Korean war veteran Harvey Marvin stands Tuesday afternoon with his patriotic window display on his home at 222 Seventh St. Marvin puts up the images twice a year, on Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, in honor of veterans of all wars.
Story last updated at 11/11/2009 - 10:45 am
Korean War veteran Harvey Marvin, 76, doesn't want you to know about his bad dreams. He doesn't want you to know he lost most of his hearing to the recoil blast and concussion from the heavy artillery he fired. He doesn't even want you to know that he stood and saluted during the recent memorial service for the soldiers at Fort Hood.
"This isn't about me," Marvin said as he traced his finger over the photos posted on his window. "I just want people to know that freedom is not free. That is my message."
Twice a year on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, Marvin puts his window display up. On one side are newspaper photos of the Korean Memorial in Washington, D.C., and on the other are pictures of Vietnam. Cutouts from recent military caskets returning stateside and funeral services are dispersed among them.
Harvey left Mount Edgecumbe High School and enlisted in October 1950 to join his brother, Richard Marvin Sr., in the Korean War. He served through December 1954. He has 10 immediate nephews who served in Vietnam. His three sons had health problems and couldn't join the military. His three daughters married into the services, the oldest warning the younger two, "Don't bother to bring anyone home unless they are a veteran or in the military, or dad won't talk to them."
Marvin earned his general equivalency diploma after the war and graduated from the Metropolitan School of Business in Chicago on Jan. 11, 1967. He returned to work in Sitka.
He lost all his military issue clothes and photos from service in a house fire, but he doesn't want you to know that, or that the fire isn't the cause of those flashes he sees in dreams. He doesn't even want you to know he was part of the group that helped bring The Moving Wall memorial, a half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C., to Juneau for the 1985 Fourth of July celebration.
"The war is nothing that I want to talk about," Marvin said. "That's 55 years behind me. It talks to me enough inside. Lots of us didn't know why we were sticking our noses in there, but we believed in our homeland. The real concern is most people ignore the hardships related to the war that military personnel deal with the rest of their lives."
Harvey Marvin doesn't want you to know that during the Fort Hood Memorial service, when a singer began "Amazing Grace," he cried.
"I was doing all right until the lady sang," Marvin said, his eyes misting again. "I wouldn't want that to be part of a story."
Marvin says he needs to raise his flags now. His neighbors usually remind him if the window display isn't timely.
"You can write what you want," Marvin says. "But the real story is freedom isn't free; someone suffers for it."
• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@juneauempire.com.
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