December 1962, Pueblo, Colorado, 110 mi south of Denver. The snow has been falling since Tuesday. The temperature on the bank thermometer across the street reads 14° inside Manny’s porn and loan on East 4th Street. A young man in a thin marine field jacket stands at the glass counter. He is 31 years old.
He served two tours in Korea. His left hand is wrapped in a wool scarf because he lost two fingers to frostbite at the chosen reservoir in December of 1950. On the glass between him and the porn broker, he has set down four objects. A silver star, a bronze star with V device, a purple heart with two oakleaf clusters, a campaign ribbon for the chosen few.
The porn broker is offering him $35 for all four. Three customers away from the counter, near the rack of secondhand winter coats, a tall man in a sheepkin coat and a snowfleck Stson is reading the price tag on a pair of Justin boots. He has not looked up. He has not turned around, but his hand has stopped moving on the price tag.
Nobody recognizes him yet. Here is the story. The young Marine’s name is Eli Tatum. He was born in Luna, Colorado in 1931. His father was a railroad mechanic for the Santa Fe line. His mother worked the laundry at the Atoro County Hospital. Eli enlisted in the Marine Corps in September of 1949, 3 months after he graduated from Luna High School.
He was 18 years old. He was a private first class with the First Marine Division when North Korea crossed the 38th parallel. He shipped out for Inchon in August of 1950. He was at the landing. He was at the push to the Yaloo. And in late November of 1950, he was one of 15,000 Marines who were surrounded at the Chosen Reservoir by 120,000 Chinese troops in temperatures that dropped to 36° below zero.
The story of what Eli Tatum did at Chosen is in the Silver Star Citation that now sits on Manny’s pawn counter. On the night of December 1st, 1950, Corporal Tatum carried two wounded men out of an overrun machine gun position, one at a time, under direct fire in a windchill of 50 below. His own hands froze to the stock of his M1 carbine.
When the corman finally pried him loose at the aid station, two fingers on his left hand came with the rifle. He came home in March of 1951. He spent 8 months at the Naval Hospital in San Diego. He married a PBLO girl named Ruthie Calderon at the courthouse in October of 1952. He took a job at the steel mill at Colorado Fuel and Iron and worked the open half furnaces for 10 years.
They had two children, a daughter named Margaret, born 1954, and a son named Daniel, born 1957. In the spring of 1962, Ruthie Tatum was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The doctors at Mercy Hospital said the treatment would cost $1,800, a figure that did not include the surgery already performed, which would cost another $700.
Eli’s mill insurance covered $400. The hospital had agreed to a payment plan in May. Eli had made every payment through October by working double shifts, but in November, the mill cut overtime when steel orders dropped. Ruthie’s chemotherapy was scheduled to resume on December 27th. The next payment was due on the 23rd.
It was $145. Eli Tatum had $11.50 in his wallet. He had not slept properly in 3 weeks. That morning, before sunrise, he had taken his Marine Corps shadow box down from the bedroom wall, removed the four medals one at a time, placed them in his father-in-law’s old cigar tin, and walked four miles into downtown PBLO through the snow.
He had passed Manny’s porn and loan twice before he could make himself open the door. Manny Gresko has owned the pawn shop on East 4th Street since 1947. He is 58 years old. He has seen Marines come through his door before. He has seen silver stars cross his counter four times in 15 years. He turns the silver star over in his fingers.
He reads the engraving on the back. Corporal Eli J. Tatum, United States Marine Corps, December 1st, 1950. Son, where’d you serve? Chosen, sir. Fox Company, 7th Marines. And these are yours? Yes, sir. Manny puts the silver star down. He sets it next to the bronze star and the purple hearts. He looks at the four medals laid out on the glass.
He looks at Eli’s left hand wrapped in the wool scarf. I can give you $25. Eli’s face does not change. He has prepared for this. Sir, that silver star alone is worth it’s worth what somebody will pay for it, son. And I don’t have a market for it. The collectors want civil war. They want Indian wars.
They don’t want Korea. Korea’s too fresh. Korea won’t be collectible for 30 years. Sir, the medals were issued. The citations are in the National Archives. The provenence is, Son, I know what provenence is. I’m offering you $25 for the four medals because I am being generous. I could offer you 10 and you would take it because it is December and you walked in here in a coat that has not been replaced since 1955.
