Trip in a World War II Jeep fulfills Elwood Woman’s Wish 

'Such wonderful memories brought back to me...'

By Dave Stafford
The Herald Bulletin
Posted September 17, 2010 

ANDERSON, Ind. — Suzanne Teachnor of Elwood wanted one last trip down memory lane. Thanks to Don Hartzell, of Anderson, she got it.

Teachnor, 90, has terminal breast cancer. Family, friends and a foundation got involved to make her wish come true.

She wanted to ride in a Jeep beside a soldier in uniform, just as she had done 65 years ago with her future husband, Carl, after the United States and Allied forces liberated her homeland of France from occupation by Nazi Germany.

“It did mean a lot to me,” Teachnor said of her recent ride through the northern Madison County countryside. “We had kind of an adventure.”

Hartzell, an Anderson High School teacher, restores Jeeps and military vehicles, and he donned the uniform of a U.S. Army sergeant circa 1945 as he pulled up to the Community Park View Care Center in his restored 1942 Jeep.

Teachnor, he said, “came out and I looked over and she just burst into tears of joy. She just cried. She said, ‘That’s just the way I remember it. ... She must have thanked me 50 times, thank you, thank you, thank you, for doing this.”

Teachnor said she most enjoyed “the wind in my hair,” and thinking back to those days when she was young and falling in love with the man with whom she would share her life in the United States and raise nine children.

She indulges in the story of riding in the countryside near her home of Carteret in Normandy with Carl, a combat engineer, who had been special dispensation allowing his future wife to ride in the Jeep with him. “No other French person I know had that experience,” Teachnor said.

So the military police were within their rights when they passed Carl and Suzanne, whipped around and gave chase.

“We were followed by two MPs,” Teachnor said. Her future husband was able to ferry his Jeep onto a barge that was just leaving to cross a river. “They were very frustrated, as you can imagine,” Teachnor laughed.

“Wonderful memories,” she said. “It brought back so many things.”

Family members contacted the Never Too Late foundation which grants wishes to seniors and people in assisted living, hospice and adult day care. The Indianapolis-based group got in touch with Hartzell, and the wheels began to turn.

“I think it was just a very unique experience,” Hartzell said. “In living history, I don’t think anything has ever touched me like this.”

Teachnor’s daughter Suzanne Miller said the trip was especially sweet for her mother.

“It was just a time in her life, being a young woman with her fiance and then husband enjoying time together,” Miller said. “By that point, the war was won, and it was just a feeling you only feel when you’re young, carefree, in love.

“It was a very, very good thing for my mother,” Miller said of the re-creation.

Suzanne Teachnor was unblinking as she described her prognosis. “There is no hope,” she said.

“You reach a certain age and you have to accept, that’s the way things are. ... When you get to be 90 years old, that’s a good thing in itself.”

Her daughter-in-law, Trish Teachnor, said, “We just look at every day as a gift.”

Contact Dave Stafford: 648-4250, dave.stafford@heraldbulletin.com