In honor of service: The Deans family

Teenage cadets stood at attention in starched uniforms, saluting as Lt. Col. Ken Deans shuffled up the stairs and into St. Thomas Academy on a sunny Tuesday in Mendota Heights.

"At ease, gentlemen," the 97-year-old Pearl Harbor veteran said with a chuckle.

He confessed that he recently had a tailor alter his old green Army uniform "so I'd have a little extra room for doughnuts."

Students at the all-male military school, wearing gray slacks, white shirts and black ties, soon packed into the Court, a two-story atrium where Deans (Class of 1930) and three other alumni were honored for their military service on the eve of Veterans Day.

The band tooted through "Anchors Aweigh," the choir sang "God Bless America" and senior Dan Freund, a fullback on the football team and member of the Junior ROTC, asked everyone assembled "to remember the soldiers, civilians and families affected by the Fort Hood massacre."

After a couple speeches and amid the building roar of a standing ovation, Deans stood up with a big grin to accept his medal. That's when the tears began to roll down the cheeks of Judy Deans, 56, the colonel's daughter-in-law from Pine Springs.

"It's a whole different ball game when you have a son serving," she said. "I got very emotional. It's very hard. "

Her son, Jamie Deans, 25, is an Army medic with the 82nd Airborne serving in Afghanistan. He so idolized his grandfather that he followed him into the military. Many of Jamie's 18 cousins back home were thinking of him as they watched their grandfather receive his medal Tuesday.

"Veterans Day has always been kind of a big deal for me because my grandfather was at Pearl Harbor," said 17-year-old Ian Deans of Mahtomedi. "Now, with Jamie in Afghanistan, it means even more."

Ian was proud to represent the family's third generation at Tuesday's ceremony, fittingly held beneath St. Thomas' Latin motto: "Ex Umbris in Veritatem," or "Out of The Shadows and into The Truth."

It was Ian who prompted his grandfather to start sharing his stories after decades in the shadows of silence. For years, Ken Deans ducked his six children's questions about World War II. "I lived it; I don't need to talk about," was his refrain.

But when Ian was in elementary school, that started to change.

"I was the one who kind of got interested and started asking the questions," Ian said. "And it just exploded from there."

With 1,000 World War II veterans dying each day, time is running out to hear the stories. That's why Ken Deans now is a frequent speakers at schools. He gave the St. Thomas football team a homecoming locker room pep talk: "Hit 'em high, hit 'em low; St. Thomas Cadets, go, go go!" And he'll be back at St. Thomas on Dec. 7, to recall the infamous attack 68 years ago that he witnessed with his late wife, Mildred, whom everyone called Billie.

Deans recalled that he had joined the Army in 1939 and was sent to Hawaii. He and Billie lived 25 feet off the beach, 12 miles from Pearl Harbor on the north end of Oahu. On patrol the night before, he was still sleeping at 7 a.m. on Dec. 7.

"My wife was walking on the beach when the Japanese torpedo bombers flew over so low, one of the pilots waved at her," he said. "And she waved back."

She ran in the house and asked what kind of maneuver this could be. "We didn't know who they were," he said.

He scampered outside and shook his head. The phones were dead. But the radio came on and confirmed "these were live bullets," Ken said. "Pretty soon, about 200 planes were flying over our house, and the roar was terrific. From then on, it was bomb, bomb, bomb."

The Deans braced for a Japanese invasion that never happened, and Ken Deans was quickly dispatched to fight the Japanese in the Pacific while his wife tended to the injured at Pearl Harbor. They wouldn't see each other for two years.

The Fleming Medal he picked up Tuesday will join the handful of World War II medals back at his home in Mahtomedi, where Deans still lives independently. Never mind that he was born in 1912 and retired from the military 50 years ago. "I feel the young people need to hear these stories," he said, "so they'll be ready when damnable things happen. Everything happens so fast that you have to put forth whatever personal effort you can."

Curt Brown • 612-673-4767