The Little Boy

Michael Bruce Croxdale, Bob Moore's nephew, was more than just an excited little boy heading for the center of attention when the famed picture was taken. True, he loved the spotlight. But he was very much a part of the family that was celebrating the homecoming.

"I worshipped him," recalled Bobby, who was five years younger. "He was about as close to being a brother as you could ask for."

The boys' mothers were sisters, close in age and in spirit. Their fathers were buddies, both serving in the military and returning to prominent positions in the community.

In his family and in his community, Mike Croxdale always stood out. He was a paradox: an outgoing loner, a perpetual boy who pursued his passions and a man who served others with remarkable courage.

As a boy, he was regarded as one of the smartest kids in the Villisca school, skipping third grade.

Classmates smile when asked about Croxdale. Few knew him well, but they remember him well. He was flamboyant, brilliant, funny, different, playful.

Susie Enarson, former mayor of Villisca, laughed as she pointed to a white spot on her hand: "I still have a scar from when he showed me how a match burns twice."

Croxdale's penchant for the spotlight had him on stage, playing Arthur Godfrey in a high school program, when he had his first epileptic seizure.

The seizures were powerful and frightening, said Jacky Adams, his high school English teacher and lifelong friend. She remembers Croxdale as a young adult tumbling head-first down her concrete steps in a seizure. Medication eventually controlled the seizures.

Croxdale was fascinated by the workings of two complex systems - the human body and the souped-up car. "Here's somebody who probably could have ended up being a car mechanic or a physician and he would have been as happy with either one," Bobby said. "It was either anatomy or car mechanics."

When Croxdale was 13, his grandfather bought a jalopy that didn't work. Croxdale got it running, then moved on to slicker, sleeker models. All his cars became hot rods - "chopped and channeled and louvered hoods and side pipes, whatever was popular," Bobby said. Croxdale had a Model A, a '55 Ford, a '40 Oldsmobile, a '57 Chevy that he supplied with fuel injection long before that feature became common.

Croxdale drove like he lived - fast. He'd take his hot rods out onto the gravel country roads, racing other boys at 85 to 95 miles an hour.

Mrs. Adams remembers Croxdale expressing his disdain for Shakespeare, saying, "I'm never going to be so grown up that I'm going to think this is any good."

"Some of us grow up," Mrs. Adams replied, "and some of us don't."

At the University of Colorado, Croxdale fell in love with mountain climbing and philosophy, his first major.

Croxdale loved folk and rock music, playing Woody Guthrie songs on the banjo when he was in high school and later falling in love with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, ZZ Top and Willie Nelson.

A voracious reader, Croxdale insisted that Bobby read "The Grapes of Wrath" and eventually all of John Steinbeck's works while he was still in high school.

"My interest in the arts and literature came from Mike," Bobby said.

In 1960, after his sophomore year, Croxdale married Judith Gerow, a freshman from California. Nearly, two years later they had a son, Leyton.

Judith, now a botany professor at the University of Wisconsin, was drawn to his extroverted nature, amazed at his comfort in any social situation. In time, though, as Croxdale's drinking escalated, his outgoing personality carried to extremes. "Everyone was really tired of him requiring center stage," she recalled. "I spent a lot of years cringing mentally because his behavior was so off the wall."

Croxdale followed his father into medical school and the Army. Military service was virtually mandatory after a doctor completed his internship, even if he had epilepsy.

By the time he left for Vietnam in 1967, Croxdale was an alcoholic. "Don't blame that on the war," Judith said.

He also was a heavy smoker. "He believed if it's worth doing, it's worth doing to excess," Bobby said. "He didn't just smoke, he smoked Lucky Strikes."

The marriage was over before Croxdale went overseas. They didn't divorce, so she would be eligible for widow's benefits.

Croxdale was in his father's old unit, the Americal Division, a hybrid outfit of infantry and light armor. He later described the field hospitals of the television show and movie "M*A*S*H" as far better than his working conditions. He was the sole doctor traveling with a combat unit, treating soldiers before they reached the field hospitals.

