, being Larry, was well known throughout West Point's sports world, being a baseball player and friendly with just about all of its athletes. Way back in August of 1950 I was at Camp Drake in Tokyo, Japan on the way to Korea and by golly Larry was also there as were quite a few other combat arms classmates. This was after many of us Infantry types had completed our after graduation leave from the Infantry School at Fort Benning. Looking back this was probably our class' first mini reunion! To explain how my friendship with Larry developed over the years let me use a number I'll call a friendship index with 10 being the maximum strength of my liking and respect for him at different times in our lives and a 1 indicating he was just another one of my many classmate acquaintances. After leaving Camp Drake Larry and I were assigned to G Company of the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division. There were other classmates in the group as well and maybe I was standing in the wrong place when assignments were handed out, but I was a surplus 2d Lieutenant and wound up being in the same platoon that Larry was given. I was told to be patient, being told "Oh, there'll be an opening for you soon enough." Now that's a happy thought. Anyway for a week or 10 days Larry and I were in pretty close contact in the Pusan Perimeter where he was a superb platoon leader whose men took a liking to and a respect for. Friendship Index: 2 Anyway after about or 10 or so days in G Company I was transferred to the weapons company (H Company) as platoon leader of the 81mm platoon and saw little of him for the rest of my time in the "Land of the Morning Calm." Friendship Index: N/A Some years later, (actually six in 1956) I transferred to the Quartermaster Corps and was sent to Fort Lee to learn to be a quartermaster officer. When I got there I found that Larry had done the same thing just a few months before. We renewed our friendship; even had a class or two together. Our families socialized from time to time and I got a kick out of Larry's acceptance of older son Winn's playing Elvis Presley records almost constantly. Little did we realize that Winn was on to something. One class we had together was Mess Administration where we were taught that the food the Army issued was fine, but that indifferent Army cooks could make meals unpalatable. The final exam for graduation was for the class to prepare and serve three meals to one of the unit companies at Fort Lee. Larry noticed that a number of G.I.'s needed haircuts while we were serving breakfast and threatened them (with a smile though) they would get no dinner unless their hair was acceptable. It worked as those singled out did, in fact, get their hair cut. The meals we prepared were actually pretty good, so good that more than a few G.I.'s said they liked it when us OLD guys prepared their meals. Boy oh boy, talk about hurt; we were just in our early thirties. Friendship Index: 6-7 Larry specialized in petroleum logistics by taking the Petroleum Course at Fort Lee, really a pipeline course, and after he completed it he was given a petroleum assignment in Zweibreucken, Germany as the Operations Officer for an organization responsible for transporting jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline through a U.S. pipeline to units connected to a pipeline and scheduling rail car deliveries from P.O.L. (army talk for petroleum, oil, and lubricants) tank farms to units in Germany. I also went through the pipeline course later on and about a year after finishing that I too, was assigned to the same outfit in Zweibreucken. So Larry and I were together once again for about two years until Larry was reassigned when he completed his three year tour. Again, our families were able to get together frequently. Larry had a good sense of humor and I remember the time when young son Steve went through the stairwell of their quarters and stomped full milk cartons in front of other apartments to see the milk gush out. Being a stern father Larry had to teach Steve that he had done something wrong, but later on Larry said to me, "I'll bet he had a hell of good time doing that." It seems to be normal now, but Larry was a key player in changing the way fuel is provided to troop units to a "push" system of bulk fuel from a "pull" one whereby units would requisition their needs for fuel in five gallon cans or 55 gallon drums when their supplies were getting low. War reserve stockpiles of fuel in five gallon cans and 55 gallon drums had to emptied and put in large storage tanks in order to fully convert to the new bulk system. Larry enforced a system of having units provide their bulk fuel inventories to his office daily and Larry would then tell them when to expect deliveries either by pipeline if connected to one or by rail car or tank truck. Larry and I were also involved with pumping gasoline across the Rhine via a new U.S. pipeline (actually it was under the river). Although all went well there were a few scary moments when we thought there might have been a major leak in the line and that the river would be filled with gasoline. That could have provoked an international incident and for a while I thought the two of us would be learning German in a German prison. Friendship Index: 7-8 In 1961, Larry and I both attended the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth we only had opportunities to get together from time to time. Friendship Index: 3 Along about 1969 Larry was in the Joint Petroleum Office at CINCPAC and I was in the petroleum office at MAC-V. There were some phone calls between us and he and Sue hosted me at their quarters in Honolulu when I was sent to CINCPAC for a conference. Gad! We kept bumping into each other. Probably because we were in a fairly small special field. Friendship Index: Another N/A Around '74 both of us had retired from the Army. Larry went with an industry association, Interstate Natural Gas Association or INGA. It is NOT a lobby as Steve strongly told me. I went with Amtrak and we saw little of each other other than at class luncheons at the Pentagon. However, there was one class reunion, I forget which one it was, where Sue did not come and Larry and I shared a hotel room. Some of our classmates referred to us as The Odd Couple. I'm not sure who was supposed to be Oscar and who was supposed to be Felix. Maybe we took turns. Friendship Index: 3.5 It was in 1991 when Larry really became my best classmate friend, maybe my best friend. I'm sure you have heard the expression "When a feller needs a friend." Well I was the feller and Larry was the needed friend. My wife Virginia, (or Ginny as some knew her), passed away from Ovarian Cancer in July of that year. As many of us here know this can be a hectic time and a pretty stressful one. For example, my daughter and I could not sit down to a meal because the phone just never seemed to stop ringing. Since this was before we had cordless phones and cell phones it meant having to get up to where the phone was in order to answer the calls. Larry, great friend, volunteered to come to my home to answer the phone for us. Sounds simple, but a tremendous help and one that took up a good chunk of his time. Then, as a final and really great help, Larry suggested that he and I have lunch once a week at the Red Lobster, which we did up to the time he and Sue moved to Vero Beach. I have to admit that we consumed adult beverages at these lunches. People would ask me what we talked about at our lunches and I would say we usually exchanged recipes. This was good for a laugh, but there was also some truth to it. I can only say that during this period Larry was not only good TO me, he was good FOR me. A real friend. I'll never forget his help at a rough time. Friendship Index: 50, 100, Just over the top! Larry was a good friend, a fine officer and a good man. So I say: Goodbye Larry. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be lucky and renew my friendship with you when I too join the Long Grey Line.

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