Günzo (photo credit: unknown)

So I notice the little envelope icon blinking on my cell phone. I missed a call.. Not an uncommon phenomena since I’m a real air head when it comes to keeping the damn thing charged.

I retrieved a voicemail from my mom… “Honey, someone called here and left a message looking for you, a Doyal somebody… his numbers are #########.” I damn near dropped the phone.. I hadn’t “heard” the name in nearly a decade, though I’ve thought it many times.

Flashback to 1994 – I was a senior photography student at Webster University and by way of knowing a few people I was invited to participate in a “Command Visit”, a United States Marines program which brings high school / career councilors and writers out to tour and witness boot camp.

I can distinctly remember the exhausted nervous feeling driving in the wee hours of the morning to get to the small mid-missouri air-base where everyone was to meet. Since I was going to do a photo essay which would put me out of the actual “tour group” I was assigned my own escort to take me anywhere I wanted to go. Sgt. Haynes, a marine photographer, came up and introduced himself: “Hello, I’m Sgt. Haynes, I’m going to be your chaperone for the next ten days – everyone calls me Günzo.”

Günzo was built like a moose, his stature would intimidate but his “aww shucks” country boy dialect and small-town Texas manners made him less scary.

We boarded a military plane and left for The Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego and began what would be probably the biggest adventure of my life.

A couple of days into following these wide-eyed kids around I pulled Günzo aside: “Hey – when you’re in boot camp do kind of get this constant knotted stomach anxiety feeling?” He explained they run these boots hard in the first stages of training, very little sleep and the D.I.s need to shock them out of civilian thinking and to get them to think like a group.

I was empathizing “too” much with my subject material. I started feeling constantly on-edge and ready to barf… I needed to step away for a little while. Günzo nabbed me, threw me into the civi-car the Marines provided us and got me off base and drove me around. It was then the ice really broke and we got to seriously photo-geek bonding… Trading darkroom secrets and him recounting his photo antics in Desert Storm.

For the rest of the trip we were good buds and I barely saw the “organized” group which I had come with. He took me around and showed me ever nook and cranny of the base, and then shot up to Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego to see more. Being of typical gung-ho marine mentality – and a little bit of a rebel being a military photographer, he risked getting into trouble more than once for the sake of thrill seeking.

Antics I recall and smile about include going off-roading in our rental Toyota on the tank course blaring “Kids in America” or running out to the beach which was reserved for amphibious landing maneuvers (which weren’t scheduled for that day) and hanging out. “Get out and get your feet wet! This is the biggest stretch of deserted, private beach in all of Southern California!”

I returned to Saint Louis to have the first solo student photo show at Webster consisting of 21 images, all of which were digitally printed. (unspeakably progressive for 1994). Günzo flew out to the show and covered it for Navy magazines and later the images were boxed up and shipped out for a tour to be displayed at bases around the US… (world?) – I never saw them again. I can only hope that they’re hanging proudly somewhere and the dye-sublimation prints haven’t broken down.

Günzo and I kept in close touch for the next year or so. We enjoyed one of those real naturally tight friendships. I looked up to him like a big brother. He even damn near talked me into enlisting in the Corp’s Officer Training Program (designed for guys going into the military who have their degree).

Time passed and we fell outa touch. He retired from the Marines and moved with his wife and two kids to Florida. I went on to pursue a career in graphic design and came out. I’ve always coveted the photo he gave me of him when he was stationed in Korea and keep it in a small shrine I maintain of photos of people who are dear to me who have either fallen into obscurity or have passed away.

We caught up with each-other briefly on the phone but we were both en-route to somewhere and couldn’t chat long. We exchanged abbreviated versions of our lives for the past decade. I got really uncomfortable when he asked: “So, ya married and have kids?” – suddenly I was 22 and deeply closeted all over again. I awkwardly dodged the question, changed the subject and told him I’d email him a URL for this thing called a “blog” where he could catch up with every tedious detail of my life from the past year.

I don’t know why I would give him a link to a blog that I don’t have… For if I “did” have one – I would have spent the entire early morning digging through my scrap-box digging up artifacts from that period in my life and getting all nostalgic. I’d probably also be bummed that I could only find some of the original scans on disc. Thankfully I’ve got all the negatives still.

Hmmm… Note to self – see ifi chrisglass was serious about wanting to go in on a negative scanner with sinnabor and a few other LJ-folks so we can archive our film.