Longtime City Employee Ron Springer Preserves Memory of Service Members

More than 50 years after enlisting to serve in the U.S. Army, Ron Springer won’t let himself forget the brotherhood he entered into and the men he served with, whether they wore the uniform in 1917 Germany or 2005 Iraq.

And he doesn’t want the rest of us to forget, either.

In his 621-square foot basement, Springer has compiled hundreds of items he salvaged from military surplus stores around the country and items he was loaned by veterans and Gold Star families. He still remembers the piece that started his collection.

“It began with a search for the kind of rucksack we carried in Vietnam,” he said. “A 1968 Tropical Rucksack.”

Springer worked for the City of East Lansing for 28 years, retiring as a community development analyst in 2010. The 76-year-old affable, earnest grandfather can captivate for hours on end, always with a slight twinkle in his eye.

This summer, ELi received an exclusive tour of Springer’s museum.

“History is…we know it’s been glossed over,” he said during the tour in a moment of reflection.

“I just learned, the other day, that Doris Allen, a Black woman who just died, she was a specialist. She was in intelligence in Saigon. She said there was going to be a Tet Offensive. But do you think the powers that be listened to a Black specialist? No, they didn’t.”

The U.S. lost 2,600 troops as a result of the Tet Offensive in 1968.

“We could do this forever,” Springer says as he begins his guided tour. 

The exhibits range from World War I to Korea, Panama, Iraq and more. It begins with photos and artifacts from the time of his maternal grandfather, Thomas Morkem. Morkem served in Aero Squadrons of the U.S. Army during the First World War, first as a mechanic and then as a chauffeur for a flying school detachment. He cuts a dashing figure in photographs Springer proudly displays next to the uniform he and his fellow soldiers would have worn during that war to end all wars.

Springer’s service began almost on a whim.

He was spending the day with two of his best friends, Bob Wietzke, who was son of The Rev. Walter Wietzke, minister at East Lansing’s University Lutheran Church between 1962 and 1972, and Joe Bell, the future owner and operator of The Peanut Barrel.

“I had gone to Lansing Community College [and] like many of the young guys, my head was spinning like a top,” he said. “The draft is on. If you flunked out of a class or something, you’ve got to hurry up and take the class again right away. If you dropped out of school for more than a semester, you’re drafted.”

Springer said Wietzke had the idea that since the trio had two years of community college under their belts and were graduates of East Lansing High School, they could go down and “volunteer for the draft and probably be made clerks.”

“Did we ask anyone about our idea?” Springer asked rhetorically. “No. We just thought…we can type. We went down to the draft board and said we wanted to volunteer for the draft. The lady at the desk said we couldn’t do that; we can enlist or get drafted.”

They inquired when they would ship out if they enlisted that very day. Upon learning that they would report on April 15, 1969, they asked if they could defer so they wouldn’t miss their spring break trip to Daytona Beach.

“So May 6, 1969, we went in,” Springer remembers before starting to laugh. “Bob found out he had high blood pressure and wasn’t allowed to enlist. The guy whose idea it was.”

Springer spoke talks little about his own time in the service during the two-hour tour he gave ELi. He spent just under two years in Vietnam with the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division in the Alpha Company.

He was a Squad Leader and Acting Platoon Sergeant, earning the Bronze Star Medal, Air Medal, Army Commendation Medal and Combat Infantry Badge.

Springer proudly shares an email he received from his former commanding officer, Colonel William L. Robinson.

“You will never know over the years how often I have referred to you as the platoon leader and platoon sergeant I could count on,” Robinson wrote in the 2004 missive. “Strangely enough, as the years pass, I remember fewer and fewer names, but not yours.”

Springer still remembers the reaction he received after he returned home from the Vietnam War.

“I came home in 1971,” he said, “and no one asked, not even my friends. They were afraid to ask.”

Perhaps that is why this otherwise unassuming retired civil servant has devoted a good portion of his life to honoring his brothers and sisters in arms. And he does it while wearing his heart on his sleeve. At several points during our tour, he blinks away tears, like during his recollection of a conversation with Dick Thelen, the last Michigan survivor of the USS Indianapolis, sunk in 1945 by the Japanese Navy.

