On Saturday’s commute to Arizona Stadium, I stopped for a red light at the intersection of Campbell and Fort Lowell. A young man driving the car next to me bent over and took a slug from a can of Coors.
He saw me looking at him, laughed, and took another hit. The driver couldn’t have been more than 21.
I thought back to my young and dumb years and shook my head. If only he knew. If the Coors-swilling driver would’ve followed me to Arizona Stadium I could’ve introduced him to 96-year-old Lauren Bruner and scared him straight.
When Bruner was 21, he was a Fire Controlman 3rd Class assigned to the USS Arizona, docked at Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. If anyone knows how fragile life can be, Lauren Bruner does.
After graduating from Elma High School near Olympia, Washington, Bruner wanted to go to college, but he could neither afford school nor find a steady job during the Depression era. His father died when Lauren was 9.
His best option was to join the Navy.
Bruner was assigned to the USS Arizona, which docked in nearby Bremerton, Washington, and soon traveled to Vallejo, California, where he was instructed how to fight catastrophic fires on a battleship. Then it was off to Pearl Harbor.
It wasn’t an island paradise at all. It was hell.
Bruner was at his battle station, about 70 feet above the deck of the USS Arizona that Sunday morning when a Japanese warplane dropped a bomb that would kill 1,177 of his shipmates. The man who hoped to go to college and be a cheerleader — “we called it a ‘yell leader’ then,” he said Friday — was one of the final two men rescued from the ship.
His hands and arms were charred. He was shot twice in the leg. He spent seven months in hospitals; about 70 percent of his body was burned.
On Christmas day 1941, Bruner’s hometown newspaper, the Elma Chronicle published this headline:
“Local Boy Listed Missing at Pearl Harbor.”
Bruner not only survived, seven months later he accepted assignment to another battleship and fought in eight major battles in the Pacific theater.
Being 21 was much different in 1941 than it is in 2016.
On Friday, Bruner and his friend, Ed McGrath, flew from their Southern California homes to Tucson as guests of the UA athletic department. Bruner is one of three living survivors of the USS Arizona. McGrath is writing a historical novel — “Second to the Last to Leave USS Arizona” — which will be published Dec. 1.
“We met with airmen at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base Friday morning and Lauren was treated like royalty,” said McGrath. “They took orders for 3,000 books. He tried to tell them his story, but he has trouble talking about it. Sometimes he just cries.”
The purpose of Bruner’s Tucson visit was to help the UA honor the legacy of the USS Arizona at the UA-Hawaii football game, which the Wildcats won 47-28. The school manufactured unique jerseys for the game. It became more special when Bruner pinned his Purple Heart just below a medallion celebrating the 1915 christening of the USS Arizona.
If you watched any of the pregame ceremonies, especially as Bruner struggled from his wheelchair to stand for the national anthem, you couldn’t help but get a lump in your throat. It has been almost 75 years since the 21-year-old Fire Controlman 3rd Class survived the most horrific moment of his life.
“Lauren’s goal is to honor the USS Arizona for time and all eternity,” said McGrath. “I’ve known him for five years and although he only talks about December 7, 1941 infrequently, he does so with total reverence.”
When the time comes, Bruner has asked to be buried within the wreckage of the USS Arizona.
His presence on the UA campus was a terrific education for those on the UA football and men’s basketball teams, who were introduced to him Friday. Football coach Rich Rodriguez huddled his team around Bruner in the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility and told his team the sobering truth.
“Mr. Bruner was 21 years old — the age of most of you — when his ship was attacked at Pearl Harbor,” Rodriguez said. “You can learn a lot from how he survived and went on to live his life.”
After World War II, Bruner worked in the refrigeration business, and later was part of a Southern California carpentry union. The appreciation for his military service grows and grows.
“I’m not a celebrity,” he told me. “I’m just an old sailor who has been fortunate to live a full life. Please don’t treat me like I’m someone special.”
But the UA did, and deservedly so.
Before Bruner and McGrath left campus on Friday, they gave me a dark blue U.S. Navy cap with December 7, 1941, printed across the front, and Lauren’s signature on the side. I wore it all day Saturday, taking it off only when I drove to the game.
It is a treasure, a keepsake I’ll wear with special feeling. But I’d give it to that beer-drinking driver today if he would stop and listen to the story of Lauren Bruner and decide that 21 is a good time to grow up.
