by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Vietnam veteran Jim Hovda’s house on the edge of Little Rock Lake near Rice is chock-full of mementoes from his years in the Army and his 23 years as a Minneapolis police officer.
Hovda, though he is in his 70s, is an energetic, feisty man not the least bit shy of giving his opinions in sometimes-salty phrases.
“I never say I was in public service,” he said, scoffing. “That sounds too much like a politician. I always say, instead, that I was giving service to my country.”
During an interview with the Sauk Rapids/Rice Newsleader in his home, Hovda shared hundreds of photos of his military years – two fat albums filled with pictures – pictures of Hovda parachuting, an artists’ drawing of military Medal of Honor winners, a big poster of officer Hovda’s police badge, a photo of Hovda in Vietnam standing next to famed actress/comedian/singer Martha Ray, a little wad of foreign money, a practice grenade.
Hovda loved his life as a military man and, later, as a police officer. Both jobs, especially the Army, were filled with life lessons, he noted.
“I learned how to treat people,” he said, “and I learned how never to treat anybody.”
Hovda is proudest of his service in the U.S. Army Special Forces, a highly elite branch that began just about the time Hovda had a chance to join it. At the time, he was a radio-communications soldier serving in South Korea. One day he saw a poster about a branch called “Special Forces.” He checked into it. He took a series of rigorous, exhausting tests and was accepted.
Then he was sent to jump school at Fort Benning, Ga., then later to Fort Bragg, N.C. There were times of intense training that pushed Special Forces members to the very edge of mental and physical exhaustion. Many of the training sessions were in extremes of hot and cold, sometimes in swamps with alligators and other creepy-crawlies.
Hovda recalled one particularly miserable time in the boonies when it kept raining on a cold night. He and his fellow soldiers had to try to stay dry using just a couple of ponchos – no tents. Somehow, Hovda managed.
“It was cold; it was miserable,” he said. “But those kinds of things we had to just suck up and learn to do them.”
One day, Hovda found himself complaining about the conditions to a soldier with a rank of E-9, and Hovda thought the guy was just a fellow grunt like himself. He soon learned in no uncertain terms that Special Forces members do no complain – ever, no matter what.
“It was a good lesson to learn,” he recalled. “The teamwork and leadership in Special Forces were outstanding – great soldiers, tough as nails. A lot of them went on to become Medal of Honor recipients.”
Hovda served a six-month tour of duty in Vietnam in 1963 at a time before that war escalated to major status, not long after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Hovda vividly remembers JFK’s murder, not long before he left for Vietnam. On a Saturday, a day when things were kind of laid-back on the base, there was suddenly a command for troops to line up in formation. Everybody wondered, “What the heck’s up?” What was up is that there was an urgent order to send a detachment of Special Forces to participate in the funeral for JFK, a request made by his widow Jacquelyn Kennedy.
Within a matter of three hours, about two dozen soldiers were measured and fitted with brand-new uniforms and flown off to Washington, D.C.
“They were ready to go and out that door by 18 hundred hours (the military’s way of saying 6 p.m.),” Hovda said. “It was just amazing how quick they sent them off.”
Hovda said he wouldn’t trade his military experiences or his police officer job for anything.
Once back from Vietnam, in 1964, Hovda returned to his book-binding job at the Minneapolis Public Library. Born in Minneapolis, he attended a vocational high school, studying printing, and landed the job in the library bindery but later he and a good friend decided to join the Army in 1960 on the “buddy system.”
Hovda came to dislike the bindery job after all the experiences and life lessons he’d learned in the Army, so he applied for a job with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department. The first sergeant he worked with was a disagreeable, ornery sort; Hovda disliked him intensely. The second sergeant he worked with was a great guy who owned a cabin on Little Rock Lake near Rice, a serendipitous fact since Hovda would later make his home at the same lake. The third sergeant was a “tough son-of-a-gun who had been part of the D-Day invasion of northern France.
“He was young and fit,” Hovda recalled. “A tough guy.”
After awhile, his job as a deputy began to get a little dull, more paperwork and traffic work than catching bad guys.
“That’s what God made me for,” Hovda said. “He made me to fight crooks. I liked fighting crooks, chasing crooks and catching crooks. And that’s what I did when I joined the Minneapolis Police Department. I loved it on Day 1 and loved it on my last day. I was on the police force for 23 years.”
Hovda likes to say there are two kinds of people – taxpayers and non-taxpayers.
“The non-taxpayers are low-life, if you ask me,” he said.
As an avid member of the Rice American Legion, Hovda and his wife Jan, an auxiliary member, are proud to take part in Veterans Day ceremonies and in many other ways of helping veterans with their needs.
Hovda’s pride and fondness for the military have strengthened with age.
“It (military years) was one huge education,” he said. “Lessons about leadership, about life and death, about crises and survival and about taking care of everything. There were lots of life lessons to learn. I met the most amazing people in the Special Forces. Many are now gone – dead. They are special people … very, very special people.”
Jim Hovda
