Birth date: Sep 21, 1943 Death date: Sep 8, 2025
Dennis Eugene Redman, age 81, passed away peacefully on September 8, 2025, with his family by his side. He was born on September 21, 1943, to Victor Pearl Redman and Hazel Irene (Davidson) Redman. On May 18, 1973, he married Diana Read Obituary
Played a lot of golf with Denny and he was a great friend that will be missed
Rick Oakley
Remembering Denny
In 1966 Uncle Sam was drafting a lot of guys because of the Vietnam war. I first met Denny at Fort Sill in Oklahoma where they were schooling us in Artillery Survey – where to point the big guns to hit a target. Most of us struggled with some pretty advanced math. Denny didn’t have any trouble. After school you would get new orders to your permanent army home. Most guys were sent to Vietnam. Denny and I were lucky and sent to Korea. No complaint there. It was late fall when we arrived in a Korea that was still being put back together after a long war. There wasn’t enough activity in the survey section to keep us busy so I took a job as company clerk to keep occupied and help burn time. Denny stayed with the survey section and soon became the acknowledged guy to go to for survey answers.
The army didn’t pay much back then ($75 a month I think) and not much at our post to spend it on so Denny soon had an extensive loan business going for those of us that couldn’t make it to the next paycheck. I never knew how many loans Denny had on the books but he soon had to recruit help on payday to make sure his customers met their obligation. He didn’t brag but between his loan business and card playing he was doing pretty good and with his family, bought Westfield Grain and Fertilizer not long after he got home.
Time can drag in the army. Normal overseas tour is 12 months which seems like a lifetime when most of that is ahead of you. Then you could expect to be sent to a new post for six months to complete your 2 year obligation. The Army gives you an option to extend in place for half of your remaining time and get out three months sooner. Normally that would be an easy choice. In this case
the extension would include another Korean winter and another Christmas away from home and family but almost anything was worth cheating Uncle Sam out of three months. What we couldn’t
foresee was North Korea picked that time to hijack a US navy spy ship that was parked off the coast of North Korea. That put all US and South Korean military personnel on high alert. Denny and I had
already received our official paperwork (orders) to depart Korea and had turned in all equipment, etc. and were set to leave when this happened. The big brass didn’t know what North Korea was going to
do next and didn’t know what to do with personnel whose tour was over and trying to leave Korea. They were a lot more concerned about what North Korea was up to than they were about 2 homesick
Midwest farm boys. While the brass was looking north these 2 Army guys walked off post, caught a Korean bus to the airport in Seoul and headed home.
Joe Blackburn