Springer remembers asking Thelen how he survived the attack, when so many didn’t. Thelen responded that he remembered his father’s words when he joined the Navy, “I want you to come home, son.”

“That was right in his forefront while he was in the water, ‘I want you to come home, son,’” Springer said. “The stories. We could walk around [the museum] again. You came over at 1, it’s almost 3; we could walk around again and I’d fill in with new stories these things carry.”

Springer’s work to memorialize those who served goes far beyond his basement. Over the last 30 years, he has regularly been called upon to speak about his experiences as a soldier and to share his insights of the larger veteran community. 

For 20 years, he was a regular speaker at the Vietnam Veterans Roundtable events held around Memorial Day at Charlotte High School. He had the chance to speak with scores of high school students, answering questions about what Vietnam and his service were like. At the 25th and final roundtable in 2013, Springer was asked what the annual event had meant to him.

“Vietnam had an effect on all of us,” he said. “Even if we didn’t know it at the time. It hurt our pride to hear, ‘You didn’t do anything over there.’ It crushed our self-esteem to hear, ‘You didn’t win your war.’ It felt like a kick in the gut to hear and read the ‘Baby killer and murderer’ label used too commonly in the media and by anti-war types when describing Vietnam Veterans. We were being told, in essence, that the war wasn’t worth it and neither were we. We were just losers.”

But, Springer told his audience, that the roundtables changed that for him — sharing his story and the stories of his peers changed that for him. 

“You saw us as real people, up close and personal, who came from all walks of life, and served in one of the most unpopular wars in U.S. history,” he said. “It means that some Vietnam Veterans finally got a chance to tell their stories to others about what they experienced.”

Springer has also spoken at Okemos Middle and High School events for more than 20 years and worked closely with the Buddy to Buddy Veteran Mentorship Program, providing support and community to service members and fellow veterans. 

But more quietly, Springer has been there for Michigan families with loved ones who paid “the last full measure of devotion,” as President Abraham Lincoln put it. He has regularly shown up at memorials and funerals for soldiers killed in action.

John Ellsworth of Wixom, Michigan is one of those individuals. His son, Lance Corporal Justin Ellsworth was killed in Fallujah, Iraq on November 13, 2004. He was the 37th Michigan soldier killed in Iraq since the invasion some 19 months earlier.

“[At] 9:30 one Saturday night,” Ellsworth said in a phone interview with ELi, “I get a knock on my door and it’s two Marines in their dress blues. I went to the door and, I hate to say it like this, but I hoped he was injured. But unfortunately that was not the case. He was killed.”

His son was killed just two months after arriving in Iraq. Justin was trained as a combat engineer, tasked with locating caches of Improvised Explosive Device, or IEDs, that had killed 145 coalition troops in the first half of the year. He came across an IED that was within 50 meters of a base. When it went off, Justin absorbed the majority of the blast.

“Fifteen Marines were saved that day because he blocked the blast with his body,” Ellsworth said.

“Obviously I’m very proud of the man he became, I wish he was still here, but the thing about Ron Springer is that he’s never let us forget just how important Justin was,” Ellsworth said. “He’s always there to honor Justin. He was there from the beginning to the end…he never forgets Memorial Day or Veterans Day. He still reaches out, telling us he’s thinking of us and Justin’s sacrifice. It’s very important too for someone who’s lost someone in a war. My biggest fear is that people are going to forget him. I can talk about him all day long but what happens when I go?” 

As long as there is breath in his body, it’s unlikely Springer will let the world forget about Justin and those like him.

But what will become of his museum when he is no longer here to give tours? What will happen to the jar of sand from the beaches of Normandy, the replicas from Saving Private Ryan, the uniforms and gear from battles past?

“No, nobody wants it,” Springer said when asked the question. “Even if it’s free to somebody someday, no one pays that much. There’s big time museums in Fort Benning, they’ve got a beautiful museum, the 82nd [Airborne Division] has got one at [Fort] Bragg, but [here in East] Lansing, Michigan, there’s only a few people interested.”

He told ELi that his collection, while massive and impressive, doesn’t maintain much of a dollar value. However, the museum carries a sentimental and historical narrative about the individuals who used the equipment, wore the fatigues and held the munitions. 

“This is how I keep the memories alive,” he said. “This is how I honor them.”