Dan was her G.I. Joe.
When she was a kid, Bernadine Suplee said, she never wanted a “Ken,” she wanted a G.I. Joe. When she met Dan Suplee, she said she found him. Almost two decades later, she lost him.
Until he died, Memorial Day was “beer day” around the Suplee home.
“It was fun. It was cookout time, beer time, cigar time,” Bernadine Suplee said. “I didn’t give it as much of a thought until it happened to me.”
Army National Guard Sgt. Dan A. Suplee, Bernadine’s husband and a 20 year veteran of the Army and Army National Guard, died Aug. 3, 2006. He was two months shy of his fortieth birthday and, had his humvee not been struck by the truck in early April, leaving him with a severe head injury, he would’ve been home on that day. It would’ve been three months after he completed a yearlong tour of duty in Afghanistan.
It wasn’t the first time Dan Suplee died, Bernadine said, he was revived while being transferred from Kabul to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, and again from Landstuhl to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland a few days later. That May, he was transferred to James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa.
When they arrived at Haley, Bernadine Suplee insisted Dan be put in a wheelchair so she could show him the flag and let him feel the sun. She thought being back home in Florida would help him recover. He hadn’t spoken or moved since the accident. Doctors initially gave him only days to live after the accident.
“He lost his speech and motion, but I insisted he was gonna come back to me. I insisted they were all wrong,” she said. “I said, ‘Pookie look, you’re home. There’s the American Flag, you’re safe. I pushed him in and he screamed. That was the last time he made a sound.”
Even though more than a decade has passed, Bernadine Suplee gets emotional when talking about her husband’s life. Remembering the day she learned about the accident and the hardship that follows is like reliving a nightmare. She can still see Dan lying there among other soldiers in the hospital, some burned and missing limbs. It sends her into hysterics, her tears rolling into laughter as she remembers the romance of their relationship.
She remembers the mimosas he’d make her on Sunday mornings and the bike rides they would take at 6 a.m. so they could have some time alone before their children, Ben and Jennifer — only kids at the time, now 23 and 25, respectively — would wake up. She remembers late nights sitting outback talking about growing old together and the love letters he’d send while deployed.
“He would call me Bubbles because I was so happy all the time,” she said. “You can’t call me bubbles anymore. I’m not the same person. I try to put up a front, but I’m not the same.”
The experience, she said, changed her. It’s been 10 years and she is only now able to arrive at a point of understanding and acceptance, she said.
Getting by with a little help from her friends
“Pam told me, ‘“You gotta put on your big-girl panties. You gotta pull yourself together for the kids and for Dan,’” Suplee said.
Pam McGregor is the president of the American Legion Auxiliary Unit 26 Plant City. At the time, she was working for the National Guard’s Family Assistance Program, providing assistance to veterans and active service members and their families. Her husband, Rob, is American Legion Post 26’s finance officer and a retired sergeant from the Air Force and National Guard, having served more than 20 years. He is now the state coordinator for the Family Assistance Program.
From the time Dan Suplee was injured to the time he died, Pam McGregor was by Bernadine’s side.
“She was there every day,” Bernadine Suplee said. “I was there yelling at doctors and nurses, shame on me. She was my anger translator.”
The McGregors have made helping veterans and their families a life’s mission. Their daughter, Beth, works with the National Guard’s Family Readiness Support Assistants and their daughter, Jennifer, is a historian for Post 26.
“It’s a way to honor those who’ve gone before me,” Rob McGregor said. “I wouldn’t be free and I wouldn’t have been able to serve if not for them. It’s all about helping the families. You take care of their families because you’d want them to take care of yours.”
Pam McGregor, like Bernadine, cries when thinking about Dan, remembering vividly the day he passed.
“I got the call at 1 a.m.,” Pam McGregor said. “It was Bernie, she said he was leaving. I cry now, but I didn’t then. I saved it. I knew I had to be strong for Pam and the kids.”
Bernadine Suplee said she doesn’t know what she would’ve done without Pam. While Dan was in the hospital, she said Pam helped with everything from getting the proper benefits to getting kids counseling and having them go on trips while she was by Dan’s side at the hospital. Pam, Bernadine said, even got family members flown in and made sure everyone had food. To this day, they remain just a phone call or text message away.
“She’s got a big heart. She’s an amazing person,” Bernadine Suplee said. “Because of her I’ve still got my big-girl panties on.”
“On Monday, I’ll be sitting with my Dan, putting my lips on him. Every time I see him, I kiss, kiss, kiss and hug his headstone.”
— Bernadine Suplee
Memorial Day 2017
Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. is a 14 acre plot across from the Potomac River. It’s home to many of the service members who’ve died in Iraq and Afghanistan since. Due to the recentness of the dead there, Section 60 is known for the intense rawness of emotion among the neat rows of gently curved stone marking graves. It’s a place where people talk to the dead with an accepted normalcy. It's commonly known as the "saddest acre in America."
In one of those rows is a headstone covered in marks of red-tinted lips. Some of if it faded to deeper brown. It’s the headstone of Dan Suplee. It’s where you’ll find Bernadine Suplee this Memorial Day. Sometimes she’ll visit a veterans’ hospital to give gifts and leave surprises so injured soldiers know they aren’t alone. But this year, the tenth since losing her husband, she’ll be there.
She plans on having a picnic there this year with her kids, her niece and, of course, Dan. Years ago, she bought an especially durable brand of lipstick to make sure it wouldn’t come off the headstone easily and it hasn’t.
“On Monday, I’ll be sitting with my Dan, putting my lips on him,” she said. “Every time I see him, I kiss, kiss, kiss and hug his headstone.”