The Best Heroes Are The Quiet Ones

Clint Eastwood missed the boat. Bob Silhavy’s life was his to portray on the silver screen. But Clint passed.

“I thought it was a real interesting hero story,” says Pete Benner, Bob’s long-time friend who sent Eastwood the story a few years ago. “These kids nowadays have heroes who take drugs, commit murder, get married 14 times. That’s a hero?”

Pete has a point. Bob outwitted death and the Japanese in World War II, relinquished his own freedom to save his men, raised a son who revered him, shot nine holes-in-one in golf and never boasted.

He died last month of lung cancer at age 76. He didn’t even want a farewell service.

Pete sent Bob’s story to several producers, but Hollywood showed no interest in the modest Coeur d’Alene man.

“War produces a lot of heroes, but he’s unique,” says Bob Jr. “He never wanted any publicity.”

Bob Jr. was 23 in 1972 when he finally learned the details of his dad’s heroic past. Father and son took a trip to the Philippines, where Bob landed with U.S. Army engineers in December 1941.

A washed-out road kept Bob from showing his son the bridge he blew up under a hailstorm of enemy fire. But he told him the story.

First Lt. Silhavy’s unit mined the bridge after U.S. troops crossed. Japanese troops were close behind. Two attempts to blow the bridge failed.

So, with Japanese troops firing at him, Bob grabbed dynamite, caps and fuse and sprinted for the bridge, zigzagging to avoid bullets. He set the charge, fled into the jungle and blew the bridge as the enemy moved onto it.

His feat earned him the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism.

Bob showed his son where he was captured in April 1942 and where he joined the brutal 140-mile Bataan death march that killed 2,000 American soldiers. He showed him the site of the prisoner of war camp he lived in until the Japanese sent him to persuade Filipino guerillas to surrender.

He told him how the Filipinos thought he was a German spy, imprisoned him for months until they believed his story, then freed him. He told his son he returned to the POW camp where his men waited under a death threat for his return.

Bob took his son to Japan to look for the POW camp where he was sent to live until 1945. But they found no records of any POW camps.

Despite his harrowing war years, Bob became a successful businessman, fiercely competitive golfer, devoted husband for 45 years and his son’s best friend.

A truly good life. Too bad Frank Capra’s movie days are over.

Grateful goodbye

My question about sad farewells reminded Coeur d’Alene’s Colleen O’Dowd that she almost missed saying goodbye to her beloved grandfather in 1972.

A Tarot card reader warned her that her grandfather was near death and that her fiance had children.

The reading was a birthday present and Colleen was a doubter. Still, she telephoned her fiance, who was visiting his mother in Nebraska.

His mother was surprised her son was engaged. He lived with his wife and two children, she told Colleen. Colleen was devastated.

Then she panicked. Maybe the card reader was right about her grandfather, too.

Colleen hitched a ride to Pocatello and spent a week with her sick grandfather.

“We smiled and laughed so hard, we cried,” Colleen says. He died shortly after she boarded a bus for home.

“I cherish that last week with my grandfather more than all the gold and riches in the world,” she says. “He is now my guardian angel.”

Long overdue

What’s the worst debt you’ve had to pay at the library and what long-winded story did you tell when you paid it? Confess to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814; FAX to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo