Keith Stempfley was a quiet young man from a small town in Northern Minnesota. He always enjoyed singing, entertaining his grade school classmates who didn’t know he actually wrote some of the songs he sang. Kathi Baraga Chase was helping find people for what will be their 50 year class reunion in 2018. When they called for the names of veterans to honor at the reunion, Keith stepped forward and included the poem. So taken by her friends words, she reached out to her friend Donald Gaynor, Thinking the words were worthy of music. Keith, a man of peace, ended up enlisting. He didn’t end up on the front lines. He instead was given the position of notifying the survivors of those who so valiantly gave their lives. He, himself eventually developed PTSD, but remained at Ft. Lesley J McNair, Headquarters for the Military District of Washington in a position involving cases of soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital who shared the condition, to help get them get medically discharged. While attending San Francisco State he became involved with a veteran’s outreach program His words ARE his story and he dedicates this song not only to those who lost their lives, but to those that had to bring the worst possible news to surviving loved ones.

And here is a note I received on Facebook.
"Joanne, thank you for the most incredible birthday present, the most incredible gift, I have ever received. Twelve years after writing the poem that stopped my nightmares, forty-five years after the events that started all this in motion, because of your gift (your voice, your tune and the vital changes you made in my poem), I feel I finally have permission to cry about what I went through in the Army. I will be grateful to you as long as I live."

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