My Pilot: A Story of War, Love and ALS by Sarajane Giere

MWSA Review
Can you imagine you are due to have your first baby the week your husband leaves to fly F4 Phantom jets in Vietnam and your mother suddenly passes away? That is a smidgeon of the challenges faced by the Giere’s fifty-three year life journey together. Author Sarajane Giere provides a marvelous chronological reflection of life with her pilot-husband. From the beautiful get-go to the unfortunate end, caused by a fatal degenerative neurological disease, these two people show how to hold on tightly together and never let go.

This couple falls in love early and stays there. Young Bernie Giere graduates ROTC and gets the lucky draw to become an Air Force pilot. In short order, he is assigned to fly the brand new F4 Phantom jets out of the factory. Deployment soon follows to fight in these incredible jets in Vietnam. He bails out twice and completes 214 missions. Later Bernie pilots for commercial carriers Pan Am and Delta and is directly involved with the Air National Guard. There is so much more told as Bernie completes life with his wife and two children while flying eleven airplanes in forty-six years. Author Sarajane captures how they did it right, despite seemingly insurmountable challenges. They shared a deep love that I found admirable.

The Gieres faced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare disease, in heroic fashion. Readers will appreciate their insightful battle and learn practical strategies to cope with and manage this terminal condition. As a career therapist, I have followed patients with ALS. Without a doubt, the progressive muscular paralysis faced is catastrophic. It creeps away with neuromuscular functions, including swallowing and breathing. I tip my hat to Bernie and Sarajane with the way they kept love alive, despite this tragic disease.

This book is recommended for anyone who appreciates leaders in life through service to country and beyond. You will find that love abounds and that is most inspiring.

Review by Hodge Wood (April 2021)

Author’s Synopsis
My Pilot offers a uniquely intimate glimpse into the life of a military wife as she tells the story of her fighter pilot husband, Bernie, a Vietnam veteran who flew 214 combat missions in the Vietnam War and served twenty-five years in the Air National Guard’s world-class 106th Rescue Wing. With searing and explicit honesty she recalls the terror of the Vietnam years and the lifetime sacrifices that affected her pilot’s life and death. In the telling, she honors her husband, their family, and their extended military family, the community she holds dear.

ISBN/ASIN: 978-1-944635-20-0, 978-1-944635-21-7, B08LMG92DS

Book Format(s): Soft cover, Kindle

Review Genre: Nonfiction—Memoir/Biography

Number of Pages: 226

A tale of joy, despite medical woes

The Southampton Press, Sophie Griffin on Aug 5, 2021

In her book “My Pilot: A Story of Love, War and ALS,” Sarajane Giere tells the story of her relationship with her husband, Colonel Bernard (“Bernie”) D. Giere, a fighter pilot who served in the Vietnam War and spent 25 years in the Air National Guard’s 106th Rescue Wing in Westhampton Beach, which he commanded at one point.

Told through vignettes, the book illuminates the struggles of being a military wife and the joy the two shared in their marriage. After Col. Giere died from complications from ALS, Ms. Giere penned the memoir.

The couple met when they were both attending Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Col. Giere, who was from Chicago, was a half-year ahead of her, and in the Air Force ROTC.

“It was sort of a blind date … My sorority sister [said], ‘Well, why don’t you go out with Bernie?’ And it just really worked,” Ms. Giere said. “We fell in love. We met in the fall and we wanted to get married by December. I mean, when I looked at my diaries and my letters, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, it didn’t happen that fast,’ but it did.”

Ms. Giere took a job at a local telephone company and supported herself and Col. Giere as he finished up college, graduating in ’62. She would go on later to finish her undergraduate degree and get a master’s.

“We lived in Cedar Rapids, and they’re very hard winters, in a little tiny apartment in the third story of an old house,” Ms. Giere related. “We were just very happy. He graduated as a second lieutenant from the ROTC and they taught him to fly at the little airport there in Cedar Rapids; he started off in a tri-pacer.”

In the ROTC, Col. Giere discovered a love for flying and airplanes. Post-graduation, the Air Force sent the Gieres to West Texas, then Tampa, Florida, for more training, and Col. Giere flew F-4 Phantoms and other jets. Eventually, he was sent to Vietnam, where he spent a year flying combat missions.

