Racing Toward Recovery. Lew Freedman

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      I had picked out the Oregon College of Education to attend college and I was being awarded a small football scholarship, too, with plans to enroll in school in the fall of 1972. I was spending the summer fishing in Hydaburg in Southeast with some friends when the notice came to my home that I was being drafted into the United States Army.

      In 1970, the government changed the draft to a lottery system based on your birthday. It was a random drawing that listed when you might be called to serve with numbers 1 through 365, for each day of the year. They did this for a few years and then dropped the lottery altogether. In 1972 I was one of the last draftees into the army.

      I had to report in August. I had my physical done in Anchorage. I should have tried to get a deferment because of college, but I did not do that. I thought I would serve my time and then take advantage of the GI Bill to go to school. So I decided to follow through with the draft and report. They sent me to Fort Ord, California, for my basic training.

      Fort Ord is near Monterey, California, a very pretty area. Up until that time, even though alcohol was becoming common in Akiak, I had never had a drink, never tasted beer. But at basic training we had weekends off to go to town sometimes and the guys would say, “Come with us. Come with us.” That was the first time I tasted beer, my first Coors. I was twenty years old.

      Although I had other plans for college in Oregon I wasn’t opposed to going into the military. My dad was in the National Guard. I was familiar with the uniforms. He was in charge of the Akiak unit of the Alaska Army National Guard. He’d go to training periodically, so I had some idea about the military. And, of course, my oldest brother, Frank, was a veteran. He was in the National Guard by then and my second oldest brother, Ted, was in the army serving in Vietnam. I think the Williams family did its service to the US Army.

      After I completed my basic training in California I had a couple of weeks off and I went to the Portland, Oregon, area for a visit. I had made friends with a bunch of guys from Native communities in that area and during the time I visited they had a bunch of basketball tournaments going on different reservations. I joined up with a team. I hooked up with a squad from Chemawa school and decided to play Indian ball for two weeks before resuming my army commitment. I was a five-foot-nine guard. That was how I spent my vacation from the army. Then I went back to California and it was somewhere between six and eight weeks later that I received orders that I was going to be deployed to South Korea. After I got the orders I got another two weeks off and went back to Portland to play some more basketball.

      I was a private just starting out, but while I was at Fort Ord (which was closed in 1994) I was selected to be a platoon leader. That was a new form of leadership required and again part of my overall education. It was a very, very good experience. Between the leadership school and the army I was making a lot of friends from around the country. The interesting thing is that to go to South Korea I had to go back through Alaska. I flew from California to Seattle to Anchorage and then on to Seoul.

      While we were fighting in Vietnam the army had a large presence in South Korea. And all of these years later there is still concern over the DMZ between South Korea and North Korea left over from the Korean War. That goes back to the time when I was born.

      It was not a high alert operation at the time, though. It was peace time in Korea, though not in Vietnam. There was some tension at all times wondering about missiles being fired between the two Koreas. We were looking at the “Honest John” rocket missiles and we had ongoing training in case North Korea fired missiles. We were there for defensive purposes. There was always concern in the military about the whole peninsula area. At that time China loomed over things. There was always the feeling that China was North Korea’s ally and that if something happened China with its huge population would get involved. I don’t think that would occur today.

      But really, nothing big happened like that while I was there. I was able to move around Korea quite easily. Actually, my appearance as an Alaska Native man was similar to the Koreans’ so they would talk to me. I looked like them and I blended in very well with the Korean population. The language was different, of course, and their ways were a little different. But I took up tae kwon do, the martial arts discipline. Six days a week I trained at night after a day of work, practicing my karate-like skills. Two hours at a time six days a week. That’s what I did with my evenings.

      Taking up Asian martial arts was good for my body and my mind. It is not only a physical discipline. There is a mental toughness necessary. It did actually help me on the Iditarod Trail sometimes in terms of being able to withstand adversity. Sometimes during the Iditarod when things aren’t going well and you are very tired and extremely cold and the dogs are having problems and not eating and you get dehydrated and sleep-deprived you go, What the heck am I doing here? You start to wonder if you should quit the race and go home. But that martial arts training, training consistently and training hard, made me a stronger person. I was able to defend myself—not to have a skill to beat up others—and had discipline. So I didn’t quit.

      I was in South Korea for six months. I also participated in traditional Korean festivities. I got interested in the culture, a new culture for me, and observed the special dates, the traditional dancing, and activities that Elders conducted. I liked the Korean language. It was different from what I had known, but I really enjoyed what they had to offer there.

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