A Marine Goes Home

 

Today, I have been thinking about the way that our experiences shape us.  The subject was amplified yesterday with the graveside service for Bud Ziemann.  Many of you have come to our church since Brother Bud has been in the nursing home and therefore, you may not have met him.  He was a fascinating character.

For most of my time here as Pastor, Brother Bud would come and sit near the back, seemingly a very quite person.  But once you got to know Brother Bud, he was anything but quiet.  He had a story to tell, no, a million stories to tell. 

It didn’t take long for him to tell you about being a U.S. Marine, serving in WWII, hitting the beaches at Iwo Jima, and struggling with the fact that he was the only one in his company who made it out alive.  He was born and raised in California, and when he got home from the war, he spent time raising race horses and racing motorcycles.  He raced for Harley-Davidson and won the Daytona race in the late 40’s, early 50’s.

He would talk about the many times he had barely escaped death, from wrecks to accidentally driving off the bluff on his tractor, and he would always say, I’m not sure why God kept me alive, but I know He has a reason.

He talked about working for Lockheed Aircraft out in California and some of the experiences that he had there.

He talked about the love of his life, his late wife, Lu, and how much he missed her.  When she passed away, she left behind a dustmop of a dog that became an extension of Bud himself.  He would carry her around on the tractor with him and talk to her just like a real person.  A few years ago, when that dog passed away, it hit him hard.

By the time I met Bud, he was 85 years old, still as tough as nails, and he could still fit in his Marine uniform.  He was one of those men, who had maintained his strength into his later years.  He still split wood for the fireplace, and talked about driving a bulldozer all week long.  But it was evident that Bud struggled with the effects of aging.  He used to tell me, “Preacher, I’m just trying to make it to 90.”  Well, he did, and he made it three years past it as well.

The reason that Bud’s story has been bouncing around in my thoughts today is that as I watched him struggle with the advancing years, I saw him trying to deal with what his identity was now, instead of what it had been in the past. 

At the graveside, his long-time friend, Wayne McDaniel had his wife share the testimony that Bud’s wife, Lu, had told her about the most pivotal moment in Bud’s long life.  Lu said that she had come home one day from work and when she looked at Bud, she could see a strange glow about him.  She asked him what had happened and he told her that the Baptist preacher had come by that day and had “saved him.”  That Baptist preacher, Dan Maxwell, came back the next day to follow up and before he was finished, Lu had received Christ as well.  Thus started their long association with Independent Baptist Church, and thus was settled the issue of Bud’s identity forever.

You see, Bud relished his days as a Marine.  He gloried in his victories as a motorcycle racer.  He enjoyed his accomplishments in every field of endeavor that he put his hand to.  But in reality, the only identity that really mattered on Friday night when Bud went to be with the Lord was that he was a blood-bought sinner whose name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.  All of the excitement, the joys, the triumphs of his life as a Marine, a horse-trainer, a motorcycle jockey, and an airplane builder, did not earn him a second in heaven.  The simple fact that on that day when Dan Maxwell knocked on his door, he humbly called upon the Lord to save him, was all that mattered.

Today, Bud is wearing a robe adorned with Christ’s righteousness and he is enjoying the presence of God and the reunion with his dear wife and others who have gone before.  I wonder how many of his fellow Marines, he’s found time to talk to.