Leo Wiley Plants a Garden

Leo Wiley’s Garden

by Glenn N. Holliman, edited by Grace A. Holliman

Last winter Wiley sent me an email that included photographs of summer flowers from his garden.  He lives in a small Iowa town near the Minnesota border. It’s the same hamlet he lived in forty-nine years ago when he was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War.  After serving in Vietnam he returned home, taught high school English for decades, and now lives quietly with his partner, Tom.  Wiley and I correspond every few weeks and in his last email he mentioned that he was planting flower seeds for this years’ garden.

In the early fall of 1969 Wiley planted a garden in Lai Khe, 40 miles north of Saigon. He took an empty ammunition box, two and a half feet long by one-foot wide, and filled it with the soil of South Vietnam. In the dirt he planted marigold seeds that had been sent to him in a care package from his mother back in Iowa. He placed the ammo box on the railing outside our office, watered the seeds regularly, and they started to grow. 

January 1970, the marigolds blooming and blooming!

During our tour of duty, Wiley and I were chaplains’ assistants in the 3^rd Brigade, 1^st Infantry Division. Not a bad job to have as far as these things go. Our orders included pulling guard duty, driving and maintaining jeeps, and assisting the chaplain with Sunday services. 

Chaplains’ assistants were also required to type. Wiley and I typed letters home to spouses and parents of the men in our brigade who were killed in action. We used typewriters with black ribbon that left smudges on our fingers. If we made a mistake typing a letter, we had to start over. It required concentration as division artillery was not far away blasting 105 shells day and night. 

One day Chaplain Pender came to Wiley and said, “Your dad just died back in Iowa. You are on the next plane home.” Wiley left Lai Khe and his box of marigolds. He had served ten months of his tour and would be state side for the remainder of his service. I looked after his garden. I weeded, pruned and watered it often. The orange and yellow marigolds blossomed for weeks, then months. They brightened up the corridor and said, “Look, there is beauty here.”

Below, Wiley on the left and Glenn on the right, both wearing regulation Australian bush hats.  Note the ammunition box with the just sprouting marigolds in the right center on the railing.  This picture taken October 1969.

Forty-eight years later I was cleaning out my attic and found a box of pictures taken while I was in Vietnam. In one picture I’m standing beside Wiley and in the background is his marigold garden. On the back of the photo I had written the name of the town in Iowa where Wiley lived. After an Internet search I found the phone number of my old Army buddy and  the week before Christmas I spoke to Leo Wiley for the first time in almost fifty years.

At one point in our conversation I told Wiley that I took care of his flowers after he left Vietnam. There was a silence on the other end of the line. I wondered if he remembered the marigold garden. After a moment Wiley said, “Glenn, you have no idea how much that means to me.”