SHARING THE RIDE
TOM AND LOUISE McKAY WEDDING, AUGUST 17, 1941.
Down the Road a Piece — DON RAYE, 1940
Cash-strapped college students often look for ways to stretch their meager resources. Tom McKay did. In 1940, while attending Eastern Washington College of Education (now Eastern Washington University) he gave rides to several students to help defray his gas costs. “I had to pay eighteen cents a gallon,” he recalled.
Thriftiness was second nature to him. He’d paid for college and helped support his family during the Depression by picking huckleberries in the mountains of Montana. He picked the berries by beating the bushes into a large shallow canvas container. Often he would pick 35 gallons a day, and along with his older brother would sell the berries to various stores.
One of the students that joined him on his daily commute was a pretty girl named Louise Strosnider. She described their first meeting. “Tom stopped by my house with a friend. These two brash young men were bragging about everything.” She smiled. “They were so cute!” But Tom, 21, especially interested her. They got to know each other during their drives to and from college. “We became friends,” said Louise. “We got friendlier and friendlier.”
They both chuckled. Tom added, “Actually, she had a boyfriend. I told her, ‘He’s just a boy and I’m a man.’” That boyfriend didn’t last long. “She told me she got rid of him,” he said, grinning across the table at Louise.
When the college advertised a Tolo Dance (a girl-ask-boy dance), Louise seized the opportunity and asked Tom to be her date. “We had to dress up like characters from comic strips,” she said. “Tom was Chief Wahoo and I was the Indian maiden Minnehaha.” Their courtship continued with long walks around the campus. Finally, one day Tom said, “Well. When do you want to get married?”
They settled on a date and Tom decided he’d better quit school, get a job and build a house for his bride. Building materials were in short supply, but he and his dad and brother found an old hotel in a nearby town that was scheduled for demolition. “We salvaged the boards, lumber and even the nails,” he said. He took a job as a locomotive fireman for Northern Pacific Railroad and worked on the house every chance he got. Louise helped too. “She straightened the nails,” he said.
They married on August 17, 1941. Four months later, Louise was at her parent’s grocery store when she heard the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “We were all in shock,” she said. She feared that Tom would soon be drafted, but because he worked for the railroad, he received a deferment. And he continued to receive deferments for three years. Louise said, “I was starting to feel maternal. I said, ‘Why don’t we have a baby?’”
Their daughter, Colleen, arrived February 14, 1944. Six months later, Tom received his draft notice—there would be no more deferments. “He called me from the roadhouse and I knew,” Louise recalled. “I said, ‘Hello, soldier.’” Her eyes clouded at the memory. Looking out in the autumn sunshine, she shook her head. “I felt just sick.”
When Tom left for basic training, Louise and the baby went to stay at her parent’s farm. She kept busy with her daughter and drove her dad’s big tractor during harvest. Tom called her every Sunday from Camp Roberts in California. One Sunday after harvest, Louise told him, “I’m coming down to see you.”
He replied, “No way! This is no place for a woman.”
She and the baby came anyway, arriving in a 1937 Cadillac. Louise said, “I thought if he’s going to war and getting killed, I’m going to spend as much time with him as possible.” They had two months together before Tom shipped out.
TOM, LOUISE AND DAUGHTER COLLEEN, CAMP ROBERTS, 1944.
TOM MCKAY, 1944.
When asked what job he was trained for in the Army, Louise promptly answered for him. “Shooting people.” The grim reality was that Tom’s company, like many others, were replacement troops—bodies to replace the growing list of U.S. casualties.
In April of 1945, Tom and other members of the 32nd Infantry, 7th Division, watched the invasion of Okinawa from a ship in the harbor. Several days later, he and his unit were packed into landing craft and deposited on a beachhead in the dead of night. He said, “For the next two months it was just a matter of slogging away. The Jap soldiers were extremely brave. They weren’t easy to take. They wouldn’t give up—we just had more people and supplies.”
One afternoon Tom and his interpreter got separated from their company. Tom said, “All at once a young Okinawan woman came from a cave. The interpreter said she wanted to know if we could take her family to a safer area. I said sure.”
