Even 30 years after leaving military service, Victor McGovern perked up from a wheelchair when he heard Brenda McGarvey sing the Air Force service song.
More than three years after entering hospice care, McGovern’s caretakers wanted to give him the opportunity to relive his military past by touring vintage military-style planes and mementos in a hangar at the Porter County Regional Airport on Monday.
After 18 years working mostly as an Air Force mechanic and driver, McGovern developed a kinship for the service that his caretakers wanted to return.
Wearing a navy blue Air Force hat, McGovern, 69, of Gary, spent about an hour in the hangar. Being in the military gave him the opportunity to travel around the world twice, something he relished, said Brenda McGovern, 65, his wife of 10 years.
“He’s going to talk about this for a long time,” she said.
Originally from Minnesota, McGovern declined to answer why he originally joined the service.
“I was a bad boy,” he said.
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His wife said the story began after a chance encounter with police.
“He was speeding with a cop” and got away, she said. “But, the cop knew who he was and met him at his house.”
His choices were limited — pay a fine, go to jail for a month, or join the military, she said.
McGarvey, Unity Hospice’s director of program development and herself an Air Force veteran, said before McGovern’s arrival that their hospice looks for opportunities to reconnect patients with memorable parts of their past.
For veterans, reconnecting them with their military service — even in hospice — has had some emotional responses.
“It’s the feel of being in a hangar is a moment again back in time for him that he remembered and he loved,” she said.
After learning that his hospice chaplain Steve Buchelt was a civilian pilot, it helped develop a kinship between them. Buchelt gave McGovern a small tour of the hangar’s office.
“You don’t know how much I appreciate this,” McGovern told hospice staff.