Whenever possible, Croxdale worked at a Vietnamese children's hospital, providing medical supplies pilfered from the military.

In addition to his medical gear, Croxdale carried an M-16 rifle and two .45-caliber pistols. When his unit was being overrun, the doctor grabbed a gun to join the fray. He killed five enemy soldiers.

On Dec. 23, 1967, a man in Croxdale's unit was injured by a land mine in the Tam Ky province. With no map showing where the mines were, Croxdale led a team of corpsmen into the minefield to treat the man and bring him out. For his "truly outstanding courage," Croxdale received the Soldiers Medal, with a "V" for valor.

He remembered walking through jungle that was wet with herbicide sprayed by American planes to strip away the foliage that provided cover for the Viet Cong. His clothes would get soaked with the chemical day after day, with no chance to do laundry for weeks at a time. The herbicide was Agent Orange.

A cannon explosion nearby when Croxdale was using his stethoscope ruptured his eardrums, causing a lifelong hearing loss.

The drugs Croxdale used to control his epilepsy disintegrated in the jungle's heat and humidity, and he suffered grand mal seizures at the front. The seizures weren't a quick ticket home, though. This was Vietnam and the Army needed doctors. He stayed until his year was up.

The war followed Croxdale home. The innocent sounds of night, or even the silence of a peacetime night, interrupted his sleep.

Exactly how much Croxdale was haunted by the war no one would know. "He didn't talk too much about the really bad parts," Leyton said.

Jim Branan, Croxdale's best friend from high school, visited after the war and remembers him telling of all the wounded soldiers he had treated. Croxdale quoted Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman: "War is hell."

Croxdale's drinking got worse during and after his stay in Vietnam. "He was getting up in the middle of the night to drink," Judith said.

Studying to become a dermatologist, he flunked his test for board certification. "It was the first time he'd ever failed intellectually," Bobby said. "That was the wake-up call."

Croxdale went to a rehabilitation center for doctors and never had another drink.

He eventually passed the test and became a dermatologist, a field he chose partly because he seldom had to worry about patients dying. After several years practicing in small Iowa towns and hating the winters, he started his dermatology practice in Las Cruces, N.M. He saw his patients in embroidered blue jeans.

Croxdale dried out with the same enthusiasm he had brought to drinking. He became a friend to whom anyone in Alcoholics Anonymous could turn, especially another Vietnam vet. "There wasn't anything he wouldn't do or give to those veterans," said Bobby, who attended an AA meeting with Croxdale once.

Croxdale didn't give up the fast life, though, just drinking. He thought the best thing about being a doctor was that his income allowed him to live as he pleased.

He fell in love with Hawaii on his way to Vietnam and went back about 25 times. He never wanted to move there; that would spoil it. It was an escape.

He still loved his hot rods and luxury cars, trading annually and owning four or five at a time - a Rolls-Royce, a Jaguar, GTOs, Lincolns, Cadillacs, a TransAm, a white Challenger like the one Barry Newman drove in the 1971 movie "Vanishing Point."

He drove his cars to Las Vegas, often on a whim, wearing the flashiest of clothes.

"He loved Las Vegas," Leyton said. "In Las Vegas you can be anything you want to be."

As with cars, Croxdale went through a lot of wives, though Leyton remained his only child. After Judith came Sandy, then Anne, and finally Teri.

"Very few people could keep up with him," Bobby said.

"I don't know what Michael was looking for in life," Judith said, "but I don't think he ever thought he found it."

After some early contentious times over custody, Croxdale became a close father.

Leyton remembers spending summers with his dad and going to action and adventure movies, especially Clint Eastwood films. "We saw every spaghetti Western ever made."

Always, Vietnam stayed with Croxdale. If he wasn't wearing flashy clothes, he was wearing his khaki Army jacket. He wore it when he went to Washington in the mid-1980s.