Back state-side, Ms. Giere was raising their children and pursuing painting — a flight surgeon’s wife who was a well-known portrait painter gave her lessons. She’d go to the beach with other military wives and children and commiserate about the difficulties they faced. The solidarity with other women who understood helped her get through it all.

After the war, they moved to New York and spent 40 years living on Long Island. Col. Giere was the commander at the 106th Air National Guard Base in Westhampton Beach, and Ms. Giere worked in the Riverhead School District for a time.

“I would find myself in a computer room with dozens of computers, so I started writing these essays during lunch,” Ms. Giere remembered. “One of my colleagues said, ‘Why don’t you send this off to the Christian Science Monitor?’ Well, they published it, and that kind of did it … I went on to publish some essays in the New York Times, and [then] someone recommended the writer’s group at Ashawagh Hall, so I would drive out from East Quogue there every Tuesday night, even in the summer when it was hotter than heck.”

Ms. Giere continued to write, going to Bread Loaf in Middlebury and eventually writing a book about her mother’s family in Minnesota. She started to work on a piece about her husband’s family, who were German immigrants.

“After [Bernie] came back from Vietnam, I’d been writing little, short essays about moments of my life that just stuck with me, little touchstones from my life that I couldn’t forget. I told him two years before he died — [when] he was 72, he was diagnosed with ALS — now I want to write about the Gieres and your family … And I said, ‘And you are part of the story.’ So I would start taking dictation when we ate dinner.”

A few years later, after Col. Giere died and Ms. Giere moved, she went back through the letters the couple had exchanged while Col. Giere was away, stationed in Vietnam. The letters spoke to her, and she decided to make them the focus of a book rather than simply including them in a larger tale of the Giere family.

“I’d read them a lot, but I read them again when he was gone and I saw the nuanced writing style, the personality that came through, was just powerful,” Ms. Giere recalled. “So this is our story of 52 years of marriage. It resonated so much in me that I wanted to share what a wonderful guy he was with my family. Now, I have a great granddaughter and I can see ones are coming along, and they won’t know a thing unless I tell them. I want to proudly tell them what a wonderful man he was.”

As she was writing, Ms. Giere would put on the music of the ’50s and ’60s that she and Col. Giere had listened to and return to the memories she had together. Reliving the days they had spent together was hard, yet healing. One of the emotionally difficult things she wrote about occurred in 1978, when Col. Giere was commander of the Air National Guard in Westhampton Beach.

“One of our rescue helicopters crashed into a mountain upstate,” Ms. Giere said. “He was a commander and these were people that we knew and their wives. In one chapter, I relate how difficult it was, because I went along with him and the squadron commander. We had to go to two wives’ homes and tell them [their husbands died]. And that was so hard, it was so hard. And then in the cemetery, [when] they brought the seven bodies back and the governor was at the base out in Westhampton and Col. Giere was there, shaking hands … That was very difficult for me because I was so close to it.”

In the last years of Col. Giere’s life, he was diagnosed with ALS.

“The thing that got me through was the ALS Ride for Life organization, out on the East End,” Ms. Giere said. “Christopher and Christine Pendergast began it … Christine started caregivers meetings, and [they] really saved my life. Here I was in a room with these people that were helping each other. Some of them had children who were affected. It could have been a brother, a husband, a wife. You learn from one another, and that really helped me because I had somebody to go to for support.”

Ms. Giere will be donating all the proceeds from her book to ALS Ride for Life, to support the organization that helped her and her husband so much.

Reflecting on the memoir process, Ms. Giere emphasized the importance of resilience.

“Looking back on [writing My Pilot] and thinking about what I learned from doing it, I think I learned that I had more strength that I knew I had. And I think it came from the adversity I went through. It’s a learning experience. I mean, the feedback I’ve received from people that have read my book surprised me. It thrills me that what I could say could help other people, who could relate it to their own lives. It became kind of a healing for me to know that something I wrote could help other people.”

