For his service to his country in Vietnam, he was spit upon and called a “baby killer.” For his devotion to his Southern wife, he was reviled by his mother-in-law as a “damn Yankee.” As reward for his military service, he was denied medical care afforded most veterans. And now, at 78, he has a rare medical condition that prevents him from driving even a riding lawn mower.
If Sam Medore needed reason to be a bitter man, he would not have to look far. And yet …
Last week Cheryl Miller Brown, a high-school classmate, called to say her across-the-street neighbor wanted to save a colony of bees living in a structure he was about to demolish.
I am not in the bee removal business, but after a phone conversation with Cheryl’s neighbor, I agreed to take a look.
This was not the first time a colony of apis mellifera, or honeybees, had facilitated an interesting introduction.
Sam Medore grew up in Dover, New Jersey, the son of an Italian father, who arrived in America on a banana boat, and a native New Yorker.
As were many boys of his generation, the teenage Medore was beguiled by a Charles Atlas ad in the back of “Boy’s Life” magazine. He became a bodybuilder.
Medore attended Kentucky Wesleyan on a baseball scholarship. While an undergraduate, he was named Mr. Kentucky in a bodybuilding competition and elected president of his fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon.
Upon graduation, with a tour of duty in Vietnam a certainty, Medore enlisted in the Marine Corps and headed to Quantico, Virginia, for Officer Candidate School.
He shipped out to Vietnam in 1965 where among his assignments was the unenviable task of inventorying bodies of American servicemen before they were shipped home.
“Mainly, I was scared as hell,” he says of his Vietnam experience. “Nobody wanted to be in Vietnam.”
Back stateside at Quantico, Medore was offered the rank of major if he would re-enlist. He refused and for the final three months of his tour was given grunt jobs.
It was during this period he met Jan Egger, a fourth-grade teacher at an on-base school. Egger was teaching a unit on Japan and Medore, a second-degree black belt in karate, was part of a delegation that visited her class.
Despite the vehement objections of his future mother-in-law, who writhed at the thought of her daughter marrying a northerner, Jan and Sam had a huge wedding at First Baptist Church.
The story with his father-in-law was different, however. Dayton Egger was the only survivor in his unit in the June 6, 1944, D-Day Invasion at Normandy and had come home with a severed spinal cord, confined to a wheel chair for life.
During Christmas break and in the summer when Dayton’s caregivers were on vacation, Sam took care of his father-in-law.
“He loved me,” Sam said of his father-in-law.
Dayton Egger was a beloved local figure. He traded in precious stones, and many a bride of that era wore an engagement ring, the product of his jeweler’s bench. Every weekday, using hand controls, he drove a yellow Checker Cab, the same vehicle used by New York City cab drivers, to the downtown post office where he would wait until someone, who knew him came along and collected his mail for him.
The Medores spent their workin life as school teachers in Virginia. They have one child, Andy, an IT specialist in Oxford.
Upon retirement in 2000, Sam and Jan moved to Columbus. By then his mother-in-law had died, and Sam would assume the role of Dayton’s primary caregiver until he died in 2004. Jan was struggling with a host of health problems including congestive heart failure and diabetes and would soon become an invalid. She would let no one care for her but Sam, who did so until her death in 2016.
Even so, the ever-tireless Medore found time to help his neighbors and for 15 years repaired wheelchairs for Baptist Memorial Hospital as a volunteer
“He’s a great neighbor,” says Cheryl, “not just for me, but for anyone who needs help.”
Glenn Lautzenhiser, a longtime friend, concurs. “You know there’s the saying, ‘He’d give you the shirt off his back.’ Sam is one of those people,” said Lautzenhiser.
Exercise and physical health has been a constant in Medore’s life, a sanctuary of sorts. Most mornings he rises at 6 and walks six or seven miles. His does his evening workouts in a living room chock-a-block with weights and exercise equipment.
“That has been my outlet,” he says. “Some people drink or smoke. I just exercise.”
And so it was on the morning of Veterans Day, I sat with Medore on the side porch of the spacious house on Old Aberdeen Road that once belonged to his in-laws, then his wife and her brother, all of whom have died. “It’s just me,” he says.
A misting rain was falling on a yard blanketed with brown leaves. About 10 yards in front of us a small circle of rose bushes meeting at a wrought-iron arch. A modest wooden sign hangs from the arch: “Jan’s Garden.”
“I built that as a memorial for Jan after she died,” he said.
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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