When I look back on the whole thing, the image I remember is that single folding chair, perched atop the rough stone of a driveway in Irishtown.
I can see it placed there on the spur of the moment by a local guy one morning earlier this week.
And I can see Clint Hammond ease his way down into it as the rest of us gathered around like school children, and fell silent.
Stories?
“Oh I can tell you some stories,” the 92-year-old WWII veteran said, “if you want to hear them.”
No objections. So he began.
Hammond was born in 1920 in Baltimore, where he grew up and eventually registered for the draft. He was 21 in 1941.
While he waited for his number to be called, he worked as a mechanic for the Baltimore Transit Company.
Eventually he was called, and tested his way in to the Army Air Corps, where he got on as a mechanic and eventually worked his way up to pilot.
This found photo online shows a B-17 bomber, though I'm not sure it's the exact model Clint Hammond flew during World War II. But I bet he'd tell you, if you asked.
Hammond flew more than a dozen combat missions at the helm of a B-17 bomber in World War II, then was recalled for Korea. He retired as a recruiter in Pennsylvania.
Along the way he had some close shaves, found love, had a boy who went on to become a state trooper, and shared more than a few laughs with the guys.
Hammond told that and more one morning this week to a few of us who were lucky enough to be gathered in the parking lot of a local auto shop.
We sat there in the early spring sun, the wind in the trees, and listened.
And what a privilege, I thought.
At one point in the morning I remembered a news report from earlier this year about the last-known WWI veteran dying at 110 years old. Her name was Florence Green, and she was a member of Britain’s Royal Air Force.
I recall reading that story and thinking about just what that meant — the closing of a chapter, never to be reopened. Certainly, these days the media and others do a fine job of chronicling our not-too-distant history.
But when the people who tell those tales are gone, there’s no turning back.
The stories will never be quite the same.
So it was with extra care that I approached the memories, in-brief, of Clint Hammond.
Photographer Shane Dunlap and I spent the morning in Irishtown, me scribbling furiously to the tap-tap-tap of his camera shutter. Hopefully, what we came away with — likely to run in print and online this weekend — will pay some small homage to one more American hero.
Sometimes, I’m still amazed how many are out there.
What I’m never surprised by anymore, though, is their unerring willingness to sit down and talk about the days they lived so long ago. It seems bravery turns, with age, to grace.
So keep an eye out for the full version.
And by the way, we were there all of us — gathered for a few hours around a folding chair on a spring morning — because the owners of that local body shop had a special surprise of their own for a man they call their hero.
I won’t get into all that here, but suffice it to say the gesture is one more example of the kindness native to this area.
And, for what it’s worth, the story is one of those I won’t soon forget.