He was an imposing figure physically, especially when he approached you with a rattling roar on that big old ’49 Harley.
A heavyweight wrestler for the Chamberlain Cubs and a football player who could move you in a direction you weren’t inclined to go out on the field, Sam Jorgensen could have been an intimidator off the field, too.
But he wasn’t. Far from it, in fact. He was way too nice for that.
“Sam Jorgensen? Oh, he was a really nice guy,” said Dan Gust, who graduated in the Chamberlain High School Class of 1968, a year behind Sam.
“Nice guy” gets used a lot about people, especially those who have passed on. Sometimes it’s true. Sometimes it’s kind of true. Sometimes, well, it’s a bit of revisionist history meant to respect the dead and comfort their loved ones.
But there was no revising history in Dan Gust’s statement about Sam Jorgensen. He really was a nice guy, with a ready smile that quickly allayed any concerns you might have had about his size and his motorcycle.
“Yeah,” I said to Dan. “If there was anybody who didn’t like Sam Jorgensen, I can’t imagine who it could have been.”
Dan and I were sitting with my brother Terry and his wife Nancy, who is Dan’s sister, in Terry and Nancy’s home along the Missouri River in Chamberlain. Dan had just ridden in on his motorcycle from Colorado for some Chamberlain High School reunion events. And I had just returned from a bridge-naming ceremony in honor of Sam at the Chamberlain Community Center, with Gov. Kristi Noem and assorted invited guests in attendance.
Neither Dan Gust nor I were close friends of Sam’s. But during most of his childhood, Sam’s family lived on a farm a few miles from ours in northeast Lyman County, where Sam attended country school. Later the family moved across the river to Brule County, where Sam went to high school in Chamberlain and came to call nearby Pukwana home.
Our family lived on our farm during the summer but moved to our house in Chamberlain for the school year. Dan and his family lived in Chamberlain.
In small towns everybody knows everybody pretty well. And Dan Gust and I knew Sam Jorgensen well enough to know who he was and how much was lost on Feb. 14, 1970, in the Tay Ninh Province of South Vietnam.
Three years ahead of me by school class, Sam was just two years ahead of me in age. But he seemed older, I suppose in part because he was so much bigger than I was and because of that big old Harley.
That was a time when the teenagers among us were in love with trendy new imported motorcycles like Hondas and Yamahas, Kawasakis and Suzukis. But Sam loved his American-made Harley hog before Harleys were cool, in our part of the motorcycle nation at least.
And Sam made a statement with that Harley that was hard to ignore.
“You generally knew wherever he was, because you could hear him far away,” Sam’s brother, Jim, said with a smile during the bridge dedication ceremony last Friday afternoon. “He loved that bike.”
Sam’s bridge the 36th honoring fallen South Dakotans
Sam was four years older than Jim, and a role model for his little brother in military service. Jim also served in the Army, retiring as a chief warrant officer.
“I did my best to follow his example,” Jim said.
It was an example worth following. And Gov. Noem said during her remarks that the newly dedicated bridge on Highway 50 a few miles south of Pukwana will help make sure people don’t forget Sam or his service and sacrifice.
It is the 36th bridge named to honor South Dakotans killed in action or listed as missing in action while in service to their country. Noem said the state adjutant general came to her during her first year as governor with the idea for the bridge dedications. She quickly embraced it and the Fallen Heroes Bridge Dedication Program was begun.
Each April the Fallen Heroes Bridge Dedication Committee meets to select the name of six fallen heroes for bridge dedications that year. The dedications take place from May to November. Applications are accepted on the state Department of Veterans Affairs website: https://vetaffairs.sd.gov/resources/Fallen%20Hero%20Bridge%20Dedications/Bridge%20Heroes.aspx
Sam’s name will live on at the bridge. And so will his story, Noem said.
“My hope is that every time someone drives by they will think of him, his story, his sacrifice,” she told about 100 people gathered at the community center. “When so many people talk, he took action…”
It was a courageous action and, as it turned out, a fatal one. Sam died in combat fighting as a tank commander and gunner supporting an infantry unit in a battle against an entrenched enemy force.
Sam was wounded once when a rocket-propelled grenade hit his tank. He continued to fight, knocking out two enemy bunkers. But when another rocket-propelled grenade hit his tank, Sam was grievously wounded.
He was evacuated to a surgical hospital, where he died. He was just 20 years old.
And with that, Sam Jorgensen — more often called Sammy by my pal Ted Goldammer, Sam’s cousin — brought the Vietnam War home to me in ways that no equally tragic death in that war ever had.
“He was the first kid I knew who was killed in Vietnam,” I said to Noem outside of the community center on Main Street, when she asked with a look of surprise why I was there.
I said “kid” without thinking, I guess. Because I was still pretty much a kid when Sam died. And at that time, I still thought of him as that big kid with that big motorcycle who seemed to be everybody’s pal.
But he was a young man who went to war, of course, and a courageous one. Noem was there to honor him for that.