The icy terrazzo floor feels unwelcoming–aloof and chilly. I would prefer wall to wall but the concrete beneath my feet came with the house.  My husband Bernie, a fighter pilot, has six months to go in Vietnam and hasn’t even seen his new son yet. I sit on the bed’s edge, as I do every night about this time, knowing Little Paul will soon sing out his belly wail. My slippers warm my feet while I slip into my robe. I know what’s coming.

My breasts throb. How can Baby’s hunger lust alert my body so quickly? How I can pop up like a jack-in-the-box when my son is about to demand his midnight snack, when only a few months ago, alone in bed, I lolled around all night, punching pillows, dreaming of Bernie, and procrastinating the day’s beginning? How swiftly things change. 

All I hear from baby is faint churning. He will take at least five more minutes to work up a frenzy, so I shuffle to the bathroom. On the way out, I grab a look in the mirror and yank a headband around my wild hair, then head down the hall towards the kitchen. Four minutes of free time left. 

I could read Bernie’s last letter tucked into the pocket of my robe. But do I really want to hear about how you can lose your wing tips by pulling too many Gs, and still land to tell about it? The small wing tips on the F-4 fighter jet are vulnerable to pressures when pulling up too fast from a dive. What Bernie did was dangerous, and I was relieved to learn he and his plane flew on and made a safe landing.  It’s not something he can write to his parents about, but I’m glad he does to me. His tells me stories that make me laugh, or cry, or desperately want to know more. 

I plop down at the kitchen table, and pull out the envelope and unfold his four-page letter.  I’ve memorized that sentence so many times. He writes as if losing the wingtips on his F-4, is a daily occurrence. I see him sitting across from me right now, gesturing with his hands as pilots do, trying to explain what happened. My heart races.  If I could just touch him.  

The stain on the folded up yellow, legal sized paper is from beer most likely, but his letters are precious keepers. I finger his closing: I miss you my darling. I feel you close to me. All my love, your Bernard.

I slide the letter back into my pocket, shuffle to the cupboard and pull out a cup with a fresh tea bag–called Sleepy Time–already in it, then click on the gas burner under the teapot. Cooking with gas makes me uncomfortable; it smells, and ticks back at me when I turn it on. While I wait for the whistle, I say a prayer for Bernie.  

The baby starts to cry as I set my steeping cup on the end table next to the living-room rocker. 

The moon lights up the room. 

“You’ll have to wait ‘till I’m ready, Little Paul.” I open the letter again and ease down into the plush cushions.  

“Two more minutes.”

Lou Gehrig, the former New York Yankee baseball great known as the Iron Horse, has been linked to ALS {amyotrophic lateral sclerosis} ever since he was diagnosed with the incurable disease 84 years ago. The progressive, debilitating disorder forced the 37-year-old baseball legend to leave his beloved sport, and he died two years later. From then on, ALS, the rare disease most people had never heard of, became known as Lou Gehrig disease. 

 The 62,000 fans gathered at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, looked down on the field where their embarrassed hero was receiving honors from his peers and coaches. Visibly humbled and overcome with emotion, Gehrig was prodded by his coach to get behind the mic and say something to the crowd. He began his talk by saying: Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Today, I consider myself the luckiest man alive on the face of the earth.

 Little did Lou know that his heartbreaking speech would consist of two of the most often quoted sentences in the history of baseball. After that opening, Lou went on to enumerate his many blessings which earned him a respect that still lives today.

I’ve always admired Gehrig’s courage in facing the inevitable, but I never imagined my husband would be facing that exact verdict. When Bernie was told he had ALS in 2012, his reply was, “It is what it is.” He was 74 then, and had only two years left; ALS’s life expectancy is 2-5 years on the average. Bernie never unlocked his personal life to others, except in rare instances or when recounting his narrow escapes as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War before an audience of history students or Legionnaires. During his last several years, we lived life to the fullest, traveling, spending precious time with our children and grandchildren, and feeling grateful for the many blessings we had during our 54 years of loving each other. 

 After reading my book, My Pilot: A Story of War, Love and ALS, my friend, Betsy, told me about her brother Ed, who had died of ALS while in his early 70s. He was a retired business man, who’d served in WW II was married and had three children, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Betsey wanted me to read his two-page typed letter which talked about his diagnosis and his reactions to it. I noticed it was dated, 1991, which meant that Betsey had saved it for 30 years. 

