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June 20, 2009

By Karen Middleton The News Courier Sat Jun 20, 2009, 07:16 PM CDT

In the weeks since I wrote for The News Courier front page about World War II veteran Thomas Berzett, who died in 1975 after decades of alcoholism, we’ve heard from some readers who said they knew him.

Former Sheriff Buddy Evans’s family experiences as a live-in sheriff in the former jail prompted the story about Berzett. Evans spoke of Berzett, but not by name, as one of several “town drunks” whom he was called on to lock up regularly.

He remembered Berzett as gentle and a playmate for his then-young son, Jerry, to whom he gave some of his WWII medals, saying the youngster was, “the only one who ever loved me.”

I hope that if in the afterlife we are aware of life on Earth that Thomas knows he was indeed loved.

Berzett’s niece, Susan Sandlin, identified Thomas after the Evans story ran, saying she wanted readers to know the story behind her uncle’s life and possibly why he turned to alcohol.

It seems that Thomas became separated from his comrades on the Philippine island of Leyte in 1944 and became caught in crossfire between U.S. and Japanese forces, having to crawl on his belly through miles of tall grass while dragging his wounded captain, whom he happened upon.

Afraid his head would be shot off if he lifted it, he remained flat to the ground despite his hands and arms becoming bloody and raw. We know of his experiences because an Army buddy cared about him enough to explain Thomas’s wartime circumstances in a letter to his family eight years after the war.

Susan said she was just 16 when Thomas died, but she knew there were those who reviled her uncle as weak because he couldn’t overcome his affliction.

We now know alcoholism is a disease. The disease theory was first suggested by Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. However, it wasn’t until 1987 that the American Medical Society officially recognized alcoholism as a disease: “The AMA endorses the proposition that drug dependencies, including alcoholism, are diseases and that their treatment is a legitimate medical practice.”

Perhaps through his shame, Thomas didn’t feel he deserved to be loved. Evans himself recalled a night when the weatherman predicted the temperature to drop to the low teens.

Evans said he drove the streets of Athens looking for him, fearing that Thomas would be out in the cold. He finally found him in an abandoned house semiconscious and nearly frozen to death.

Evans said he took him to the jail and called a doctor, who administered a shot and pulled him through.

Former meat cutter Ed Hall recalls that he gave Thomas bologna and hot dogs. “He would be hungry,” Hall told me in an e-mail. “We were good friends (and) he promised me a lot of times he would quit drinking.”

Reader Sue Qualls wrote to say she regretted that Thomas would be remembered through my story as a “town drunk.” She said that once when she was young she spoke to him on the street and he came to her parents’ home to tell them how much he appreciated her kindness.

I weighed using that label. Thomas’s niece, Susan Sandlin, and I discussed it at length when she came to see me to request a story about Thomas.

Those who remember Thomas knew of his alcoholism. What Susan and I wanted to achieve with my story was to illustrate to our readers that there is often more to a man than the face he shows the world.

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