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thedrifter
02-11-07, 07:25 AM
Iraq war's deaths give life to songs

Web Posted: 02/11/2007 12:59 AM CST

Scott Huddleston
Express-News

SPRING BRANCH — A songwriter often must endure a lost love or a brush with death to reach a new creative plateau.

For Gary Lenz, it took the war in Iraq and the deaths of two young men from San Antonio.

Lenz almost always has a song in his head, whether he's hanging Sheetrock, feeding his horses or driving his pickup on a winding Hill Country road. But it took two wrenching stories from the war to connect him to something he's spent years searching for — music that flows from the heart.

Joseph Graham, a veteran police officer, didn't know what to think when Lenz, a drywall contractor, called him last summer. Lenz said he'd written a song about Graham's son, Lance Graham, a Marine killed by a suicide bomber.

He wanted a photo of the fallen Marine for an album cover.

"I wondered if he was some kind of weirdo," Graham said. "I've come across people who like to collect things from the dead, and they're just weird."

Lenz dropped by on a Friday night, when Graham was having a barbecue with his family and Marines who served with his son. Two of them had seen Lance die in an ambush in 2005.

Lenz played his song, "Won't Be Comin' Home," on an old cassette player from Graham's garage. The song tells of a soldier's heartfelt "death letter," like one Lance had written in Iraq.

What his parents and friends heard through muffled speakers was a simple, three-minute country-folk ballad, with the sweet, plaintive sound of mandolins and with lyrics based on the young Marine's last message home:

"I'm writing you this letter to all I truly love; I've gone to better places, on the wings of a white dove; And I think I've made a difference for the people that I've known; And I've met my beloved maker, and I won't be comin' home."

A hush followed. Some of the Marines had tears.

It was hard to listen to, but touching, Joseph Graham said.

"It surprised me," he said. "I had been wondering, 'Can this guy actually sing?' But it was really nice."

Lenz left that night with the father's blessing, and photos of the departed Marine.

Some of Lance's closest friends, including Ashley Hildebrand and his mother, can't hold back tears when they hear the song. They've listened to it over and over, thinking about the tall, muscular Marine and all the other fallen troops.

"The song really is for all of us who've lost someone we love," Suzanne Hildebrand said.

She said she's grateful to Lenz for writing and performing a powerful tribute, one that likely will be played at a local volleyball tournament held in Graham's memory every July.

"What a lovely thing to do, to have the talent, the ability and the heart to do that," she said.

Lenz, 56, has dreamed for 25 years of making an album. He's spent countless hours on his music, when he's not busy with work or his wife and two sons. In 2002, a Nashville producer with Aladdin Records told him he had talent, but needed to improve his songwriting.

Two years later, a news article about a local soldier killed in Iraq gave him an artistic spark.

Some use exercise or crafts to channel their energy when they're worried or stressed. Lenz picks up his steel-string acoustic guitar. Under an open sky, to the ambient sounds of horses, dogs, hens and roosters, he weaves words and music together on his 22-acre spread.

His first song about Iraq, "White Dove," was based on a 2004 San Antonio Express-News article about a ceremony at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery on the one-year anniversary of the burial of Pvt. Robby Frantz, 19. Frantz was killed by an insurgent's grenade in Baghdad.

During the 2004 observance, one of two doves released to symbolize peace fluttered onto Frantz's headstone, amid hundreds of other markers, instead of flying off into the distance. His 3-year-old daughter, one of the first San Antonio children left fatherless by the war, began petting the gentle white bird.

Lenz drank his morning coffee as he read the article about the ceremony. He spent the next few hours writing a song, including these words:

"They knew the dove would help him, to find his way home; The Lord took him by his hand, the next thing he was gone."

The song was the first of six he's written during the war. Most are on lighter topics — love and life in general. One is a tribute to children of the fallen that he crafted on his own.

"I'm really not good with words," Lenz said. "Since I wrote that first song, my songwriting has really come along."

Frantz's mother, Kim Smith, said she's proud Lenz wrote a song about her son and wants to use his photo on the album. By telling Frantz's story without naming him in the lyrics, the song is both personal and a homage to all the troops who have died, she said.

"He's got a big heart to want to do this," Smith said. "I'm very grateful to him."

Growing up in San Antonio, Lenz began playing polkas on an accordion, like his dad, at 5. He later picked up a guitar and sang Elvis and Beatles tunes, and performed "I'm Into Something Good," a 1960s Herman's Hermits hit, at a junior high school talent show.

In the 1980s, he played in country dance halls. Now, he records with a band. He personally prefers Toby Keith and George Strait, but has taken a liking to his sons' rock music.

The closest he ever came to military duty was in 1969. He drew a 202 in a local draft lottery, when other young men with numbers up to around 175 were being sent to Vietnam.

He believes his song about Graham, with lyrics based on an Express-News article published last year, is his best ever. It will be the title track of a 10-song album, which he'll release this spring, if he can scrape up cash to have the disks printed.

Using his own label, Short Horse Records, Lenz plans to have 500 CDs printed to sell for $10 each. For each one sold, $1 will support a fund for Frantz's young daughter, he said.

"What I want is for people to hear the songs about the soldiers," Lenz said.

"I can't imagine writing a death letter," he said. "I'm trying to say what the soldiers are trying to say, like he said in his letter, about belief in an afterlife. I'm trying to say things to help the families feel a little better."

The war in Iraq has generated scores of protest and tribute songs, mostly by lesser-known artists. Few have gotten much radio airtime.

He knows a song about Iraq may be too gloomy and controversial to break that trend. But with a strong singing voice and tender lyrics about two of the most poignant local stories the war has generated, he's earned a few loyal fans — those who loved the men behind the songs.

"He's put so much of himself in this," Smith said. "He had to be personally touched by the two men's' stories to do this. That's admirable, in every sense of the word."

When Joseph Graham hears the song about his son, who was buried near Frantz at Fort Sam, he wonders how many fallen troops would have wanted to reassure their families, as his son did in the death letter.

"The song isn't just about Lance. It's something for all the boys," he said.

Maybe it's worth listening to one more time.
shuddleston@express-news.net

Ellie