Exactly seven years ago at this time of year, Lou Vargas of Crest Hill was hosting a coat drive for homeless veterans, a drive Lou would run until spring.
At the time, Lou, an Army veteran, was the commander of the Harry E. Anderson VFW Post 9545 in New Lenox and also of the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 103 in Crest Hill, as well as the vice chairman of the Veterans Assistance Commission of Will County.
Lou did whatever he could to help veterans, sometimes taking phone calls in the middle of the night when veterans didn’t know who else to call, Billie Love of Crest Hill, Lou’s daughter, said.
“Dad would do anything for veterans to make it easier,” Billie said. “He never wanted a fellow veteran to feel as degraded and heartbroken as he was when he came back from Vietnam.”
According to a 2016 Herald-News story, Lou also served as commander of the Stone City Post 2199 VFW in Joliet. He received the State of Illinois Veteran of the month award for July 2011 and strove to visit Capitol Hill every year to fight for veterans rights.
Lou was 73 when he died Oct. 15 of COVID-19.
In a 2013 Herald-News story, Lou Vargas of Crest Hill recalled his “welcome home” greeting when he returned from Vietnam.
Someone spat on him. Billie said that same person also called him a “baby killer.”
Billie said her father also had post-traumatic stress syndrome and survivor guilt. Lou’s wife Bernice Vargas of Crest Hill said Lou often had nightmares, too.
In the 2013 story, Lou said veterans deserved better treatment and he felt the “welcome home” parades were a good first step.
“Man or woman. It doesn’t matter,” Lou had said. “They fight for our country. They do what they’re told to do. They deserve the right and dignity to be respected.”
While serving in Vietnam, Lou took care of the mechanics on the tanks, Billie said. He was also a “tunnel rat,” she added.
“He was the one sent out to ferret anything going on under the ground,” Billie said. “That led to ridiculous claustrophobia ..he could not be in large crowds or confined spaces.”
Lou had grown up in a poor family in Crest Hill and lived most of his life in his childhood home. His father and mother were 23 years apart.
His father’s first wife and their eight children were raised, died and waked in the same house. Bernice thinks the cause of death may have been diphtheria.
Lou’s mother grew up on the former Guardian Angel Home orphanage. She and Lou’s father had six children; one died from leukemia, Bernice said. Lou worked odd jobs until he joined the Army, she said. Bernice herself had met Lou when she was 16 through friends.
But Bernice had re-met Lou when she was 19, shortly after he returned from Vietnam. They ran into each other during a Bluelight Special at the former Kmart on Jefferson Street. And it was her blue eyes that caught his attention, Bernice said, even though Lou was 29.
“He said he knew from my eyes that we were going to be together,” Bernice said.
Lou had just come back from a doctor’s appointment. The doctor had told him his lungs were bad and that he should quit smoking. He actually lit a cigarette while they were talking. Bernice said she told Lou she couldn’t be around cigarette smoke because she had breathing issues, too.
“He went home and threw all his cigarettes away,” Billie said. “That was the last time he had a smoke.”
The next day, she and Lou saw “Shampoo” at the former Hill-Top drive-in movie theater in Joliet. They were married later that year, on Dec. 27, 1975.
Bernice said she loved to hear his stories and the way he always spoke with conviction.
“He never wavered,” Bernice said. “And he always stood behind me no matter what. He’d never go against me for anything.”
Bernice said Lou was deeply committed to St. Anne’s Catholic Church in Crest Hill. He and Bernice were married there and renewed their vows several times there. Their children and grandchildren have also attended the church, Bernice said.
Through the years Lou experienced a variety of health issues: diabetes, emphysema and diverticulitis, Bernice said. In 2013, Lou said he’d also experienced severe kidney, bladder and prostate infections, which he felt resulted from Agent Orange exposure.
He almost losing his right leg in March of 1967 in a fire attack while serving in Vietnam.
“One of the guys accidentally threw an 8-inch round weighing 200 pounds,” Lou said in the 2013 Herald-News story. “It fell on my knee cap. They kept shooting me up with morphine until I told them I didn’t want it anymore. So they more or less got me up on crutches and moved me around.”
Lou first became involved in veterans rights after he first sought financial assistance for his disability in 1999. In the 2013 Herald-News story, Lou recalled the “exam” at one veteran’s hospital.
“The doctor told me to walk across the room,” Lou had said. “He said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with your leg.’ No x-rays, no nothing. I got turned down.”
Lou received his disability status in 2004. He bemoaned how the paperwork “takes so doggone long,” which he felt wasn’t fair to veterans.
“We didn’t sit around and say, ‘We’ll go when we have time,’” Lou said in the 2013 Herald-News story. “We went when we were called.”
“Giving back” to veterans also meant helping out the mother of his former next door neighbor, the one that was killed at Vietnam in 1969. The night before the neighbor left for Vietnam, Lou said he looked him in the eye and said, “I want you to take care of my mother.”
Lou also visited veterans at hospitals and nursing homes and participated in community service efforts.
But Lou’s generosity wasn’t limited to veterans. If he saw someone in need, he helped, such as shoveling snow for neighbors.
“He was a good man. He helped anyone he could,” Bernice said. “Our neighbor’s stove broke down and he couldn’t see them not having a stove with three kids at the time; it was right before Christmas. So we went out and bought hem a stove and she came over and made Christmas cookies. He was that kindhearted of a person.”
In fact, Lou also had picked out a new puppy for himself – the runt of the litter - but he died before the puppy ever made it home.
Like other people, Lou had hobbies. Billie said he liked to work on and restore old cars, and she often helped him, which is when Lou would tell her stories from Vietnam.
“He taught me how to use tools; he taught me how to take care of myself, to stand up for myself,” Billie said. “That’s the hardest part. I don’t have my protector anymore.”
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