Don Hosier’s book was partially inspired by his 12 years as a Bluffton church pastor
By MARK MILLER
“Freedom bird” has a double meaning for Don Hosier.
“Anyone who served in Vietnam, they know that’s what we called the airplane that would take us home,” he said. A commercial airliner is part of the cover of a book he published in late 2022 which is partially about his combat experiences in the Vietnam War in 1970. There is also a white dove on that book cover, representing his acceptance of Christ a few years later.
“That’s the real ‘freedom bird,’” he explained.
Hosier’s nearly 50 years of ministry include 12 years in Bluffton as pastor of what was then the Mulberry Street Wesleyan Church. He now serves in semi-retirement as an assistant pastor of a church in Enid, Okla., where he and his wife of 55 years, Debbie, are now living.
The book, appropriately titled “Freedom Bird,” has been a work in progress since the early or mid-1990s.
“I felt like there was a story to tell about what it was like in Vietnam and how this eventually led into my spiritual life and ministry,” he explained. “At first I wanted to be able to tell it to my kids and my grandchildren, but then also to tell it for the other veterans.”
A Grant County native, he got a “good factory job” at Fisher Body in Marion after graduating from Fairmount High School in 1967. He and his sweetheart since junior high school, Debbie Hipsher, were wed in 1968. They were just getting settled into their new married life when his draft notice arrived in 1969.
“I was at Fisher Body one day and Fort Knox the next,” he remembered.
The details of his one-year tour with the 1st Air Cavalry are in the book, reconstructed from the dozens of letters he sent home to his wife. Not only would he survive multiple weeks “in the jungles” and battles that would earn him two Army Commendation Medals, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, but also a very severe case of malaria.
Back home again in Indiana, Hosier pretty much picked up his life where he’d left it — with Debbie and his job at Fisher Body.
“I had a good, secure job. Debbie was working. Life was good,” he recalled.
He had grown up going to church — his grandfather had been a pastor — but “we kind of wandered away from it” after high school and while in the Army. “But one Sunday, we decided we’d go to church, and that changed everything.”
The call was not just to accept Christ into his life, but to go into the ministry. After graduating from what is now Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion while serving a small rural church nearby, he began a career that would take the couple and their growing family to serve churches in Michigan, Maryland, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, back to Oklahoma, then to Bluffton in 1999 followed by a church in northeast Ohio before returning to Oklahoma and semi-retirement.
One of their two sons is a Wesleyan pastor about 90 miles away while their other son lives in southern Indiana. They now boast of eight grandchildren. “We are blessed,” he said.
“We had always liked Oklahoma’s weather, and the people, too,” he said. “It doesn’t get nearly as cold here in the winters.”
But Bluffton has “a big place in our hearts. We have such good memories,” he said. But it’s not only because, of all their churches, it was their longest pastoral charge. Bluffton played a significant role in Hosier’s healing from his military service.
Although Hosier did not experience any hostility, anger or negativity that many Vietnam veterans dealt with after returning back home, “neither did I really talk about it,” he said. “I don’t recall ever just telling anyone I’d been in Vietnam unless I was talking with another vet.”
But then something happened one night at a Bluffton Street Fair.
“That year, they decided to include veterans in a parade,” he tells the story. “So I bought a ‘veteran’ hat and we lined up. They put us in groups for when we served.”
He recalled that the parade was led by veterans from World War II, and then Korean vets. His group of Vietnam veterans came next.
“When we came up the street and got to the place where the people were standing along the side, there on Main Street close to the hospital, everybody stood up,” he said. “They had been applauding, but they’d not been standing for the other vets but when we came by, they stood up. It was overwhelming. It moved me to tears. Somebody welcomed us home.
“So I am so glad you called me about this book,” he continued, “because it gives me the opportunity to tell the people of Bluffton how much that meant to not just me, but all the other guys that night.”
That experience is also told in his book, along with reflections on the contrast between a veteran’s experiences and his life as a pastor and follower of Christ.
“I really believe that God’s spirit was guiding me as I was writing this book,” he said. “And any chance I’ve had when talking to senior citizen groups, I also add that I did this when I was 73. So if there’s something you want to do, get out there and do it.”
“Freedom Bird” is available on the Amazon website and currently has a 5-star reader review rating.
miller@news-banner.com
