COLUMN: Going home is sweetest song a man can hear
Larry Ballard might have wondered if he was trapped inside a dream. Teetering on the edge of consciousness, he could hear the voices of family members around his hospital bed.
There was sadness in their words. He overheard them whispering about what clothes to bury him in … a button-down shirt with a Vietnam vet cap. They were going over a list of pall bearers.
“They were planning my funeral,’’ he said.
But last week, Larry sat in a wheelchair in the courtyard at the Atrium Health rehabilitation hospital on Northside Drive, listening to the music of a young lady who had traveled 2,300 miles to play the violin for him.
The violin has the most powerful emotional range of any musical instrument, and Larry was feeling every sweet note with a grateful heart. He was waiting to be released from rehab two weeks before his 72nd birthday. He has not slept in his own bed since the middle of March.
A few months ago, friends and family members were preparing themselves for the grim possibility that Larry might never get to go on another fishing trip or be around to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary with his wife, Patsy, later this year.
In February, three days before Valentine’s Day, he tested positive for COVID and spent a week at the Medical Center. Five weeks later, he struggled to catch his breath and was back in ICU. His lungs began to fail him. He lost mobility in his arms and legs.
But he still possessed his important fighting mechanism – a stubborn will to live. It has saved him before. It saved him again. He might not have nine lives, but his pitch count is up to at least three.
Although he and Patsy knew each other growing up in the Walden community and Highway 247 in south Bibb County, they never dated in high school. She claimed he wasn’t her type. Her friends tried to convince her otherwise.
After graduating from Willingham, Larry went to work for his family’s electrical business. He knew it was only a matter of time before his draft number would be called, and he would be on his way to Vietnam. He wasn’t sure he was cut out to be a Marine. He couldn’t swim, so he didn’t join the Navy. He didn’t care for heights, so he wasn’t up for the Air Force. Instead, he marched down to the Army recruiting station and enlisted.
In January 1970, he was critically injured on a combat mission. He suffered multiple fragment wounds when a mine exploded. The blast put 29 holes in his body, leaving him like piece of Swiss cheese in the jungles of Southeast Asia.
A scrap of steel was lodged in his brain. Had it struck a millimeter on either side, he might never have spoken another word. Or his name might be among the more than 58,000 listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., whose memory we honor this weekend.
He spent a month in a field hospital and had a protective plate put in his head. He survived a bout of malaria, was transferred to a hospital in Japan and then went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. It would be five months before he saw anything beyond the walls of a hospital room.
Patsy had sent him a care package of chocolate chip cookies, and they chased him around the world before the crumbs caught up with him.
For the past three and half months, Larry’s health has been a crumbled mess, too. The other day, he spoke on the phone with his former platoon leader, who had been injured in same mine blast more than 50 years ago.
“Vietnam was a cakewalk compared to COVID,’’ Larry told him.
He is on the mend now, though, and he called Monday’s violin concert, a “dose of medicine.’’
Mica Bone, a 24-year-old violinist from Santa Monica, California, stopped in Macon to perform for one of her biggest fans.
It was a surprise visit. They had never met face to face. Although they are not related, they share a special kinship. He refers to her as his “beautiful, talented niece.” She calls him her “Uncle Larry.’’
Mica (pronounced Mee-kah) is the daughter of Mike Bone, a former classmate of Larry’s from Willingham High. Mike is a retired music executive who worked for almost a dozen record labels, including Capricorn, Chrysalis, Island and Mercury.
Mica, a graduate of Southern Cal’s Thornton School of Music, has played at Carnegie Hall, in Vienna and Prague. In August, she will be headed to Valencia, Spain, to attend the Berklee College of Music graduate program.
For the past 10 years, Mike has been sending videos of Mica’s concerts to his high school buddy.
Larry doesn’t play an instrument. He plays the radio. “And I don’t do a good job of that,’’ he said, laughing.
He is passionate about country music and southern gospel, but the violin always has been his favorite instrument. Mica opened her performance with a rendition of “Jerusalem’s Ridge,’’ a classic by Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music.
It was sweet music to the ears of a man grateful to be going home.
Again.
Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph
This story was originally published May 30, 2021 at 7:00 AM.