Croxdale visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, wanting to read through the list of names etched on the black marble. He would find and remember the soldiers he had left behind, the friends whose wounds exceeded any help he could provide. He would find the name of Jerry Ziehe, the boy the Croxdales had taken in and raised as his older brother.

Those names Croxdale was expecting to find. The search was emotional, cathartic, the least he could do for brothers who had died in Vietnam. Then he found a name he wasn't expecting. Someone he had forgotten entirely. How could he have forgotten?

Croxdale bowed his head in anguish, his right hand resting on the wall.

Photographer Cynthia Johnson snapped his picture. She was on assignment for Discover magazine, illustrating a story on veterans with post-traumatic stress. She didn't talk to him or get his name. Like the homecoming picture, this one didn't show his face. He would be an Everyman, grieving for a fallen comrade.

But you didn't have to see Michael Croxdale's face to recognize him. That was his jacket, his shaggy hair, his flashy ring, made by a friend from a 1926 three-dollar gold piece. That was even his brand of cigarettes (he had switched by then to Pall Malls) in the left hand. Friends and family who saw the magazine recognized him instantly.

Croxdale thought the picture would make a powerful image on a T-shirt, to sell to raise money for veterans' causes. He called Ms. Johnson asking for the picture. She said he would have to pay for the rights. He got angry, saying it was his picture, why should he pay? He berated her for taking his picture without his permission and threatened to sue. Ms. Johnson quickly passed him along to a Time Inc. lawyer.

"I remember feeling that he was a little unhinged," she said.

He didn't sue and didn't make the T-shirts.

Several times, Croxdale returned to Villisca for visits, looking up old friends and always attracting attention with his fancy cars, long hair and gaudy appearance. "It was probably the first earring we'd seen on a male in Villisca," said classmate Judy Schroeder.

He always stopped for a visit with the old soldier he had greeted at the depot years before. However different their appearance or personality, Bob Moore and Mike Croxdale shared a bond of family and duty. Bobby said, "Dad kind of was amused by his interesting antics."

Croxdale quit smoking in his 40s, after decades smoking four packs a day of unfiltered cigarettes. He developed lung cancer, blaming it on Agent Orange.

Whatever the cause, the physician knew the fate he faced as the tumor on his lungs wrapped around his aorta. "He knew that he was going to bleed to death in a few seconds," Leyton said.

The man who craved center stage set about planning his finale. He commissioned a writer friend in AA to write his obituary. No somber just-the-facts send-off would do.

"Dr. Michael Croxdale truly lived his life taking all the pain and all the joy," read the obit. "He loved music, and cars with large, powerful motors. Not to be overlooked was the gusto he gave to casino gambling. He loved his fellow man and was there for them when they needed a helping hand."

As he was dying, Croxdale offered Bobby a gift. "He said, 'You don't have a mom and I've got a pretty good mom,' " Eva Croxdale recalled. The dying man asked his cousin to care for his aged mother.

The end came June 29, 1993. He was 52.

The funeral, planned by Croxdale, filled the 300-seat Graham Mortuary Chapel in Las Cruces. AA friends sat together to pay tribute to their flamboyant comrade and confidant.

Eric Clapton's emotional song "Tears in Heaven" opened the service. As the casket was being carried out, bagpipes played "Amazing Grace" and the tears flowed. "My Dad," said Leyton, "definitely knew how to make an exit."

Croxdale took one last trip to his beloved Hawaii, for burial in Honolulu.

Leyton, who lives in Kent, Wash., still has his father's favorite car, the only one he held onto for long. It's a huge 1978 Mercury Marquis, black with red leather and darkened windows, "bored and stroked, with dual exhaust and headers," Leyton said. In one vehicle, it combined Croxdale's loves of luxury, speed and ostentation.

His son drives the car, now with more than 200,000 miles, to work. Clipped to the visor, Leyton said, is his father's hospital identification badge. "Dad and I still drive around together in that car."

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