THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 10, 1994 TAG: 9411080132
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY HEIDI GLICK, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
After an almost 50-year search, including a culminating phone call in January, Otis Drake, 76, has come face to face with a long-lost Army buddy.
Forrest Duke, who was stationed with Drake at Camp Croft, S.C., recently drove into Norfolk from New York to visit his former bunk mate.
``I just wanted to see what the old guy looked like,'' Duke said affectionately.
Duke's wife, Peg, stood in the front hall of Drake's West Ocean View home and took pictures as the two embraced.
``It was an emotional high,'' she said. ``It was a dream I wanted to see come true for the both of them.''
For Drake, their meeting was the final outcome of a half-century-long journey through the mail to find a man he had befriended for six months while on active duty.
``It took me a minute before I could talk halfway decent,'' said Drake, still emotionally high from the meeting. ``I had run into so many brick walls in my endeavor. I was afraid to be too enthusiastic.''
Duke and Drake spent a week reminiscing about their families, hobbies, the military and Drake's search for Duke.
``I thought, `What did I ever do that he would remember me that well?' '' Duke said. ``I was amazed anyone would go through that length to find me.''
Both men say their friendship in the military resulted from common interests and lifestyles. They both loved guns. They were in their late 20s and married, whereas most of the men in their unit were younger.
``We just got along,'' Duke said. ``Our bunks were two feet apart. There was nothing else to do but sit on the bed and talk stories.''
Then, in November of 1945, Duke got pneumonia and went on sick leave. Drake soon was discharged, and that was the last the two saw of each other.
``I would think of him in passing,'' Duke said. ``I didn't know where he was or if he was still around.''
Drake was more aggressive in his desire to see his old friend.
Soon after getting discharged from the Army, the two men corresponded with each other for three years, until one of Drake's letters to Duke was returned with a stamp from the post office stating that no one lived at that address and that the street no longer existed.
Thinking the post office erred, Drake wrote again and again but to no avail.
``I didn't know what to do, didn't know how to contact him,'' said Drake, a retired crane operator. ``That went on about one year or two. I wondered what he was doing, how he was getting along. This is where I started my long search.''
He wrote to the Department of Personnel for Army, Social Security offices, congressmen. He researched newspapers in the area of Duke's last address and asked the newspaper to print a letter to the editor from him looking for this person.
He wrote to the Bureau of Vital Records and Health Statistics, signed documents in his wife's name hoping that would help, put an ad in a magazine called Veterans of Foreign Wars and even sent money to different people on talk shows who claimed they could find anyone. All he got back from them were canceled checks.
It wasn't until almost a year ago that Drake got Duke's phone number through an Armed Forces Locator Directory book and called his friend.
``That was it,'' Drake said. ``That made my day. After 42 or 43 years of chasing that sucker, that's got to be him.''
``It was a heck of a feeling,'' Duke said, recalling the phone call from Drake.
Peg answered the phone that day and listened on the other line as the two talked for the first time.
``Well I tell you it was like he lived next door,'' she said. ``They talked for two hours.''
``I'm not that much of a conversationalist, but it was easy to talk to him,'' Duke said.
For the last eight months the two have been writing letters back and forth and making plans to visit. The final meeting, Peg said, was an emotional high.
``He (Drake) opened that door and the minute he put his arms around us, it felt just like family,'' she said.
``Like myself, he's got a few more extra wrinkles and his hair's almost white, but his favor is still there,'' Drake said of his buddy. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by HEIDI GLICK
Forrest Duke, right, visited his old Army buddy, Otis Drake, in
Norfolk.
by CNB