As we left the parking lot across from the Trestle Tavern in Seymour, I asked Jimmy Robinson how he knew.
“You could just tell,” he tells me. I’m not sure if he’s messing with me or not.
“Really?” is all I can think to reply.
“See how she got quiet?” he asks. “You could just tell.”
Earlier, Robinson, an Army veteran in his 60s, had gone outside the tavern after starting a conversation about jumping out of airplanes with 25-year-old Trestle bartender Danielle Luby.
While Robinson stood outside, Luby, also an Army veteran, showed me the worn, silver bracelet on her wrist.
It had an inscription, but she wore the bracelet so that the name on it faced the floor.
I couldn’t make out the whole inscription. The silver was worn. It looked like it had been discovered after being buried under a rock for several years.
But I saw the name.
Army Maj. Larry J. Bauguess Jr.
The father of two young daughters was killed in 2007 by small arms fire on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“He was one of my leaders,” Luby said.
Luby gave me a look that told me not to ask for the details. I had just persuaded her to share some general details about her decision to join the Army after graduating Seymour High School in 2005.
She agreed, reluctantly, probably because I was accompanied by Robinson, a loquacious, lifelong Derby resident. Robinson is my neighbor. He took me on a quick tour of the Valley Monday looking for veterans, stopping in at places such as the Catholic War Veteran’s building on Derby Avenue in Derby.
I was most surprised by Luby’s story at the Trestle Tavern in Seymour, because it shook my stereotypical view.
“This is awkward. I’m sorry, but I’m not good talking to people,” Luby began.
Where else can you walk into an old-school watering hole and learn the young lady serving bottles of Bud was sitting atop a Humvee a few years prior, manning a giant machine gun?
There’s something uniquely Valley about it, I said.
Robinson backed me up. I think this is why he wanted me to tag along with him Monday — to show something uniquely Valley. Robinson loves the Valley, especially Derby. I met him when I first moved to an apartment on E Street. He would explain the history behind individual houses on Derby’s Hawthorne Avenue.
“We are unique,” he told Luby and I.
Luby had the Army in mind while attending Seymour High School. It was a career path she didn’t share with anyone.
“I wanted to leave immediately after graduating, but my mom found out, so I pushed it a few months,” she said.
Why join the military?
“I was looking for something different,” she said. “I wasn’t interested in college but I wanted a challenge. I wanted something that would challenge me physically, emotionally and mentally. Most people say ‘I wanted to serve my country.’ That’s what I feel like now. But when I first joined, I didn’t know that. I just wanted an experience.”
That experience included learning how to jump out of airplanes — and a 15-month stint in Afghanistan, spanning 2007 into 2008.
“When I finally got overseas I realized, yes, I’m doing this for everyone back here,” she said.
In Afghanistan, part of Luby’s duties including searching females for weapons after soldiers broke down doors to investigate insurgents and the like.
She was also a machine gunner.
“That means she shot a gun,” Robinson explained.
The experience was surreal, she said.
“To be honest, it was like a video game. You don’t feel like it is actually happening. I don’t know how else to explain it,” Luby said.
Her active duty time ended in 2009. She moved back to Seymour. She is still in the Reserves.
She usually keeps her military service to herself. She’ll answer questions if someone finds out. She wasn’t wearing any hats or insignias on Veterans Day showing she had been in the armed forces.
On Veterans Day 2012, her thoughts were with the Army leader who lost his life — and with other friends she lost overseas.
“To be completely honest with you, I broke down last night,” she says at the end of our conversation.
“This was one of my friends that I lost,” she said, looking at her wrist. “I witnessed my friends lose their lives.”