Eli does not answer. Manny softens his voice. He has done this before. He knows the next part. Look, I’ll go to 35. That is my final number. That is more than I will get back on these. I am doing you a favor because I was in the Pacific in 44 and because my own boy did his service at Camp Pendleton in 58. $35.
Eli looks down at the four medals on the glass. He looks at the silver star. He thinks about the night of December 1st, 1950. the snow, the wind, the second man he carried who was named Pety Lynwood and who survived and went home to Indianapolis and sent Eli a Christmas card every year for the past 11 years. He thinks about the chemotherapy invoice in his coat pocket.
He thinks about Ruthie. $35. Eli says, “Yes, sir.” Manny opens his register. He counts out three 10 and a five. He slides the bills across the glass. He picks up the four medals one at a time and places them in a small velvet display tray under the counter. Eli folds the $35 into his wallet. He turns to leave.
He has made it two steps toward the door when a voice behind him says, “Son, where are you watching from tonight? Drop your state in the comments.” And if you’ve ever stood in a pawn shop with something on the counter that should not have been there, something your father gave you, something you earned at a cost nobody can read off the engraving, type the word remember, so we know you’re with us.” Eli turns around.
The man at the boot rack has set the Justin boots back on the shelf. He has taken his Stson off and is holding it against his chest. His hair is gray at the temples. His face is weathered in a way Eli almost recognizes from somewhere but cannot place. He is a tall man. He is older than Eli by about 25 years. Yes, sir.
The man does not walk toward Eli by about 25 years. Yes, sir. He walks past Eli toward the counter. Manny. Manny Greskco looks up. His mouth opens. He closes it. Mr. Wayne, those four medals you just put under the glass. I’d like to see them. Manny lifts the velvet tray and sets it on the counter.
The silver star, the bronze star, the two purple hearts, the chosen few ribbon. The man in the stson does not pick them up. He looks at the engraving on the silver star without touching it. Eli J. Tatum, Fox Company, 7th Marines. He turns to look at Eli. Eli has not moved from where he stopped two steps from the door.
Son, were you with Litenberg’s column on the breakout to Haruru? Eli’s mouth has gone dry. He has not heard Colonel Litenberg’s name spoken aloud by a stranger in 11 years. Yes, sir. From Udamni, December 1st through the 4th. The man in the Stson nod slowly. I was on a bond tour with Chesy Puller until 52.
He told me what your battalion did at Tokong Pass. He used the words, “The finest 14 hours of fighting in the history of the United States Marine Corps.” He did not exaggerate. He was not a man who exaggerated. Eli cannot speak. The man turns back to Manny. I’ll take the four medals, whatever your price was, Mr. Wayne. I just paid him 35.
I’ll pay you 100 cash today for the four pieces. That’s a fair markup on a transaction you completed 2 minutes ago. Manny does not argue. He picks up the velvet tray. He puts the four medals into a small Chammo bag from under the counter. The man in the Stson takes a long leather wallet from inside his sheepkin coat.
He counts out a $100 bill onto the glass. Manny picks it up. He puts the Shamuay bag on the counter. The man does not pick up the Shamoi bag. He turns and walks the four steps over to Eli Tatum. Son, hold out your right hand. Eli holds out his right hand. The man places the Shamway bag in Eli’s palm.
He closes Eli’s fingers around it. These do not belong on a porn counter in Pueblo. They belong on a wall in your house where your son can look at them when he is old enough to understand what his father did at 20 years old in temperatures that would have killed any other army on earth. Eli’s hand starts to shake.
The bag of medals shakes with it. He looks at the man’s face. His mouth tries to form words. He cannot get them out. Sir. Eli finally says, “Sir, I sold these. I took the $35. I cannot accept. You can because I am not giving them to you. I am giving them back to you. There is a difference.
They were never going to belong to anybody but you. The porn broker held them for 90 seconds. I bought him out of the transaction. Eli is still shaking his head. Sir, I cannot pay you back. I am here because my wife. The man holds up one hand. Son, why did you come in here today? Eli looks at him for a long time. The porn shop is quiet.
Manny has stepped back from the counter. The other two customers have stopped moving. My wife has cancer, Eli says. Ovarian, she has chemotherapy on the 27th. The hospital payment is due on the 23rd. I am $110 short. The man in the stson nods. What hospital? Mercy on Quincy Street.
