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With help from Rugby residents, Vietnam vet says goodbye to friend

By Sue Sitter - | Aug 20, 2022

Submitted Photo Lionel Castillo, center, poses for a photo on the Fourth of July with Rugby residents Michael Wendland, left, and Jessie Wendland, right..

A disabled Vietnam veteran living in Texas fulfilled a bucket-list dream to say goodbye to his U.S. Army buddy in Rugby, thanks to local residents willing to help a stranger.

Lionel Castillo, of San Antonio, Texas, had never set foot in North Dakota before last Fourth of July weekend.

But he had heard plenty about the state from his buddy, Army Specialist Robert Hornstein, when both were soldiers stationed in Long Binh, Vietnam, together from 1967 to 1968.

“Bob would always tell me, ‘I’m from Rugby, the Geographical Center of North America,'” Castillo said in a phone conversation. “He was always laughing and telling me stories of his boyhood.”

“He was a great friend,” Castillo added.

Both served in a supply unit. “I think it was called the 563rd Supply Company,” Castillo said. “We were in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.”

The supply company never saw combat, Castillo said, however, its depot sat next to a rain forest where personnel saw planes flying overhead, spraying Agent Orange to kill the foliage.

After duty in Vietnam ended, the company came back to Ft. Hood, Texas.

About 1970, the stint in the Army ended for Castillo and Hornstein, and each went back to civilian life. Castillo became a fifth-grade teacher in Texas.

Hornstein came back to Rugby.

“His mother used to write to me all the time – Florence Hornstein,” Castillo said. “Bob wasn’t much of a letter writer. But she’d write to me and keep me in touch with her son.”

When Hornstein married, his wife, Mary, also wrote to Castillo.

“They sent me a birth announcement about Heidi, their oldest daughter,” Castillo said. “I still have that and remember how he was so happy that she was born to this world. I still treasure that.

“We were very, very close,” Castillo said. “And then, when I found out he had passed away at the age of 41, I felt really bad.”

Hornstein died of cancer in 1989. He was buried at Little Flower Cemetery in Rugby.

“His mother had told me that they were trying to get ahold of me,” Castillo said. “He had asked about me before he left this earth. They weren’t able to get ahold of me, but she wrote me a letter, and I still treasure the letters that she would write to me.

“And it was on my bucket list that before I leave this earth, I’m going to have someone take me all the way from San Antonio, Texas, to Rugby, North Dakota,” Castillo said. “And sure enough, it happened.”

Search begins

With little information other than Florence Hornstein’s address, Castillo sent off another letter in December 2020 asking for information about Robert’s family, and hoped for the best.

Florence had died in 2010. The new occupants of the home, Mike and Jessie Wendland, received the letter.

“We got this letter in the mail, and I looked at it and thought, ‘I have no idea who this person is,’ and I thought it was a scam,” Jessie Wendland recalled.

“But I opened it and was reading it and thought, ‘Wow. This is crazy.’ It was Lionel and he wanted to get in touch with Robert’s family and the last known address for any of them was our house. So, he left me his email address in the letter,” Wendland said. “I emailed him and told him ‘It’s a really small town. Give me a few minutes and I bet I can figure this out in no time.'”

Wendland said she remembered a question from family friend, Charlotte Wurgler.

“She asked me, ‘Was it Florence’s house that you bought?’,” she said.

Wendland said she asked her mother, Michelle Lake, if she had known Florence and the Hornstein family.

Bit by bit, a trail came together with help from social media. Wendland found Bob Hornstein’s sister on Facebook. She forwarded Castillo’s email address and his letter. She also sent some pages from the Hornstein family tree she had found while remodeling the home.

“I got her address, sent it all to her, let Lionel know, and he sent me an email saying thank you, and I thought that would be the end of it,” Wendland said.

Wendland, who works as an emergency medical technician for Heart of America Medical Center, was in for a surprise.

Bucket list item complete

“On the Fourth of July, I was cleaning an ambulance to go in the parade, and my husband called me and said, ‘You need to come home right away,'” Wendland recalled. “I thought maybe something had happened to the dogs.

“He said, ‘No, someone’s in the driveway and he wants to meet you.’ I thought, ‘Ha, ha, Ashton, our stepson, had come home for the weekend.’ He said, ‘No, it’s the man from the letter,'” Wendland recalled.

“I came home and saw Lionel and A.J. standing in our driveway. A.J. had driven him up here. He’s full-time military and he was on weekend leave,” she said.

Castillo said the son of a friend in San Antonio who was an Army lieutenant had heard his story and was more than willing to help him make his bucket list journey to Rugby. He drove the 2,000-mile round trip to help out.

After their visit with the Wendlands, the two went to Rugby’s Little Flower Cemetery.

“On the Fourth of July, I was able to put a Vietnam hat on Bob’s tombstone and some flowers,” Castillo said.

“I decided before I went home, I’d take something to remember him. I looked at the ground and saw a bunch of little pinecones,” Castillo added. “I collected pinecones from the cemetery and I brought them home with me. I’m going to treasure these as a reminder of my trip to Rugby.”

Castillo said he also visited Florence Hornstein’s grave at the cemetery, and “talked to her and Bob in prayer.”

After Castillo returned to Texas, word of his trip to Hornstein’s grave reached Mary Neuman, his widow.

Memories old and new

Wurgler and others contacted Neuman, who in early August visited Rugby and her former husband’s grave to see the hat Castillo had placed there.

“I was surprised,” Neuman, who now lives in Minnesota, said. “They sent me (text messages) Jessie had written, and by the time I responded, he had already gone back to Texas.”

She noted Castillo “said it was on his bucket list for years to see his amigo, friend. On his hat, it says, ‘Amigo.'”

Neuman said she and Castillo now send each other text messages regularly.

She said he had asked her to give his hat to her daughter, Heidi Hornstein-McClure, when it faded over time in the harsh North Dakota weather.

Castillo said he regrets not staying in contact with Hornstein and his family more, especially after doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Texas diagnosed him as disabled due to Agent Orange exposure.

He said he wondered if Hornstein’s cancer might have come from the exposure.

Castillo said he would cherish his visit to North Dakota. His visit “brought back all these stories Bob would tell me about Rugby.”

“One story I remember, he told me one time was he had an encounter with the Abominable Snowman,” Castillo said, laughing. “He told me this story, and I fell for it, I believed him.

“Then, he saw that I had a straight face, and he said, ‘Castillo, do you believe what I’m telling you?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘No, Castillo, I’m lying to you,'” he added.

“I said, ‘That’s okay, just finish the story,'” Castillo recalled. “He was like that, always telling stories.”

“When I think of Bob, I think of all the racism and hatred nowadays,” Castillo said. “I’m Mexican-American, and Bob was of German ancestry. But Bob and I had no color barrier between us. We were just friends. He accepted me for who I was and I accepted him for who he was.”

Like Robert Hornstein’s family, the Wendlands said they planned to keep in touch with Castillo.

“We’re planning to see him maybe this coming summer because we think it’s our turn to drop in and say hi to him,” Jessie Wendland said.

“It would’ve been easy for someone to say, ‘I don’t know who this person is,’ and just throw the letter away,” Wendland added. “But he’s one of our veterans, and you’ve got to help.

“He did more work for me than I could ever do for him,” she said.