ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 26, 1996 TAG: 9602270047
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
TERRY PLUNK died a hero's death in Operation Desert Storm. It's been five years, and his mother and sisters still feel the pain. But they hang on to their memories of the boy with the photo-perfect smile and old-fashioned determination.
Terry Plunk did his best to protect his mom when he went away to war.
He was a combat engineer, so he let her believe he was building bridges and airfields. He never told her his real job during Operation Desert Storm: disarming mines.
"I learned a long time ago: Mothers don't need to know everything," Doris Plunk-Matthews recalls. "And I never pressed him as to just what he was doing."
His younger sister Julie, away from home in her first year of college, imagined the young lieutenant working in some behind-the-lines headquarters office.
"I should have known better," Julie Plunk said. "His personality was to be right there in the middle of the action."
In the middle of the action. That's where Terry Plunk loved to be. If somebody was taking a photo in the Plunk house, Terry was right in the middle, flashing that smile that lit up the room. If somebody was moving a couch, there was Terry - pitching in and grabbing the heavy end.
On Feb. 23, 1991 - the day the ground war started - Terry Plunk turned 25.
Three days later, he was part of a team disarming mines at an airfield in Iraq. They had performed this task over and over, but this day, something went wrong. A mine exploded, killing seven Americans. It was five years ago today.
Plunk died instantly, the U.S. Army told his mom. He was the only soldier from the Roanoke Valley - and one of two Virginia Military Institute graduates - to die in the war.
As Americans contemplate the fifth anniversary of the Persian Gulf War, some remember only victory. But some have had five years to live with the sacrifices.
"Some ways it seems like it's been an eternity - and other ways it seems like yesterday," Plunk's mother said. "I don't know how you measure time when you're talking about the loss of someone."
Doris Plunk-Matthews endures with the help of her family, friends, neighbors and co-workers - in many ways all of Vinton and much of the Roanoke Valley. She has her memories of Terry to hang on to, the photos, the mementos, the posthumous honors - and the knowledge that Terry went because he had to go, wanted to go, needed to go. His country was fighting a war, and Terry Plunk considered it his duty to be there.
Doris Plunk-Matthews has one of those big picture frames with multishaped cutouts for snapshots. The photomontage tells Terry's life in brief images: the young athlete crouched over a football in his sandlot uniform ... the Cub Scout sitting with Dad on the front steps of their Vinton home, waiting for church ... the high school wrestler flexing his muscles in a ready-to-scrap pose for the camera ... the smiling uncle holding his baby nephew ... the VMI freshman, mud-caked and beaming after fighting his way to the top of the hill in the final ritual that transformed him from lowly "rat" to full-fledged cadet.
"He was full of energy - a lot more than I had," his mother said. "He was just a typical energetic daredevil - very determined. He just would take on anything. Always felt like if he got his mind right, he could accomplish whatever he set out to do."
He was the middle child: Teresa was 16 months older, Julie was six years younger.
"He used to get the girls to wait on him," his mother recalled with a smile.
"And you," Julie added.
"And me," Doris Plunk-Matthews admitted. "We just all spoiled him, didn't we? 'Get up and get me a Coke'''
He worked hard, played hard. He was a straight-A student, prom king and valedictorian at William Byrd High School. He played football and soccer and finished third in the state in his wrestling weight class. He didn't like to lose. Not finishing first in the state wrestling tournament may have been his biggest personal disappointment.
He was well under 6 feet, no more than 150 pounds, less when he lost weight for wrestling. He always wanted to be bigger, to be a behemoth on the football field. "If he could have been 250 pounds," his mom said, "he would have been something else."
He liked to laugh, loved to tease his parents and his sisters - and Mau, the family cat. He liked that old cat, he said, because it had spirit. He'd snatch it up and pretend he was playing the guitar on its tummy. The cat would jump down and scamper away, not to be heard from for hours.
"He just had a way," his mother said. "When he walked in a room, everybody was happy."
His dream was to go to Virginia Military Institute and be a soldier. He endured the traditional harassment that VMI upperclassmen impose on the freshman "rats." He said it was just a mind game - you had to set your mind right, and you'd get through it.
He excelled at VMI despite the shock and grief of losing his dad, Joe C. Plunk, an Appalachian Power Co. executive, in 1985 at age 43.
When Terry Plunk graduated in 1988, he won the Society of Cincinnati Medal and was one of only about a dozen honored as "distinguished graduates."
He enlisted in the Army and served 16 months in Korea before returning stateside in time for his sister's graduation in June 199O.
Later that summer, Iraq's Saddam Hussein decided to settle a dispute with neighboring Kuwait by invading the smaller, oil-rich nation.
Plunk and his unit, the 82nd Airborne from Fort Bragg, N.C., shipped out to the Middle East as part of the multinational force deployed against the Iraqis.
As 1990 changed to 1991, his mother did what mothers do in wartime: She worried, but tried not to burden her son with her fears. He called home whenever he could get to a phone. With the time difference, sometimes it meant the phone rang in Vinton in the middle of the night. She didn't mind.
Every phone call, he wanted to know: Were the American people still supporting the troops? She would assure him the country was behind him.
The last time they spoke, at the end of January, she did most of the talking. She was excited: It was clear the Allied bombing was smashing Iraq's forces, and the fighting would soon be over.
On Feb. 27, two Army officers arrived at William Byrd High School. The principal called her minister, then pulled Doris Plunk-Matthews, a teacher's aide, out of class so they could break the news to her.
She was frantic, worried about her daughters. She didn't want them to hear it on the news before she could tell them in person.
Then there was the waiting. It was almost two weeks before Plunk's body was returned to Roanoke. They buried him at Mountain View Cemetery with a white-gloved honor guard saluting him. It was believed to be one of the largest - if not the largest - funerals in Vinton history.
Letters she'd written him - but had never caught up to him in the war zone - were returned unopened. "It was hurtful to us," she said, "because weeks afterward they kept coming back. Did he think we weren't writing him?''
People reached out to her from all over the country. They sent cards, letters, poems, photos of Terry as a boy and as a man.
She rarely lacked for support. "My friends, neighbors - they're all one and the same - they saw that I got out. They insisted that I go out with them."
Two years ago, she married C.W. Matthews, a retired bus driver. They share a hilltop home in Vinton filled with pictures of Terry.
Now, five years later, the pain is no longer fresh. But it's still there.
"Every day is the anniversary of his death," Julie Plunk said. "Every day is tough."
They hang on to the memories of the good times, his smile, his laughter.
"When we're all just family," his mother said, "we just talk about him as if he were still overseas or somewhere else. He still seems very much alive to us."
LENGTH: Long : 145 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Terry Plunk joined the Army in 1988 and, true toby CNBform, managed to be in the middle of the action. As Americans
contemplate the fifth anniversary of the Persian Gulf War, some
remember only victory. But some have had five years to live with the
sacrifices. 2. Even at the age of 2, Terry had his famous winning
smile. color.