For as long as there’s been war, there has been a need to comfort those who fight it. The horrors of the battlefield, the inhumanity and pain, they stay with soldiers.
Enter chaplains, whose existence dates back to the medieval church. The Rev. John Hurt was America’s first military chaplain, appointed in 1791. He fought seven years in the Revolutionary War. With him, the role was formalized.
And so Walter Palmisano, who lives in Moran and recently became the Veterans of Foreign Wars chaplain for the state of Kansas, carries on the legacy of a group who, as described in the VFW chaplain’s charter, “shall be concerned with the spiritual needs of the members.”
But it happened almost by accident.
PALMISANO, 70, wasn’t a real big military guy. In fact, while his late wife, Jo Cuppy, was alive, he never got close to a VFW post.
Hiis military service just wasn’t something he talked a lot about. A military police officer in Vietnam, Palmisano grins as he says he “mostly brought pilots who were too drunk to drive back to the base. I spent most of my time trying to keep them out of trouble, not get them in it.”
Stationed at an air base in Can Tho, Vietnam, he was medically discharged after about a year.
And that was that. Palmisano returned to his native New Orleans, married his high school sweetheart, had a daughter and worked as an environmental engineer, and then as a curator of a zoo in the reptile department, which he describes as “kind of life being on a roller coaster – it’s scary, but you know it’s safe. The scariest things are behind the glass.”
It was a lot of fun. But then came the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition, a World’s Fair held in New Orleans. A woman from Moran showed up; it was Jo Cuppy. “And you can put the rest together on what brought me here,” Palmisano said.
THE YOUNG couple married, settled in Bronson, and had a son, Seth Cuppy. During their time together, Palmisano didn’t think much of his time in Vietnam.
“Every once in a while, Jo would touch me on the shoulder when we were at the VFW,” he said. “She had a strange sort of pride in my service. Maybe it was just the free medical care,” he laughed. But it seemed to Palmisano that his time in Vietnam mattered to her, almost more than it did to him.
Jo passed away from cancer in 2015. After her death, Palmisano started to think more about his service, and his late wife’s pride in it. Maybe connecting with the VFW could be a way to honor her memory. And so on a whim, he attended a meeting at VFW Post No. 6324 in LaHarpe. It was a baptism by fire.
The acting chaplain was sick. “So they asked if I would step in and serve as chaplain,” remembers Palmisano. “I didn’t even know anyone. They told me, ‘Just read from this, and we’ll tell you when to stop.’”
Go figure. But as the chaplain’s health declined, “I just sort of served in that place and read the part,” said Palmisano.
Eventually, Palmisano became a member of the post and its official chaplain. He began attending district meetings and ended up chaplain for Kansas’ District 3, which includes LaHarpe.