It turned out her family consisted of approximately 30 people who spilled out from the cave. One was a wounded Okinawan soldier, still wearing his uniform pants, carried by his father. Tom’s eyes filled with tears at the memory. “His father wouldn’t put him down—he carried him all the way off the island.” It was dark by the time they finally rejoined their company. “They thought I’d been killed,” Tom said. “But they were more worried about my interpreter—he was more valuable.”
The battle for Okinawa was brutal and Tom didn’t escape unscathed. He recalled, “One afternoon, we crested a hill and they let loose and killed both point men and shot the medics. It was kill or be killed. I had four hand grenades and I was big and strong. I could throw them farther than they could.” He hunkered in against a rock and exchanged fire with the enemy. “It went on all morning long. I got five or six guys.” Finally, he felt a bullet tear through his right shoulder. It went out through the back of his arm, shattering his shoulder. “It didn’t even knock me down,” said Tom. “I said, ‘Well. They got me.’”
Certain he was going to die, he staggered to a clump of bushes. “I didn’t die right then, so I drank a couple canteens of water and ate a handful of hard candy.” Then he got up, and though wounded, killed two more enemy soldiers and led his men on an attack that caused the enemy to retreat. He returned to his company with valuable information that enabled the troops to reach their objective with a minimum of casualties.
For his heroic efforts he received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
Many men died that day and somehow a newspaper thought Tom had been one of them. Thankfully, the first thing he’d done while recuperating from his injury was to write his wife a letter. He had to use his left hand, but she could make out his scrawl and still treasures that letter. She shrugged. “I read in the paper that he’d been killed, but I’d already heard from him.”
In that letter he wrote, “If wishing would help, I’d be with you now.” And he signed it, “Yours always and always.” When he returned home from the service he went to the railroad to see if he could get his old job back. “They took one look at me and said, You’re all done firing.’”
TOM MCKAY, 1944.
Tom still bears the physical scars of that battle and can no longer raise his right arm above his head. The emotional scars took time to heal, as well. He was haunted by what he’d seen, heard and done. But unlike many World War II soldiers, he talked about his experiences with his wife. “He’d say, ‘Oh, the men I’ve killed … .” she recalled. “And he finally got so he didn’t talk about it as much.”
He and Louise sold everything they had and bought 920-acre ranch with her parents. Tom felt like farm work would be the best rehabilitation for his shoulder. They enjoyed the work and the beautiful location. Their family grew with the birth of Nancy in 1946 and Tom in 1949.
In the ensuing years Tom added teacher to his resume. He taught 7th and 8th grade and then taught high school for six years. Their daughter Christie was born in 1951. Not long after, Tom decided to finish the education that marriage had interrupted. The family moved to Cheney, Washington and lived there for three years, while he earned his Master’s Degree. Louise too, finished her education and earned her BA in Education in 1958.
Tom and Louise taught school. They held on to their ranch property and he built a log cabin on it. “The kids loved it,” said Louise. After retiring in 1979, he got busy fulfilling a promise he’d made to Louise. “I promised I’d build her a big new house, and I did.” Using a one-man sawmill, he built his bride a beautiful two-story home. They enjoyed nightly Scrabble matches and Louise often read aloud to him, so they could enjoy books together.
When they celebrated their 70th anniversary, Louise wore her wedding dress for the occasion. “Well, I squeezed into it,” she said. She said their marriage has been made easier thanks to Tom’s easygoing ways. “He just came with a sweet disposition.”
Much has changed in their seven decades together. They weathered the loss of their daughter Christie, who died in a car accident in 1991. Louise said, “There’s nothing like losing a child.”
Their five grandchildren give them joy and Tom said their marriage has been built on mutual respect and shared values. “The kids can’t believe we never fight, but after the war I felt like I was living on borrowed time.” He didn’t want to waste precious moments squabbling with the love of his life. It’s been many years since the couple carpooled together on their way to college, but Tom smiled at Louise and said, “She’s still my sweetheart.”
LOVE LESSON
“Wejust don’t quarrel and we make all our decisions together.”—Louise McKay
TOM AND LOUISE MCKAY, 2011.
Photo courtesy J. Bart Rayniak, Spokesman Review
Tom McKay died July 1, 2013