 I lay the letter before me as I sat at my kitchen table, warming my hands around my fresh mug of coffee. I felt privileged my friend was sharing her brother’s words with me, but I had no idea what was in store. 

  Ed’s letter began, I was diagnosed as having ALS, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He went on to describe how the nerves that connect the brain to the muscles die and the muscles atrophy, which sounded all too familiar to me. Ed explained that the disease was making itself known to him through his vocal cords, throat and mouth. 

  When Ed and his wife received the doctor’s diagnosis, their reaction was one of quiet introspection rather than emotion. Bernie and I felt the same way. Basically, Ed said, the doctor told me I am going to die. This can hardly be called surprising or startling information. We all are, or should be, aware of our own mortality. When destiny told me to pick a card, I could have done worse. Unlike Alzheimer’s, ALS does not affect the mind, and it does not involve pain. 

His brutal honesty took me by surprise. As I continued reading his thoughts, my wish was that I had known this fine man. By the time I finished his letter, I felt as if I had. It’s one thing to be diagnosed with a curable malady, I thought, but another to be told there is no cure for you.  

When Ed called himself, one of the world’s luckiest people, I wondered if most people would feel the same way under similar circumstances. What’s there to be thankful for? they could ask. In fact, I might have posed that question myself, had my husband been alive and healthy. I read on…

 I stand in absolute awe of creation, Ed said. Beauty is all around us, the gentle music of a northern lake touching the shore, the perfect peacefulness of falling snow, the ultimate wonder of a sunset, and the wind in the high conifers make me feel I am on the verge of comprehending infinity. He added how he and his wife cherished every moment, and how they reveled in the pleasure of each other’s company. We count and are humbly grateful for our fortune and our many blessings. 

  By sincerely claiming and naming his past good fortunes—which probably unbeknownst to him, had his readers evaluating their own lives as they read on—Ed did us a favor by looking back and uncovering a mountain of treasures that he might have left along the way had he not been stricken. 

 I can imagine Bernie smiling at this question Ed posed: Can anyone be more fortunate than I, and wouldn’t I be a class idiot to let the fear of dying spoil the obvious pleasure I get from living? If Bernie were here, I believe he’d look upon Ed as a confidant whose words expressed his own feelings. 

 I’ve had the privilege of knowing memorable PALS—People with ALS—during my journey with Bernie. One remarkable man we came to know was Christopher Pendergast, who had ALS for 27 years, and wrote about it. His book, entitled Blink, was written with an eye-checker device on his computer screen because he could no longer use his hands. Others like Bernie, expressed their courage and daily accounts silently to themselves; day by day, week by week, month by month. 

 No matter how they handle their emotions, those who live with their endgame in sight have a lion’s courage, and the satisfaction of knowing what matters most in life. 

Anthony Castrovince March 4, 2021 – mlb.com

Lou Gehrig the man who was once a permanent fixture in the New York Yankees lineup, now has a permanent place on the Major League calendar.

June 2 will hereby be known as “Lou Gehrig Day,” Major League Baseball announced Thursday. The annual, league-wide event will be a time not only to honor and celebrate the legacy of the Hall of Fame first baseman but to raise awareness and funds to fight amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the awful disease that ended Gehrig’s life and informally bears his name.

“Major League Baseball is thrilled to celebrate the legacy of Lou Gehrig, whose humility and courage continue to inspire our society,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “While ALS has been closely identified with our game since Lou’s legendary career, the pressing need to find a cure remains. We look forward to honoring all the individuals and families, in baseball and beyond, who have been affected by ALS and hope Lou Gehrig Day advances efforts to defeat this disease.”

On Lou Gehrig Day, all players, managers and coaches will wear a special uniform patch, with red “4-ALS” (the logo bearing Gehrig’s retired uniform number with the Yanks) wristbands available to be worn in-game. Additional ceremonial details for each home park that day will be announced at a later date.

Gehrig joins Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente as the only players to have a day reserved in their honor across MLB. The June 2 date is significant in Gehrig’s story both as the day he became the Yankees’ regular first baseman in 1925 (replacing starter Wally Pipp, who famously asked out of the lineup because of a headache) and, sadly, as the day Gehrig passed away, in 1941, roughly two years after he was diagnosed with ALS.

