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LAKE LINDEN -- Lake Linden author John Gagnon has a rare talent: bringing the people of this region to life on the pages of his books. His latest--Old Northland Warriors--takes readers to the battlefront and back home again with nine veterans of three wars.
Published by McFarland & Company, based in Jefferson, North Carolina, the book tells the tales of three veterans of World War II, three who fought in Korea and three who served in Vietnam. Two of them--Joe Enrietti and Jake Jackovich--have been profiled in Marquette Monthly magazine.
Joe Enrietti of Mohawk is 101, one of the oldest living veterans of World War II. A bomber tail gunner, he was the only survivor of a plane crash in training.
His crew was deployed to a base in Liverpool, England. They flew bombing missions over France, Germany and Switzerland. He was tail gunner in a plane named Angel, the lead plane in his squadron.
Joe's crew never lost a man, but they went through three planes. A landing gear jammed on his first plane, and it did a belly flop along the runway. The second one took flak after dropping its bombs and lost two engines, but made it safely back to base.
Did it bother Joe to drop bombs, knowing that homes, schools and churches, men, women and children were being hit? Being high in the air somehow made it "cleaner," he says. "In the infantry, you see the person you kill. That's pretty dirty. I think you have to live with that for the rest of your life."
The second World War II veteran profiled in the book is Wesley Loosemore, a bomber radio operator. Born in Skanee in 1923, he flew 35 missions with the 303rd bomb group. He told Gagnon he could smell fear before, during and after a bomber mission. "It's pungent, a powerful odor. It stinks," he said, adding: "I've never smelled that since."
Uno Isaacson, the author's third World War II profile, was an infantryman from Calumet. He weighed only 106 pounds and had to heft 100 pounds of gear for 25 miles in training. During the war, he shot two men dead at point-blank range.
"What's it like to kill someone?" Gagnon asked him. "You gotta be heartless," Isaacson replied. "It's a helluva way to think."
Gagnon's Korean War vets were Pete Capello, Paul "Ozzie" Winquist and Leonard Kyllonen. Capello was a combat engineer. He told Gagnon he had seen more mayhem in the Copper Country mines than in a lull during the war.
Winquist was a machine gunner. He said the highlight of his time in Korea was his family sending him the Daily Mining Gazette. Living in constant danger, he explained, he kept thinking about family and friends, and he wanted to read about them.
Kyllonen was a rifleman who faced intense combat. Gagnon was only person he had ever talked to at length about the war. He said told one other person a little bit, but he never told his parents or family anything about his experiences in Korea.
All of the Vietnam veterans whom Gagnon profiled were Marines. All of them were wounded, and they all ended up at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital.
Ray DeRoche, a rifleman and tunnel rat, was badly wounded. "They thought he was a goner," Gagnon says.
Jake Jackovich, a rifleman and grenadier, lost a leg. He had been a competitive runner, and he didn't run again for 47 years. A prosthetic device called a running blade finally got him back in the race. He's since run in four consecutive Canal Runs and completed a 13-mile half marathon.
Neil Isaacson, a machine gunner, grew up near Calumet. He was two weeks away from an R&R break in Australia when he tripped a Viet Cong booby trap. It blew up in his face and blinded him. The son of Uno Isaacson, a Korean war vet whom Gagnon also profiled, Neil battled cancer after he got home. He died from complications of his war wounds at the age of 68.
Gagnon, who grew up in Hubble, has always wanted to be a writer. He got a B.A. in journalism from Wayne State University and a Master's degree in writing from Northern Michigan University. After working as a reporter in Colorado and Missouri, he came back to the Copper Country to do promotional writing for what was then Suomi College and finally for Michigan Technological University.
He has written three books. In addition to Old Northland Warriors, Gagnon authored Hard Maple, Hard Work, a collection of profiles of loggers, foresters, syrup makers, merchants and scientists who work in the U.P.'s renowned forests, the only place in the world that produces coveted birds-eye maple. The book's publisher is Northern Michigan University.
Lake Superior Profiles shares the stories of a wide variety of people who live and work on the big lake, which Gagnon calls "the unsalted sea.” They are from Michigan, Canada, Wisconsin and Minnesota, ranging from a ricer and a botanist to fishers, scientists, boatsmen and monks. The publisher is Wayne State University.
Gagnon belongs to a local writers' group that meets monthly. The late Dennis Walikainen, a fellow writer and colleague of Gagnon's at Michigan Tech, started the group 26 years ago. He named it the Dixon Ticonderoga Writers’ Group.
"The guys helped me with all the stories in this book," says Gagnon. When people ask what the group does, he tells them: "We get drunk and insult each other. But I jest. They’re a good bunch."