When the Vietnam War really came home for us
I’d been wanting to ask the governor some questions on other issues. And our chance encounter outside the community center was an opportunity for that. But it wasn’t the time or the place for that. She was there for Sam. And so was I.
I first heard the news of his death back in February of 1970 from Ted, who was, like me, 18 at the time. Some words stick with you for a lifetime. And Ted’s words stuck with me.
“Sammy got killed over there,” he said, with an expression that looked as bewildered as it did sad.
And so, we suddenly understood a controversial war in a seemingly inscrutable distant land in a way we hadn’t before. It was a more personal way of understanding, one with lethal potential. If Sammy could die “over there,” who couldn’t? And what “kid” we knew might be next?
That was a question Ted faced very personally a year or so later with his own service in Vietnam. He and another friend and I were all within a month of each other in age, all born in November of 1951. So we turned 18 in November of ’69 and were in the draft lottery drawing on July 1, 1970.
In the drawing, which was only held for a few years, the lower the number the higher the likelihood of being called to take a physical and, if you passed, serve in the military. The other friend and I got a high draft number in the drawing, which was run live on radio and TV.
I remember watching it on our living-room TV, and being more than a little tense. My tension diminished as the drawing continued without my birthdate being called.
If I remember right, it was finally called at 348. That meant I had virtually zero chance of being drafted.
Ted’s number was very low, single digits I think. He enlisted, ended up in Vietnam and, thankfully, came home.
My other friend and I never got the call. And given the direction of the war and all the controversy and questions around it by that point, we never had the inclination to volunteer. We went to college, where Ted eventually joined us for a semester at SDSU before moving on to school in other states.
We all went on to careers and marriages and children and grandchildren.
Sam Jorgensen never got any of that. No marriage. No kids. No grandkids. He never got to come home and go to work, as he planned to do, with his older brother Larry in the electrical, heating and ventilation business. He never got to ride that old Harley again. It was all part of the price he paid in service to this nation.
Like so many others, he went into harm’s way voluntarily
And Sam didn’t have to be drafted to serve. Like the majority of those who went to Vietnam, especially early in the war, Sam went voluntarily. And he had already served a full tour of duty in Vietnam when he took the option for another tour and an early out of the Army after that.
So, he volunteered once and then again to put himself in harm’s way in service to his country. He was weeks away from leaving Vietnam when he died.
Sam is now one of 58,220 listed U.S. casualties of the Vietnam War. And his name is among all the others on The Wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.
I sometimes think of the life I have and the one he never got to live. I still feel both very lucky and a little bit guilty. Had my birthdate been called sooner in the lottery, how would I have responded? I was psychologically troubled then. Even going to college in Brookings in the first year or two was a challenge for me. So maybe I wouldn’t have passed the military physical or gotten through boot camp.
Or maybe, by that time in the war, I would have been assigned to non-combat duty. I’ll never know. But one thing I do know: Sam joined because he wanted to and was ready to fight when asked. And then he stayed longer than he had to and gave his life fighting for his country and the comrades around him.
Whatever the Vietnam War was and wasn’t, such acts of patriotism should never been forgotten.
Along with his place on The Wall in Washington, D.C., Sam is also remembered on the Wall of Faces on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website. On that website Doug Jones, a “kid” who lived across the gulch from our house in Chamberlain, wrote this:
“I was a year behind Sam at Chamberlain High and sat behind him in government class. Sam had no upper-class pretensions. He was everybody’s friend. I didn’t serve with Sam but followed him with service in the Air Force. I’m glad to have been Sam’s friend and proud that we both served in the U.S. military. Rest easy, Sam. You honor us all.”
Indeed, Sam does honor us all. And he is honored by family members who live on, by friends who remember him and tell his story, by his legacy of service and sacrifice, by his place on The Wall.
He is remembered, too, by a simple little wildlife refuge on the northwest edge of Pukwana that has for years been dedicated to Sam’s service, and to his loss. On a number of occasions I’ve stopped there to appreciate the peacefulness and think about Sam and the others who died in Vietnam. I’ve written about it, too.
A simple bridge over a small creek with an enduring meaning
One of my columns from some years back, which was on display at the bridge dedication last week, apparently inspired Sam’s sister, Linda, to have the state Department of Veterans Affairs invite me to the bridge dedication.
I’m grateful that she did.
And now Sam’s name will be seen by all who travel north and south across the bridge over Nelson Creek a few miles south of Pukwana southeast of Red Lake.
It’s not an especially high-traffic highway or a high-profile location. It’s a simple bridge over a small creek in Sam Jorgensen’s home country. I guarantee you he traveled that road many times on his Harley. And I’m pretty sure he would like the location of the bridge named in his honor.
I drove out there after the dedication ceremony, knowing the signs wouldn’t be up just yet but wanting to see the place and start to get to know it. I walked back and forth across the bridge, listening to the trill of a red-winged blackbird and the muffled shuffling of cattle grazing in a pasture next to the highway.
It’s a fetching spot for people who appreciate such country, the kind of place where a person might stop from time to time and think about a young man who gave everything he had for his country.
And I intend to do just that.
