Gary Grimmette, troubled Vietnam War veteran turned White House gardener, dies
Gary Grimmette’s life was defined by his experience as a young combat medic in Vietnam, addiction, homelessness, peripatetic ramblings, a spiritual awakening and a self-reckoning for a troubled man who finally made friends with himself.
Gary L. Grimmette, a Bolton Hill resident, died March 24 of pneumonia at the Veterans Administration Hospital on Greene Street in downtown Baltimore. He was 75.
“Gary was a very, very open and generous person,” said Noah Tyler, a neighbor and friend.
“I met him one day when he was walking his dog and he needed a ride after a woman reneged on driving him to Fort Meade where he did his shopping in the commissary, so for the last 16 years I’ve been taking him there,” Mr. Tyler said. “Gary is also godfather to several of my kids.”
Gary Lee Grimmette, son of Wayne Grimmette, a coal miner and B & O railroader, and Rosa Grimmette, a waitress, was born in Rita, West Virginia.
It was a hardscrabble existence from the beginning.
“My father died of a heart attack and fell over onto the stove. He was buried in the family cemetery in our holler,” Mr. Grimmette wrote in an unpublished memoir, “They Pay Me To Pick the Flowers.”
“We raised vegetables, chickens, pigs, but it was never really enough. I remember my brothers, brother-in-law, used to sit in the living room and drink from jugs. One day I got hold of the jug and took a big gulp. It took my breath away but I went back for more. I liked it. It was moonshine.”
Seeking a better life, his mother moved the family to Detroit where they moved around and sometimes lived with relatives.
His mother worked as a waitress while falling into several violent and abusive marriages.
“We lived like gypsies, moving from one place to another,” he wrote.
After his stepfather threatened to kill his mother, Mr. Grimmette, who was already working odd jobs, left home.
“I was on my own and loved the freedom and the peace that I now had. I was 12 years old and on my own,” he wrote.
“I learned how life on the streets worked and became street smart, also to survive.”
Mr. Grimmette was 15 when he dropped out of high school, and when he turned 16, he lied about his age and in 1965 joined the Army where he was trained as a medic.
“I was going to Vietnam as a medic. It was the height of the war in 1966. I was to be there for a year,” he wrote.
In Vietnam, he met the medic he was replacing. “He was really happy getting out of this hell. He wished me luck and told me to be careful.”
He joined C Company and was sent to a forward aid station.
Enduring heavy combat, Mr. Grimmette recalled his last battle before going home.
“I don’t remember a lot after the battle ended, and the wounded and the dead were taken care of, but I remember standing on a mound of dirt all by myself and just crying. I became numb to everything around me.”
He was sent to Fort Eustis, Virginia, where he worked in the base hospital, and where he began drinking heavily and taking tranquilizers to deal with the endless flashbacks that haunted him at night.
He became publicly disenchanted with the war.
“I never received any medals and the Army was ready to get rid of me, so they let me out six months early to go to college,” he wrote.
He earned his GED, briefly attended community college in Northern Virginia where he studied horticulture, and grew estranged from his family.
“Gary saved many lives and sent people back home to their families,” said his sister and sole survivor, Gladys Stotridge, of Wellington, Ohio.
He moved to Baltimore, came out as gay, and then went to Arlington, Virginia, where he sold shoes.
In 1971, he took a job with the National Park Service, eventually becoming a White House staff gardener.
“After all, we are the chosen ones in the Park Service,” he wrote. “We’re the presidential gardeners.”
He left the Park Service in 1984, and after working in a Georgetown antiques store, he moved back to Baltimore.
He then moved to Los Angeles in 1986 and resumed working as a gardener and owning a landscaping business while, according to his memoir, consuming three cases of Lowenbrau beer a day, “so as not to have the shakes and to be able to function.”
On Nov. 17, 1987, he sobered up in his apartment enduring “horrible shakes and the DTs. I had put a gun, a .38 special, in my mouth. I said, ‘If you don’t do something, I’m going to,’ and even though it was 2 a.m., I was bathed in a beautiful white light.”
Four days later, he attended his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
In his fifth year of sobriety, Mr. Grimmette, who had become an AA leader, suffered a mental breakdown and was admitted to the hospital where he was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder that dated to his Army days.
In 1992, he was diagnosed with AIDS.
“I knew I was going to die of AIDS anytime now just like most of my friends had,” he wrote. “I only went out when I had to, and I’d sit in my rocking chair and I’d wait for death to take me,” he wrote.
He went on disability. “I decided to resume life and to live it to the fullest that I could,” he wrote.
Mr. Grimmette sold his house in Hollywood and moved to Paris and Pisa, Italy, before returning to Baltimore and settling into a Bolton Hill apartment in 2008.
He joined the Bolton Hill Garden Club and enjoyed helping his neighbors tend their gardens while he maintained Maple Leaf Park, a garden at the intersection of Bolton and Roberts streets.
He told the Bolton Hill Bulletin, a newsletter, in a 2011 interview that he “doesn’t trust the government,” and reads The Guardian and listens to the “BBC and trusts them and the Associated Press but no other media.”
Troubled by unwanted email, he unplugged his computer. “You can reach me by phone or by mail, but I won’t be back on email,” he told the newsletter.
“He was married in the 1990s, but his wife disappeared and they never found her,” Mr. Tyler said.
He was an active communicant of Mount Calvary Roman Catholic Church.
“He had a deep spiritual faith and would do Bible readings throughout the day and prayed for the sick from his church,” Mr. Tyler said.
“He was a hero for not giving up.”
Reflecting on his life, Mr. Grimmette wrote, “I am a miracle today and everyday. I do not drink alcohol and am of service to someone, and I remember — “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
A Requiem Mass will be offered at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Mount Calvary Roman Catholic Church at 816 N. Eutaw St.
He is survived by his sister.
