An Idahoan’s war diary coming home, seven decades later
 

      Kathy Grenz is hoping to have one more moment with her late husband, Delmar.

      Later this month, the Twin Falls woman will get that chance, thanks to an elderly New Zealand couple.

      Dougla Kerrisk and his wife are bringing a diary penned by a very young Delmar Grenz during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942. Grenz apparently later lost the diary, and Kerrisk’s brother found it on a wharf in Wellington, New Zealand, 69 years ago.

      The saga of the diary was uncovered last month, when Taranaki Daily News reporter Jared Smith called Kathy Grenz. Kerrisk had approached the paper for help in finding the diary’s author.

      “I was fascinated,” Kathy Grenz said. “I never knew anything about a diary. And it was like right out of the blue, and I got excited. I really did.”

      Delmar Grenz died in 1993 at the age of 69. The couple had been married for 44 years — not nearly enough for Kathy Grenz.

      “He’s been gone 18 years, and it was just like having him here for a minute,” she said. “He was just a kid.”

      As Smith told the Taranaki paper, the diary had been loved and kept on a bookshelf and in a kitchen drawer in Hawera, New Zealand.

      “I always felt I wanted to do something about it but didn’t have the ways and means,” Kerrisk said.

      When Kerrisk walked into his office, Smith was intrigued.

      “It seemed a tough task, trying to find a man who lived half a world away, from a hard-to-read name in a 69-year-old diary,” he wrote. “But those diary jottings provided the spur, or perhaps it was the memory of my own grandfather, who was also a navy veteran of Guadalcanal.”

      The diary is a wry firsthand account of a bloody 1942 battle by a 17-year-old Idaho boy who details his chance encounter with headhunters; a sad Dear John moment; and a jungle appendectomy.

      Grenz began his Navy career after running away from his Twin Falls home three times as a teenager. After the third attempt, his mother took him to enlist.

      Delmar and Kathy met, as many young couples did in the 1940s, through wartime correspondence.

      She lived with her parents in Los Angeles. One of her girlfriends had a stable of eligible military pen pals. When she got overwhelmed by correspondence, she’d send along the name and address of her good friend, Kathy.

      Delmar Grenz made an impression right away.

      “He wrote to me and sent pictures of himself dressed up, with a monocle,” said Kathy Grenz. “It was kind of a clever letter. It wasn’t anything sexy. I had to laugh because he looked so funny. That was the beginning of the end. He was a cute guy.”

      The couple met in person in 1948 in California. He just called up for a date, Kathy Grenz said. It wasn’t love at first sight, but eventually she fell hard.

      “We did get married early,” Kathy Grenz said. “He wouldn’t leave me alone. We were going to get married on Valentine’s Day. This was in October. We were married on Halloween.”

      The young couple had eight children, whom they raised in California’s Bay Area while Grenz served in the Navy as a medic — a corpsman.

       After World War II, he served with the Marines during the Korean War.

       But his lengthy exposure to battle took a toll. Delmar Grenz was a “nervous wreck,” his wife said. He hated going to movies, primarily because of war-related news reels, she said.

      “If there was anything in there, he would cry,” Kathy Grenz said.

       Nonetheless, the family was happy.

      “It was a good life,” she said. “He was good to the kids and to me. He loved his family, that was his thing. He had all these kids and went to sea once in a while.”

      Grenz retired in 1960 as a chief petty officer. Then he went to work in California for the U.S. Postal Service.

      But his health took a turn for the worse. Delmar Grenz had a heart attack and never quite recovered, Kathy Grenz said.

      By 1980, Grenz longed for Idaho, so the family moved to Twin Falls.

      “It was home to him,” Kathy Grenz said. “Since it didn’t matter to me, I agreed to do what he wanted.”

      Grenz had a bit of a romantic streak, occasionally bringing his wife flowers.

“It was roses,” she said. “Always red roses.”

      Eventually, he planted a red rosebush in the backyard of their home.

      He died in 1993 from his heart troubles, and while the roses are a good reminder, Kathy Grenz said she is eager to see the diary and reconnect in that way with her husband.

      “We were together 44 years and five months and 19 days,” she said.

      So the entire family is gathering at David Grenz’s home in Fremont, Calif., later this month for a barbecue to meet the Kerrisks and to receive the diary.

      David Grenz, 61, the couple’s first child, spent hours going through his father’s service record with Smith and verifying stories in the diary.

      “I kind of grew up with a lot of the stories,” Grenz said. “I went into the Navy also. We had that camaraderie.”

      Initially, he will keep the diary and make copies for the family, friends and military historians who have asked for a look. His mother will decide where it stays.

      “He was a good dad and a good husband. and I just wished he lasted longer,” Kathy Grenz said. “But my house is still busy. I have all the kids and grandkids.”

Kathleen Kreller: 377-6418

Idaho Statesman

Used by permission