As I was walking up to Norm Gerster’s front door his
two companions, Tad and Talley, were barking my arrival; I didn’t even have to
knock. The two canines are brother and sister, a mix of Labrador Retriever and Boxer
both with tiger-striped brindle markings. Norm, the 87-year-old subject of my
next interview, greeted me at the door, his full head of white hair just as
brilliant as his smile. Norman Gerster could easily play the part of an old
rancher in a Western, complete with the brushy mustache.
The dogs barked until Norm told them “hush!”, and they
did immediately. “C’mon over and have a seat on the couch.” I did, and listened for the next ninety minutes to
Norman Gerster’s tale of life in the U.S. Army…and all the rest that’s filled
out his time on this Earth.
If you’ve read the article online at the News
Journal’s website you already know about the 22-year-old Gerster being chosen
to play for the 3rd Armored Division’s traveling baseball team. Norm
toured most of Free Europe (Germany was divided between east and west, thanks
to Soviet expansionism) and played a lot of baseball, seeing places he never
would have gotten to see if he had been sent to the Korean theater of war. That
issue caused he and his teammates some problems.
“They had us eat with the officers, in the officer’s
mess, wherever we went. The regular soldiers, I guess, didn’t like it because
we played ball. They wouldn’t eat anywhere near us.”
After returning from the service, Gerster said he
never played baseball…but did play a lot of softball. “They had leagues just
about every night,” he said, “and I played when I could.”
Norm also had another passion, one he’s enjoyed as
long as he can remember. “All told, I’ve probably owned at least twenty-five
motorcycles. Me and my brother rode to Daytona plenty of times; three days
down, three days back. I also rode to Yellowstone National Park, and out to
Sturgis ( South Dakota ), too.”
“I had three Harleys and didn’t like any of them, too
much trouble, but that was in the late 50s”, he remarked. “Ducatis, Moto Guzzis
and BMWs, That’s mainly what I rode. I plan on riding around the track during
Vintage Bike Days at Mid Ohio this year, too.”
Gerster also had the privilege of traveling to
Washington, D.C. in April, aboard an ‘Honor Flight’, an air transport trip that
enables America’s veterans to visit the memorials honoring their respective
wars and service to this nation. Honor Flight is a non-profit organization
that, in 2016, took over 18,200 veterans from across the country to Washington
cost-free.
“I’ll tell you what, I’m tickled to death I went. A
woman at the V.F.W. in Crestline informed my daughter about it, so my daughter got
a form, I filled it out and took it back to her”, he recalled. “They didn’t
have any flights left when I dropped the papers off ( last September ) but they
called me around the first of April and asked if I still wanted to go. I told
her I did and she said ‘OK, the fifteenth of April’. I got a hotel room at
Columbus airport the night before the trip because we had to leave at 5:30 in
the morning. They shuttled us to the aircraft and we got on…83 of us…and not a
one that I knew.”
“We got into Baltimore, and then they put us on a
bus…it took about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to Washington. We visited
all the monuments; the Korean War one impressed me the most. Nineteen bronze
soldiers stationed all around this big area. Each of us had a host, someone
that took care of everything we needed. Hell, they wouldn’t even let me open a
bottle of water! Everywhere we went, they were with us. Then, when we got back
to Columbus…around 9:30 at night…there were all these people there, family and
friends….to welcome us back.”
Norman Gerster
had tears in his eyes, his voice strained; it was evident that the welcoming
crowd at the end of his Honor Flight provided quite an emotional experience for
this very grateful, old farmer-turned-soldier-turned ballplayer-turned
motorcyclist.
You can find Norman Gerster most mornings at the
McDonald’s in Crestline, and I plan on going to see him there very soon.
