In 2013, Gary Beikirch retired after a thirty-three-year career in education. At his retirement ceremony, student after student described how they loved and respected him. He was affectionately known as “Mr. B.,” the soft-spoken guidance counselor who cared for everyone he interacted with.
Today, Gary travels and speaks extensively. He is still active as chaplain of the Medal of Honor Society, visiting the hurting and wounded, ministering to their needs.
During each holiday season, the Beikirch home is filled with their three children and their spouses, plus fourteen wondrous grandchildren.
In 1999, Lolly was encouraged to steer in a new career direction—counseling—although she’d already informally been providing people with insight, wisdom, and love for years. She graduated from a university program and became certified through the American Association of Christian Counselors. Her specialty became trauma counseling. Gary became certified as well, and over the years he and Lolly have often counseled individuals and couples together.
When Lolly is asked why she stayed with Gary during their most difficult seasons, during the bouts with PTSD and life in the shack, she answers, “Because he was my gift from God.” In recent years, both she and Gary have fought and won battles against cancer. They are quick to point out that their story has not ended, but they can face the future in part because of what they have learned from the past.
Gary describes how the wholeness found through his faith and through hard inner work over the years has developed into a lasting peace. Through the years of education, marriage, parenting, service work with veterans, and care and concern for his students, the peace ebbed and flowed, yet it’s grown constant at last.
Gary has long since given up trying to forget. He knows the scars of the Vietnam War will always remain. Yet Gary has used his scars to develop a passion for helping people heal and thrive. He describes how he will always treasure his time with the Montagnards, knowing they helped provide him with a foundation of love and acceptance. He will always treasure his time in the cave, mostly because he learned there to look beyond the cave. And he has grown to love his wife and family in the deepest ways possible, being present in mind, body, and spirit. He’s become the husband and father he’s always wanted to be.
In a recent newsletter article for the Medal of Honor Society, Gary wrote,
Pain is not something to be hidden deep inside us or covered with a façade of bravado. Just as joy is to be shared with those we love, it’s equally important to share our pain with those we love, for in doing so we acknowledge the closeness of our relationships. We acknowledge that we are important to one another. We acknowledge the care that makes our relationships grow deeper.
We acknowledge we are not alone.