LOCATION: Vivian, Louisiana
PERIOD: 1968-2011
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: D.W. Washington (1949-2011); Mike “Sarge” Broussard (1948-2014); Marie Martin Broussard (1950-1981)
Dwight Wayne Washington was born and spent his early life in Detroit, Michigan. He was drafted into the Army in 1967 when he turned 18 and was sent to Vietnam. Eventually he was assigned to the 515th Transportation Company in Cam Ranh Bay under Sergeant Mike Broussard. Here he learned just about all there was to know about repairing cars and motors.
Instead of going back to Detroit, D.W. decided to move to Vivian and continued to work for Mike in his filling station and auto repair shop for the next 40 years. D.W. and Mike were best friends despite D.W.’s tendency to get drunk most weekends forcing Mike to drive by his house on Monday morning and get him up for another week of work.
MIke married his high school girlfriend and they had a good life until she got cancer. When she realized that no matter what the doctors told her, she wasn’t going to get better. And she didn’t want to continue treatments which left her debilitated and took over her life. She decided to take control and she would decide how and when she would end the misery.
However, MIke was adamantly opposed to giving up. He wanted to try everything possible to keep Marie alive. But she wasn’t having it, although she kept her worst thoughts from Mike, she confided in D.W. She asked him when the time came she needed his help to get it done. Reluctantly he agreed, feeling that she needed him more than what his loyalty to Mike might call for.
It all happened exactly like Marie planned, and Mike was bitter for years, but turned his anger away from Marie and held D.W. responsible. They didn’t speak for a very long time.
Then D.W. began losing his grip on reality, the doctors called it dementia, maybe Alzheimers. When he heard about this, Mike set aside the grudge he’d been holding onto and the two friends spent D.W.’s last days together, sharing a few beers and memories.
D.W. died in 2011 shortly before his sixty-fifth birthday from congestive heart failure (see song “Out on Cross Lake”).
D.W. WASHINGTON
(F. D. Leone, Jr.)
I wanna tell you about my friend Sarge
We met each other in Vietnam
His real name was Mike Broussard
D.W. Washington is who I am
Sarge was white and I am black
But we were the best of friends
Did our tours and we came back
To a one pump station in Vivian
We ran that shop him and me
Just fought once in over forty years
It had to do with his wife Marie
Of the two sides I chose hers
She needed me more than him
Well Sarge didn’t see it like that
But I saved his life back in ‘Nam
That’s the only reason he came back
Figured I didn’t owe him a thing
Ah, but Marie needed my help
She couldn’t take anymore of that cancer pain
Couldn’t do what she wanted by herself
So the truth is I saved his life
Helped her to slip away
Sarge blamed me for his wife
Right up to my dying day
I can still see him under the hood
Chewing on a ten cent cigar
I’d do it all the same, yes I would
My best friend was still Sarge
My best friend was still Sarge
© 2017 Frank David Leone, Jr./Highway 80 Music (ASCAP). The songs and stories on the Highway 80 Stories website are works of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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