Vernon Long: More than a photo in a frame

I've been to a lot of funerals and memorial services.

It comes with the territory when you live in a small community for a long time.

The one for World War II veteran Thomas Vernon "Louie" Long held Thursday on a picture-perfect morning at the Portales Cemetery was one I'll never forget.

For one thing, it was performed with full military honors, a moving ritual infused with tradition, beauty, respect, and precision that never fails to bring a lump to my throat.

But what really stood out to me that morning was that due to the unusual - some would say miraculous - circumstances that led to this service, only one person there had known Vernon Long while he was alive: his 96-year-old baby sister, Jean Sawyer.

Yet Long's legacy continues to spread like ripples across a pond.

Long was only 27 when he died in the Philippines in 1942 during one of the darkest chapters of World War II. His little sister was not quite 16, the youngest of the six sisters Long left behind when he sailed overseas as a member of the legendary 200th Coast Artillery.

Remains believed to be those of Long were returned to Portales and interred in 1949, but ongoing excavations and research by the Department of POW/MIA Accounting Agency in the Philippines, aided by DNA technology not available at the time, recently disclosed new remains positively identified as his.

Family members all born after Long's death conducted Thursday's graveside service, including his great-nephew, Toby Teague, pastor of the Leslie First Baptist Church in Leslie, Mich.

"Vernon died 23 years before I was born," Teague told us, "but I have to say there hasn't been a soldier that touched my heart and changed my life more than Vernon."

Teague spoke holding a photo of his uniformed great-uncle in a vintage oval frame, the same one he remembered seeing on a desk at his grandmother's house as he was growing up.

There was always a bowl of chewing gum in front of it, he said, and his grandmother would encourage him to get a piece of gum when he came to visit.

"Every time I'd go to get gum, I'd look at Vernon," Teague recalled. "As I got a little older and looked at this, I began to understand what this represented."

The years talking with his grandmother and his aunts and hearing stories about Long had a cumulative effect, Teague said, until "all of a sudden a guy I'd never met ... a guy who died 23 years before I was born ... started to change my life."

Teague said his grandmother and his aunts helped him come to know his great-uncle as a man who "stood up for those who couldn't, and just did it every chance he got."

Inspired by those stories, Teague said, "I thought I'd better make sure that I live a life worthy of what Vernon did, and I better stand up for those who can't stand up. Vernon taught me that.

"John 15:13 says there's no greater love for any man than to give up his life for his friends," he said. "That's what Vernon did. Not just his friends (but for) people he'd never meet ... a nephew, nieces ... great-nephews, great-great-nephews he would never know.

"He put that uniform on for us," Teague said, "and I can't thank him enough."

Neither can we.

Betty Williamson tips her hat to an extraordinary family. Reach her at:

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