PORTLAND — Thanks to a mostly anonymous voice on the phone, Joyce Corier’s son, a deployed sailor, returned home in time to spend a final five hours with his father. At a chance meeting about seven months later, Joyce met the woman who helped make it happen.
Thanks to a bit of luck, Joyce met Red Cross volunteer Julie Burger in March.
In June 2015, Joyce’s daughter and son-in-law came upon a motorcyclist who’d crashed and fallen into a ravine the day before. Joyce was invited to join a Red Cross event in March to honor her daughter and son-in-law and other local heroes and life-savers.
Joyce, who’s from Vancouver, and her party sat with Julie’s, and they got to talking. Julie, who’s also from Vancouver and has been volunteering with the Red Cross for 50 years, explained one of her primary jobs is helping families communicate with service members during emergencies stateside.
That voice on the phone, Joyce found, had been Burger’s.
“And so we both cried and hugged, and I told her how much I appreciated her help, because my son got home five hours before his dad passed away,” Joyce said. “Had it not been for the Red Cross getting involved, he wouldn’t have been home.”
Joyce’s husband, Dan, had been in palliative care with a severe heart condition for a few weeks when, around August 2015, it became clear he was running out of time.
Their son, Mike, was in Japan, so Joyce contacted the Red Cross, and Mike was able to fly into Seattle.
One of their other sons drove up to the airport to get Mike, and they kept in touch on the way down, giving updates on their location as they drove down Interstate 5.
“We kept telling my husband, ‘Hold on, hold on,’ ” Joyce said. “‘Hold on, honey, hold on, he’s going to be here; Mike will come,’ and I really believe he held on for that reason. He knew that Mike would be there.”
Theirs is a blended family, Joyce said — she brought six kids, Dan four — and Mike was his youngest.
Mike, like Dan, plays guitar, and in his father’s final hours, Mike asked for some private time so he could perform a song he wrote especially for his dad.
Dan died at 66.
“I don’t even know the melody. I know the words of the song. He played it for him, and he could barely get through it himself,” Joyce said. “He held on for Mike, I’m sure of it.”
Joyce and Julie were together again for a Red Cross event Friday at the organization’s Portland headquarters, where volunteers helped pack gift bags of toiletries for patients in veterans hospitals, and they recalled how low the odds they’d ever meet seemed.
The Red Cross says it processes 522 urgent messages daily between service members abroad and family back home, whether it’s word of a sudden death, illness or birth of a child.
“There were tables set up in a large room like this, and what are the odds that we just so happened to sit at the table that Julie was at?” Joyce said.
“It was meant to be,” Julie said. “I believe it was meant to be.”
Julie’s husband was a two-star Army general, and she has three sons and two grandsons in the military.
After they got married, she moved from base to base with her husband. She joined the Red Cross because she figured she could use what she learned there to be helpful to others no matter where she went.
It turned into a rewarding career, Julie said, adding she feels like she gets more than she gives. The Red Cross, she said, serves as a bridge between the military and service members’ families.
“But I have never, in 50 years, ever met the person that I spoke to on the phone, ever. And so here I am, meeting somebody that I took care of, who got their son home, who was able to see his father,” she said. “That made the 50 years worthwhile, I have to tell you, that one small thing.”
Julie said that even if she never sees Joyce again, she’ll remember that connection.
“Sometimes you do things and you don’t know if it’s really helping, or if people are going to care, or something like that, but now I know,” she said. “Like I said before, it’s made those 50 years worthwhile”
Monique Dugaw, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross, said volunteers assembled more than a thousand kits Friday, and much of the stock donated to fill the kits came from Vancouver.