And the doctor’s name, Dr. Ruben Halloway. The man nods again. He does not write any of it down. He turns to Manny. Manny, telephone. Manny slides the black rotary phone across the glass. The man in the stepson lifts the receiver. He dials the operator. Operator, connect me to Mercy Hospital in Pueblo, Colorado.
Billing department person to person. He waits. The call goes through. Yes, ma’am. I’d like to inquire about the account of Mrs. Ruthie Tatum, TA TUM, treating physician Dr. Ruben Halloway. I’m not the husband. I’m a friend of the family. I’d like to pay the balance in full and arrange for continuing treatment to be build to a private account in Nino, California.
Yes, ma’am. I’ll hold. The porn shop has gone completely silent. The man in the Stson stands at the counter with the receiver against his ear. He waits. He listens. He gives the woman on the other end a billing address, a telephone number, a bank reference. He hangs up. Son, he says to Eli, “Your wife’s account at Mercy Hospital is paid through her sixth round of chemotherapy.
Dr. Halloway’s office has been informed. There will be no more invoices to your house. You and your wife will receive a written confirmation by registered mail before Christmas Eve.” Eli’s knees go. He catches himself on the glass counter. The Shamay bag falls out of his hand. The silver star and the bronze star and the two purple hearts spill out onto the floor. The man in the stson kneels down.
He picks up the medals one at a time. He puts them back in the sham bag. He stands up. He places the bag in Eli Tatum’s coat pocket and buttons the coat over it. Son, look at me. Eli looks at him. You walked four miles through the snow this morning with something in a cigar tin that you should not have had to walk anywhere with.
I am going to ask you one thing in return for this morning. Just one thing. Will you do it? Eli nods. He cannot speak. When your boy is 15 years old, I want you to take that silver star down off the wall and I want you to tell him the name of the man you carried out at Tok Pass. I want you to tell him Pety Lynwood’s name.
And I want you to tell him that a stranger in Pueblo, Colorado in December of 1962 thought Pety Lynwood’s life was worth more than $35. That is all I want. Will you do that? Yes, sir. Good. He could have walked on. He is 55 years old. He has driven down from Denver that morning on his way to a Bureau of Indian Affairs meeting in Albuquerque about a film he is trying to get financed about Davy Crockett. He has a script in the truck.
He has a producer waiting on him at the London Hotel in Santa Fe. He has every reason to be 200 m farther south by sunset. He could have looked at the price tag on the Justin Boots and walked out the way he came in. He could have given Eli Tatum the $100 in cash and a handshake and a war story to tell at the PBLO VFW for the next 50 years.
That would have been the easy version. But instead, he picked up a black rotary phone and called Mercy Hospital and put a billing address in Enino, California against an unpaid chemotherapy account belonging to a steel worker’s wife he had never met. He puts his STSON back on. He tips it once at Manny Greskco.
He tips it once at Eli Tatum. He walks out of Manny’s porn and loan onto East 4th Street where the snow is still falling and he gets into a dusty rented Ford station wagon parked at the curb and he drives south on Highway 85 toward Trinidad and the Raton pass and Santa Fe and a Davy Crockett meeting he is going to be 3 hours late for.
Eli Tatum stands at the glass counter of Manny’s porn and loan with four medals in his coat pocket and $35 in his wallet and a hand that will not stop shaking. Manny Gresko walks around the counter. He picks up the $100 bill from the glass. He folds it in half. He walks over to Eli. He puts it in Eli’s other coat pocket. Son.
Manny says, “Take that home to your wife. I do not need this money. I have not deserved this money. I will not sleep tonight if I keep this money.” Eli does not have the words. He walks the four miles home through the snow. Have you ever sat down on a counter the things that proved you were braver than you ever felt? Have you ever sold the proof of your own life for less than the price of one week’s groceries? And has anybody ever in this world picked those things up off the counter behind you and handed them back to you and asked nothing in return except that you tell your son a name? Some moments do not happen to you. They happen for you. And the rest of your life is built on the floor of what they leave behind. Ruthie Tatum completed her chemotherapy in May of 1963. The cancer went into remission. It came back in 1971. She died in March of 1972 at the age of 41. at home in the bedroom of the small house on Spruce Street in PBlo with Eli holding her hand and their two children Margaret and
Daniel sitting on the foot of the bed. The hospital bill, every dollar of it from December 1962 through her final hospice care in 1972 was paid by a private account in Inino, California. The account was never closed. Eli never received another invoice from Mercy Hospital after that morning at Manny’s.
