Shared meal offers people a chance to thank our veterans

One day last spring, 85-year-old Dave Toomey and his wife accepted an invitation to lunch at the Stanwood home of Bob and Carolyn Rawe.

“It was an excellent meal. We left full of lasagna,” said Toomey, of Camano Island.

He also left with a sense of shared experience. Around that table, Toomey felt a kinship despite barely knowing the Stanwood couple. There were a half-dozen others there for lunch. Toomey didn’t know them at all.

“We were strangers with one thing in common,” Toomey said. “We were survivors.”

The meal was an early outreach by a new organization, Take a Vet to Lunch. It started as a one-man effort by Bob Rawe, 63, who served in the Air Force in Vietnam.

Rawe sees a shared meal as a way for those who aren’t veterans to thank those who’ve served in the armed forces, and for veterans to share their stories or simply feel appreciated.

“My wife and I have been doing this at our house since the first of the year. It started out small,” Rawe said.

This weekend, they aim to take a big leap as Take a Vet to Lunch hosts a community dinner. The dinner is at 5 p.m. Saturday at the Arlington Assembly of God Church. Nonveterans have been asked to buy $15 tickets, which cover dinner for them and a free dinner for a veteran. Some families, organizations and businesses are hosting tables. Rawe hopes the dinner will draw as many as 160 people.

He has made contacts with veterans through the American Legion Post 92 in Stanwood and the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Arlington. “I have veterans coming from as far away as Oak Harbor, Mount Vernon, Everett, Marysville and possibly Concrete,” Rawe said.

He’s been in touch with many World War II veterans in the Stanwood-Camano area, but said finding younger veterans, those who’ve served in Iraq or Afghanistan, has been more challenging.

For those who haven’t been in the military, Rawe hopes face-to-face conversations with veterans will convey the magnitude of sacrifices so many have made for their country. “I want them to understand what veterans have been through on their behalf,” Rawe said. “Freedom is not free. These guys made a sacrifice.”

Toomey, for example, was in North Africa and Italy with the Army Air Corps during World War II.

“I left an airplane in the Mediterranean,” Toomey said. Several years ago, he wrote a memoir, “Tall Tales and Vapor Trails,” recounting his experience of being shot down in a P-38 photo reconnaissance plane. He has been back to Italy several times, and said he knows the underwater location of his plane’s wreckage.

It’s no accident that Saturday’s dinner will be in the same week as the country marks the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Rawe wanted to hold a large event on that date, but decided more people could attend on a weekend.

One of the Rawes’ neighbors in Stanwood, Barbara Towse, will host a table Saturday, providing plates, utensils and dinner for eight. She’ll be there, but one member of her family won’t be.

Her 24-year-old daughter, Army Staff Sgt. Rachel Towse, is stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. The young woman has been to Iraq twice and has served in South Korea. “He is showing his appreciation,” Barbara Towse said of Rawe.

It’s Carolyn Rawe who has been making lasagna lunches at their home twice a month since January. “She’s a good sport,” her husband said. At their first lunch, they didn’t know anyone. “They get here, they’re apprehensive to say anything. When I tell them my stories, they may go on with theirs for three hours,” Bob Rawe said.

He doesn’t belong to the Assembly of God in Arlington, but said the church has been welcoming. “This is not a religious or a political thing,” he added.

After serving in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970, Rawe said he left the military and didn’t look back. He worked in Marysville as a machinist and raised four children. After retirement, he started thinking more about what service to country means.

Often, Rawe said, veterans tell him they didn’t do much. “That’s how most veterans are, ‘I didn’t do anything, I was just doing my job,’ ” he said.

This year, he has learned the limits of a one-man effort.

“We’ve had some very good people step forward and help. In order to do this again, we need more of them,” Rawe said.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.