Often referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, ALS is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Those afflicted lose their ability to walk, talk, eat and, eventually, breathe. ALS can affect anyone, anywhere, at any time, and, while scientists are making some strides in understanding the disease and there are several potential treatments in late-stage clinical trials, there is no cure.

According to the ALS Association, more than 5,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with ALS each year, with an average life expectancy of just two to five years.

Henry Louis Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS on his 36th birthday — June 19, 1939 — after months of uncharacteristically poor play and mysterious fatigue that forced him to pull himself out of the lineup on May 1, ending his then-record streak of 2,130 consecutive games played (since broken by Cal Ripken Jr. in 1995). After his diagnosis, Gehrig immediately retired from baseball with 493 home runs, 1,995 RBIs, 1,888 runs scored and a 1.080 OPS that ranks third all-time behind teammate Babe Ruth (1.164) and Ted Williams (1.115).

When the Yankees held the original “Lou Gehrig Day” on Independence Day at Yankee Stadium that year, Gehrig reluctantly stepped to the microphone and gave one of the most famous speeches in the history of professional sports.

Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech

“For the past two weeks, you have been reading about a bad break,” he told a rapt audience. “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

Gehrig passed away less than two years later, but his legacy of grace in the face of such a daunting diagnosis has long outlived him and made him a celebrated figure. And for those afflicted or affected by ALS, what happened to baseball’s “Iron Horse” stands as an enduring reminder of how the disease can strike even the seemingly indefatigable.

While MLB has raised ALS funds through various initiatives — including an annual Winter Meetings Charity Auction and the “MLB Fights ALS” campaign — over the years, this will be the first concentrated day centered around this legend and this cause. A group known as the “Lou Gehrig Day Committee” — a collection of individuals, family and friends affected by ALS — campaigned to make this addition to the MLB schedule become a reality.

One particularly vocal advocate was longtime MLB broadcaster Jon “Boog” Sciambi, now with the Marquee Sports Network, whose childhood friend, Tim Sheehy, was diagnosed with the disease in 2005 and passed away in 2007.

“I think of it as baseball’s disease because of it also being known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease,” said Sciambi, who serves on the board of directors for Project Main St., which raises funds to improve the quality of life for those afflicted by ALS. “So I’m really excited that baseball is doing this. Just from an awareness standpoint, it’s so important.”

Castrovince on Lou Gehrig Day

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which was organized by the late Patrick Quinn and Pete Frates, went viral on social media in 2014 and was transformative in improving the public awareness of ALS while significantly increasing donations and expanding investment in disease research from the federal government.

Still, according to ALS Association research, more than 60% of Americans know nothing about ALS. The hope is that Lou Gehrig Day can help change that and continue to aid the pursuit of a cure.

“In 2021, it’s jarring to hear that anything is 100-percent fatal, and ALS is 100-percent fatal,” Sciambi said. “We’re still far away from finding a cure. And as the condition worsens, the financial cost increases and so many things are not covered by healthcare. People need help.”Lou Gehrig Day will carry deep meaning for A’s outfielder Stephen Piscotty, who lost his mom, Gretchen, to ALS in 2018, and Rockies outfielder Sam Hilliard, whose father, Jim, was diagnosed with ALS that same year.

Piscotty on ALS Cure Project

Piscotty’s father, Mike, is a Lou Gehrig Day Committee member and president of the ALS Cure Project.

“I believe Lou Gehrig’s sentiments as he said, ‘You don’t get the breaks unless you play with the team instead of against it,’” Mike Piscotty said. “ALS is a curable disease if we work together in a coordinated manner to achieve breakthroughs following the collaboratively developed ‘Roadmap to Cure ALS.’”

Lou Gehrig Day, therefore, is not just about Gehrig himself but the many people here and gone who have longed for a solution to this “bad break.”

The following text was taken from mlb.com, all rights reserved.

Castrovince, Anthony. “Inaugural Lou Gehrig Day Set for June 2.” MLB.com, MLB, 4 Mar. 2021, https://www.mlb.com/news/lou-gehrig-day-june-2-to-raise-als-awareness.