Taking the Long Road Back

BEDFORD, Mass.--Some people will do anything to get to their reunion.

Undeterred by traffic, his partner's injury and a pair of high-friction tries, 71-year-old Dale O. Hiestand biked 1,830 miles over 34 days from his home in Cooper City, Fla. to a 50th reunion in Cambridge.

"We're awfully tired, "he said as he disembarked from his bike with his best friend and riding partner, Kenneth G. Coleman, age 69.

Fifty years ago this year, Hiestand was a U.S. Navy midshipman in training at Harvard Business School. Today, he returns to the Business School campus to rejoin his 1945 training class.

The program enabled Hiestand to complete one year of the Harvard Business School's MBA program in eight months on an accelerated track. After the war, Hiestand returned to Harvard to complete his business degree and graduate with an MBA in 1947.

Hiestand, who is 71 years old ,began his journey across the East Coast at the end of April with Coleman, a friend he met in 1987.

The cycling partners met through an advertisement Coleman had placed in a national biking magazine in 1987 looking for a companion for a bicycle tour of Yugoslavia,"taking time to smell the roses."

His curiosity piqued, Hiestand responded to the ad by phone, and two weeks later visited Coleman California.

"Later on he came to Taxes and did a weekend ride with me and a 150-mile charity ride with me, and we've been riding ever since," Hiestand said.

"We never did go to Yugoslavia because the country fell apart, but we stayed friends," said Coleman.

The pair have taken other cycling trips together, including one in China (but not along the Great Wall, Hiestand said). But they still waited to do a transnational trip in America.

"When he decided he wanted to do this trip, no way we weren't going to do this together," Coleman said.

The pair of veteran bicycles departed by bike from Cooper City, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, and traveled continuously, with only rest stops for sleep and a quick stop in New York City. On the way, they traveled through Hermosa Beach, Fla., Savannah, Ga., Charleston, S.C., Kitty Hawk, N.C. and Cape May, N. J.

The two friends chose the scenic route, biking up the Gold Coast through Vero Beach, off the coast of Cape Hatters in North Carolina and up the Del Mar pennisulla off the coast of Delaware. "We kind of avoided the major cities," Coleman said.

The friends did not bicycle all the way: they hitched a ride with a pickup truck as they crossed a tunnel near the Chesapeake Bridge.

The pair diverged as they drove through New Jersey and reached New York. Coleman took a ferry to Manhattan after stopping off to visit his wife in New Brunswick. Hiestand rode a ferry from State Island, riding over the renowned Brooklyn Bridge and connecting with his friend on Long Island. From there, they took another ferry to New London, Conn. and then biked to the town of Bedford, Mass.

Hiestand's wife Carol, however, chose to fly to New Jersey, where she met up with Coleman's wife, Ruthe.

From New Brunswick, the two women drove to Cambridge. The couples were reunited Wednesday in Badford with Hiestand and Coleman arriving-by bicycle 20 minutes before their wives, who came by car.

"His wife didn't want to do it alone, so I was his babysitter," Coleman joked.

The two friends talked to reporters after completing their last leg of the journey, coming down the Middlesex Trunpike and driving into the parking lot of the Stouffer Bedford Glen Hotel, where his reunion activities are centered.

The 50th anniversary reunion that begins this week includes an array of alumni from the naval training program, including the Rev. Raymond C. Baumhart, the president of Loyola University, and William Dearden, chair of the Hershey Foods Corporation. The mid-officer class also included two current U.S. Navy rear admirals, Edward Renfro and Bernie Browning.

Two Wars

Hiestand spent a year at Harvard, from March 1944 until March 1945.

The first four months the training class served as navy midshipmen and learned the ins and outs of naval supply procedures.

Because his training ended only two months before V-E Day and just six months before Japan's surrender, Hiestand did not see combat directly. He served as an assistant supply officers in the Pacific on a CVE III aircraft carrier dubbed the Vella Gulf.

But the carrier did skirt the fierce battle for control of the island of Okinawa, and Hiestand was present in Tokyo Bay as diplomats signed Japan's unconditional surrender.

Hiestand is a native of Pasadena, Calif., where he grew up and went to high school. He attended Pasadena City College for two years before enrolling at Occidental College. There, he needed only a year to complete almost all his bachelor's requirements. "They were accelerating everything then," he said.

"Most of weren't full graduates," he said of his naval training class. "For that matter, I still don't have a college degree." Hiestand never actually received his bachelor's because, he said, he did not want to take a remaining half course in religion.

Following the war, Hiestand became a recalled for the Korean War, however, and served as assistant to the supervisory cost inspector for the 11th naval district.

But he calls his military position in that conflict "the easiest job in the world." Hiestand remained in the States during the Korean War, and built in Los Angles during the period. Following the conflict, he began a small practice in Pasadena.

An early pioneer in the information revolution, Hiestand began a small business developing computer program in 1962. "There were computers those days, he said ,"although it's a far cry from today."

Hiestand moved with his wife, who worked for American Airlines, to Fort Worth, Tex. and finally retired in the mid-1980s. Both moved to Cooper City two years ago.

Since then the veteran has relaxed and worked on his biking career.

Firm Friendship

Hiestand's and Coleman's eight year friendship began under unique circumstances with a magazine ad. Their friendship has been growing ever since.

Hiestand, who at 6 feet tall cuts an imposing figure, credits Coleman with being the more experienced biker. "He's biked a lot, and I've done a fair amount," Hiestand said.

The sojourn along the East Coast brought the friends closer together, Hiestand said. Coleman turned 69 during the trip, on May 24.

But the trip also posed certain challanges for the men.

For instance, Coleman suffered a fall as they headed toward the ferry stop at Orient Point, Long Island.

"It isn't a question whether you're going to fall, it's a question of when," Hiestand said. Coleman fell on his hip, but luckily was only bruised. "It turned out fine but it could have been tragic," Hiestand said.

The trip that ended last week was Hiestand's longest ever, but Coleman has biked from coast to coast twice, in 1986 and 1990.

That accomplishment is especially remarkable, Hiestand proudly noted, because of his friend's struggle against a physical handicap.

Coleman ,a native of Newark, N.J. served in the Air Force and was based in the U.S. He contracted polio when he was in his 20's, and noted that Coleman had suffered from infantile paralysis. "They said I would never walk again ," Coleman said.

But through muscle rehabilitation and physical therapy, Coleman successfully fought polio and stood on crutches at his graduation from the University of California at Los Angeles. Previously he had been wheelchair-bound.

Coleman's inspirational recovery and dedication to cycling helped to drive the pair on their East Coast journey. Besides, Hiestand couldn't wait to be reunited with his classmates, whom he remembered fondly.

And as for future bicycling trips?

"There'll be some ,"Hiestand promised.