"Back to Iowa?" Submission #1

Southern California...1992

My work had sent me on four or five trips across the country during the second half of 1992 and the first half of 1993. I was assigned the task of managing our product distribution using the services of a number of private warehouses around the fruited plain.

Our warehouse in Atlanta began to have some issues with our inventory accuracy, among other things, so I was dispatched to the site to perform a physical inventory of our product. As long as I was making this trip, I was told to add a couple other of our warehouses to my trip itinerary... Pottsville, Pennsylvania and Rock Island, Illinois.

The problems at our Atlanta warehouse proved to be significant enough that we were forced to part ways. I was in charge of finding another distribution partner in the southeastern portion of the United States. This project led to numerous trips over the period of a year and visits to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina.

For most of these trips, I would leave out of Long Beach on a Friday and stop in Iowa for the weekend to visit my mom and my sister, Barb. It was during those visits that Barb began to ask me if I'd ever consider moving back to Iowa.

Iowa... hmmmm. Would I ever move back? For the most part, my boyhood experience in the Hawkeye state was NOT a pleasant one.

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Virgil LaVoy Munson - My dad

I was born in Iowa in January 5th, 1959. That same year, dad packed up the family and moved us to the Los Angeles area of California in pursuit of a job opportunity.

Southern California...1969

It was April 22nd, 1969 when my dad died of cancer. I guess that I was the only member of the family that was shocked by his death. I was barely 10 years old and had never experienced anyone in a fight with a serious disease. I mean, I knew cancer was worse than a cold or the flu but I had obviously underestimated how much worse it really was.

I'm the small guy and the rest are my siblings... circa 1963

There were five of us kids. I was the baby of the family... by far.

Bill was the closest to me in age at seven years my senior. He was finishing up his junior year at Artesia High School when dad passed away. Bob was 18. Butch was 19 and was serving in the Army. Barb was 22 and living at home after separating from her husband of nearly four years. My cousin, Bruce, was also living in our home after the passing of his mom months earlier. Bruce was 13.

This is me in about 1968

The night before his death was pretty scary. I recall a flurry of activity as he had apparently taken a turn for the worse. Different members of the family were scurrying in and out of his bedroom with panic written on their faces while my mom was on the phone frantically begging for someone to send an ambulance and screaming, "My husband is dying!!"

I remember sitting at the kitchen table... trying to listen, trying to understand, trying to pray.

When I couldn't take anymore, I grabbed Bruce and said, "Let's get outta here."

We walked around the block. I don't remember what we talked about or even if we talked at all. I was just hoping that everything would be back to normal when we got back. I hoped that mom and Bill would be sitting at the table playing Yahtzee, as the often did. I wanted to see Bob laying on the couch, reading the latest issue of his "Archie" comic book. I hoped against hope that dad would be on the road to recovery so that we could continue to cultivate that father and son relationship that it seems we had just begun.

Those desires were dashed as we rounded the corner and saw the flashing red lights and a small crowd of neighbors gathered on the sidewalk in front of our house. I rushed through the front door just as the emergency workers wheeled my dad through the living room. I heard him groan and a member of the emergency crew said, "Take it easy old-timer.'

"Old-timer? Old-timer?" Heck, my dad had just turned 46 the week before. He wasn't an "old-timer!" Virgil LaVoy Munson was a decorated soldier from World War II! He was a strong man! But, of course, all they saw was a shell of a man's man whose body had been ravaged by this insidious disease... cancer