Not for surgery, not for chemotherapy, not for the morphine in her final week. Not for the funeral arrangements that the hospital handled on the family’s behalf when Eli could not. He never told anybody who had paid. He never told his children. He never told the men at the steel mill or at the VFW Post 1064 in Pueblo.
When neighbors asked how he had managed it on a steel worker’s wage, Eli would say, “Only a friend helped.” He would not elaborate. Eli Tatum worked at Colorado Fuel and Iron for 32 more years. He retired in 1994 at the age of 63. He never remarried. He raised his two children alone, the way his wife would have wanted them raised.
Margaret became a registered nurse and worked the oncology ward at Mercy Hospital from 1976 until her retirement in 2018, the same hospital where her mother had been a patient. Daniel followed his father into the steel industry, then into a mill foreman’s job in PBLO, then after the mill closed in 1982, into business for himself, running a small welding shop on East 6th Street, where he is still working at the age of 67.
The four medals went back onto the wall of the small house on Spruce Street the night Eli walked home from Manise. They stayed there for the next 60 years. The shadow box was the first thing visitors saw when they came in the front door. Eli never explained the story behind why the box had been empty for a few hours one morning in 1962.
He just said, “Those are mine from Korea.” When Daniel turned 15 in the spring of 1972, 2 months after his mother died, his father took the Silver Star down from the shadow box. He sat down with his son at the kitchen table. He told him about a night in December of 1950 at Tok Pass when the windchill was 50 below zero.
He told him about a marine named Pety Lynwood who had taken a Chinese bullet through the shoulder and could not walk. He told him about carrying Py Lynwood half a mile through the snow with hands that had frozen to a rifle stock. And then he told him, “Son, a stranger in this town once put this medal back in my coat pocket on a morning when I should not have taken it off the wall.
I told that stranger I would tell you his name when you were old enough to understand.” But the stranger did not give me his name. So, all I can tell you is what he asked me to tell you. He thought Pety Lynwood’s life was worth more than $35. And he thought your mother’s life was worth more than the price of one month’s chemotherapy.
That is all I know about him. That is all I will ever know about him. Daniel Tatum was 15. He did not understand the whole of it yet, but he remembered every word. Eli Tatum died in his sleep in February of 2003 in the same bedroom where his wife had died 31 years earlier. He was 71 years old. He was buried beside Ruthie at Imperial Memorial Gardens in Pueblo.
The four medals from Korea were buried with him at his request. He left a handwritten letter to his son that read, “The medals belong with me now. The story belongs with you.” Daniel Tatum cleared his father’s house in the summer of 2003. He was 46 years old. In the bottom drawer of his father’s dresser.
Beneath a stack of folded blue work shirts and his Marine Corps discharge papers, Daniel found a small wooden cigar box. Inside the cigar box were three things. A receipt from Manny’s porn and loan dated December 19th, 1962 for $35. Four military decorations returned to seller same day. Transaction voided. A cancelled check from a bank in Nino, California made out to Mercy Hospital of Pueblo dated December 19th, 1962 in the amount of $4,400.
The signature on the check was unreadable, but the printed account name beneath it read MM Productions and a folded letter on plain ivory paper dated December 19th, 1962 written in a square unhurrieded hand. The letter was addressed to Eli Marie. By the time you read this, I will be on the other side of Ratton Pass and most of the way to Santa Fe.
I am writing this in the parking lot of the Trinidad Cafe because I want it to reach you before you start to wonder whether the morning happened. It happened. The hospital is paid. Your wife will have her treatment. The medals are in your pocket where they belong. I want to tell you why I did this because I think you deserve to know.
I was on a bond tour in 1944 with a Marine sergeant named Henry Boltz who had been at Terawa. He told me what it was like to carry a wounded man under fire when you yourself were already half dead from exhaustion. I did not understand him at the time. I was a man making pictures. He was a man who had been on a beach.
There was no comparison. Henry Boltz died in a hotel room in San Diego in 1949 with no family and no money and a Navy cross in a dresser drawer that nobody knew was there. I have thought about Henry Boltz once or twice a year ever since. I have thought about the medals in that dresser drawer.
