SHELBURNE — Gertrude “Trudy” Ralph was a civilian nurse working in a surgical ward at Camp Drake in Japan in 1969, sifting through mail when she noticed one particular letter’s return address: Bernardston, Massachusetts.
The Conway native who now lives in Shelburne was thrilled to deliver the piece of mail to a fellow Franklin County resident, 19-year-old Hugh Der.
“And so, of course, I’m going over [to] say hi and then a couple days later, he was gone,” Ralph said in her Smead Hill Road house last week. “But I often wondered what happened to this kid, because, you know, he’s [from] Bernardston.”
That mystery was solved in May, when the two reconnected over a phone call 56 years in the making.
“Without her, back in Japan, I don’t think I would be where I am today,” Der told the Recorder from his home in Rockledge, Florida. “I can’t thank her enough, I can’t. There’s no words.”
The two reentered each others’ lives through a coincidence some might call remarkable. Der’s brother was sorting through their mother’s office files about a year and a half after she died in Greenfield and found a folder of newspaper articles related to Franklin County residents serving in the Vietnam War. One clipping included a photo of Der on crutches, with Ralph assisting him.
Der’s brother texted photos of the articles to Der, who showed them to his partner, Marty Johnson, who was back in Franklin County visiting family and friends. Johnson and some of her former colleagues immediately recognized Ralph from their time working at the Greenfield hospital. Ralph was a nurse and Johnson worked in the administrative office. This revelation quickly led to Ralph and Der catching up over the phone and through other communications, including a poignant and heartfelt letter.
“I know that you and the rest of the staff there saw many a GI go through the ward during your time, but you treated each of us as though we were your only patient,” Der wrote in May. “Your kindness and the brightness of your smile uplifted us more than you know. And on top of that for me was learning you were from Franklin County! You probably had no idea how much that lifted me up and gave me the desire to heal and get back home and to live.”
The irony of their recent reconnection, Der said, is that he lived in Bernardston for seven years after retiring around 2005.
“And she was just down the road in [Shelburne],” he said.
Der, now 75, explained that he attended Pioneer Valley Regional School but dropped out to enlist in the Army. He served a year in Vietnam and came back before being redeployed. He was back in the Southeast Asian country for eight days when he was seriously wounded while in a helicopter scouting treetops for Viet Cong fighters. An enemy soldier fired bullets into the helicopter, hitting Der once in his left leg and three times in the back.
The helicopter pilot was not seriously wounded and immediately flew Der to a field hospital. Medical staff saved his life but had to amputate his leg. A couple of weeks later, he was shipped to the American-operated 249th General Hospital in Osaka, Japan, and became depressed to be a 19-year-old amputee.
“Trudy came in and … it gave me a lift to see someone from back home,” Der recalled. “She said, ‘Life is not over.’ She was right, and it gave me the lift to get out of bed to start rehabbing and not give up on life.”
Der had a 32½-year career as a supervisor in mechanical stress analysis equipment manufacturing and lived in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. He said Ralph is the reason he was able to have three children and three grandchildren.
Ralph, now 86, eventually returned stateside and worked for 30 years as a nurse in New Hampshire, North Carolina and Arizona. She has one son, two grandchildren and a 15-year-old great-granddaughter. She was in Japan because her husband, John, was in the Army.
“And the hospital was 900 beds, but they’re all Quonset huts,” she said. “So I worked in the surgical Quonset hut.”
Ralph and Der have not met in person since 1969, though both said they would like to.
Der, who moved to Florida in 2013, is expected to be presented with a Quilt of Valor at a ceremony there on Nov. 16. The quilt was crafted by Ralph and her friend, Lynn Carrier, the Vermont state coordinator for the Quilts of Valor Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to literally and metaphorically comfort veterans with the healing love of a homemade quilt as an expression of gratitude for their sacrifices.
Der said he is not accustomed to being the center of attention, but is deeply flattered to be honored in this manner.
