Updated: Saturday, May. 24, 1997 at 17:37 CDT Carving out a tribute to veterans club
By Dave Lieber Star-Telegram
For weeks, Ed Terry of Hurst kept asking George Dionis the same question.
"When are you going to get that table?"
"It's coming, Ed," promised Dionis, owner of Danny D's Pit Bar B-Q in Hurst. "It's coming."
Terry tried his best to wait. He was dying, and seeing the special table was his final wish.
The ash table was special to Terry and a dozen other men because it was designed for them. They are the members of Danny D's Coffee Club -- World War
II and Korean War veterans who gather at 3 p.m. each weekday at Dionis' barbecue joint on Bedford-Euless Road. These fellows drink coffee and attempt to solve the world's problems.
"They're a bunch of great guys," Dionis says. Since 1986, these veterans have hung out at his barbecue joint. The table was Dionis' tribute to them.
A month ago, the table finally arrived. It was a beauty. Dionis placed a brass plaque in the center that states: "Danny D's Coffee Club. Established 1986. Solvers of World Problems."
Dionis asked each of the regulars to bring in an old photograph of himself in military uniform. He placed the photos beneath a plastic veneer on the table. Even a spilled cup of coffee can't hurt them.
Terry's photograph shows him as an Air Force belly gunner on a B-25.
But Terry never got to see the table. He died four days after it arrived.
The day of his funeral, the table stood empty as the coffee clubbers went to say their final goodbyes.
The next day, Danny D's Coffee Club was back again.
In the past month, however, two more regulars whose photographs are saved for posterity beneath the plastic have passed away.
Forrest Spurrier of Bedford, who once served as an aide to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Dan Clark of Hurst, a former Air Force man, left their spots at the table.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day, and the dozen remaining coffee clubbers have plenty to think about.
They say that if they could have one special wish, it would be for Terry, Spurrier and Clark to share more cups of coffee with them.
"In 10 years, we'll all be gone," says Jack Ferguson of Hurst. "We're kind of like a brotherhood. There's not anything that one would ask of the others that we wouldn't do."
Each weekday afternoon, the fellows stroll in. Each drops $1 in a cup to pay for the coffee.
They talk about World War II, the Dallas Cowboys, the Texas Rangers, politics, fishing, hunting and lying. The lies are usually about fishing and hunting.
These fellows laugh and tease one another. Mostly, though, they love one another like brothers.
When one of them goes away forever, the others shed a tear or two.
Dionis, who served in the Navy in the 1970s, said it's almost impossible for younger men and women to understand what these men went through as soldiers.
The declining popularity of Memorial Day is a testament to this lack of understanding.
"Most people today have never fought in a war and don't realize what it's like to fight and save the freedoms we have," Dionis said.
Ferguson remembers the words of his commander who, before one assault, told his men:
" `Boys, all of us are going in, and we're going in to win. Some of us aren't going to make it. But that can't be your attitude. If you're going in, you have to go
in to get out.'
"We never did think we'd live to see the future. Our goal was to win the war and go home."
They won, and they came home. They married, raised children and worked most of their lives. Now they're retired and tomorrow is supposed to be the special day for their departed friends and family members who gave everything they could on behalf of their country.
But it hurts when they see that so few apparently care.
So to the remaining members of Danny D's Coffee Club -- Ferguson, Joe Watson, Louis Goeke, Fred Moser, Don Coggins, Norman Williams, Leo Templer, John Burns, Ed Foster, George Brandsma and the others -- remember that tomorrow truly is your special day.
Tomorrow is also for the late Ed Terry, Forrest Spurrier and Dan Clark.
Not everyone has forgotten you.
And your photographs are enshrined in that special table forever.
Dave Lieber's Northeast Beat column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays in the Star-Telegram. � 1997 Fort Worth Star-Telegram