Today, when I walked into Manny’s and saw what you were doing, I understood that I was being given a chance to do for one marine what I had not been able to do for Henry Bolts. I did not save your life. I did not stand at Tok Pass. All I did was pay a hospital bill and pick four pieces of metal up off a glass counter.
That is the smallest possible thing a man could do. But I am the man who happened to walk in that door, and I am the man who could do it, so I did it. You owe me nothing. There is no debt here. If you ever feel the urge to repay me, you can do it by picking up a porn counter someday and putting somebody else’s medals back where they belong.
Tell your son the name Pety Lynwood. Tell him your wife survived because Pety Lynwood survived. That is the whole chain. That is the only thing worth telling him. Yours, Marian PS. If you ever come through Enino, the gate is on Old Oak Road. Ring the bell. Tell whoever answers. You are a chosen marine. They will know what to do.
Daniel Tatum read the letter sitting on the floor of his father’s bedroom. He read it three times. Then he laid it flat on the dresser beside the canceled check from MM Productions, beside the voided porn receipt from Manny Gresko. He understood for the first time that Marian was the man’s given name.
He understood for the first time that his father had known exactly who it was and had kept the secret for 41 years because the man had not signed a last name and had not wanted to be thanked. Marian Robert Morrison, born May 26th, 1907 in Winteret, Iowa, died June 11th, 1979 in Los Angeles, California.
Eli Tatum had outlived him by 24 years. In 2005, Daniel Tatum donated the canceled check, the voided porn receipt, and the folded letter to the PBLO Heritage Museum on North Union Avenue. He kept his father’s medals at his own home in his father’s original shadow box, hanging beside a framed photograph of Eli and Ruthie on their wedding day in October of 1952.
The three documents sit together in a small glass case on the second floor of the PBLO Heritage Museum between a 1950s Colorado Fuel and Iron Hard hat and a Korean War era Marine Corps utility cap. The placard reads porn receipt cancelled check and personal correspondence dated December 19th, 1962.
Following a chance encounter at Manny’s Porn and Loan on East Fourth Street, a private citizen of California paid in full the cancer treatment of a PBLO steel worker’s wife and returned the steel workers Korean War medals to him at no cost. The donor’s identity was confirmed by the recipient’s son in 2003 through the canceled check.
The donor never publicly acknowledged the transaction. The recipient kept the donor’s identity private for 41 years. The donor’s name is not on the placard. Daniel Tatum asked that it be left off. He said his father had kept the secret for 41 years out of respect, and the museum could keep it the same way. The afternoon light through the second floor window falls across the three documents for about an hour every day.
Manny’s porn and loan closed in 1989 when Manny Gresko died at the age of 85. The building on East 4th Street is now a barber shop. The glass counter where Eli Tatum set four medals down on a December morning in 1962 was hauled out to a salvage yard in Florence, Colorado in 1990. Nobody knows what became of it. Pety Lynwood, the man Eli Tatum carried out at Tokong Pass on December 1st, 1950. Lived in Indianapolis until 1998.
He sent Eli a Christmas card every year of his life. He died of a heart attack at the age of 70. He never knew about the morning at Manny’s. Eli never told him. The chain held. That was the whole thing. The chain held. Eli Tatum carried two wounded Marines out of a machine gun position at 50° below zero on December 1st, 1950 with hands that had frozen to a rifle stock.
12 years later, he carried a Silver Star and a chemotherapy invoice 4 miles through the snow in PBlo, Colorado, because there was nothing else left to carry. A stranger in a sheep-skin coat picked the medals up off a porn counter and put them back in his pocket and paid a hospital bill from a phone in a porn shop in 90 seconds and drove off towards Santa Fe before anybody could write his name down on a receipt.
That stranger never sent another check to Mercy Hospital. He never spoke about Eli Tatum on television. He never wrote about the Morning at Manny’s in any of his memoirs. He died in 1979, 24 years before Eli, and never said a word. He just bought four medals out of a transaction. He just made one phone call.
He just told a marine to tell his son a name. If this story reached you tonight, do me a favor. Pass it on. Share it with a Marine. Share it with a chosen family. Share it with anybody who has ever sat down on a counter the proof of something they were braver than they ever felt they had a right to be. Hit that subscribe button if you haven’t yet.
There are more Duke stories coming every night at midnight. And unfortunately, they don’t make men like John Wayne anymore.
