The Russian Rocket

By Mike Takeuchi
(*Note A shorter version of this story appeared in another publication)

When he was a mere nine-year-old Sergey Sushchikh had already found himself in a transition period. One year removed from coming to this country from St. Petersburg Russia, his family was relocating to Goleta. Yet instead of struggling with the language, he thrived in many aspects thanks to some great teachers and friends who embraced him. Eight years later, another group of friends and teachers have brought him into the comfort zone once again. Only instead of the language barrier being conquered, it was a possible championship.

On Saturday, Sushchikh will try to lead the Dos Pueblos boys cross country team to its highest CIF Southern Section Division placing in 38 years. The seven-member team of Sushchikh, Jacob Bartholomew, Alfred Scott, Sam Sarmiento, Bryan Fernandez, Max Davis, and Ben York, along with alternates Dylan Zukin and Brendan Morrow-Jones will travel to Mt. San Antonio College to try and become the first team to qualify for the State Meet since the Chargers placed fifth in the State Meet among Division II schools in 1999. The top seven teams and top 20 individuals of non-qualifying teams in the division earn a berth to the State Meet at Woodward Park (Fresno) on November 27.

One person who is confident that the current team will be there is Gordon McClenathen, the longtime coach who headed the Dos Pueblos program from 1967 to ’97, and whose 1972 team was the runner-up to division champion Lompoc. McClenathen, along with Micks Purnell assists head coach Leslie Wiggins-Roth and Len Miller in coaching the Chargers.

“They have the talent and the desire to go to State,” McClenathen said. “But they also have the character to do well if they do.”

And the runner in front will be undoubtedly Sushchikh. After a junior year in which he placed 47^th individually in the 2009 CIF-Southern Section Division II Finals, the senior started off solidly this fall. By the end of the season, he took off by running a league record 14 minutes and 31 seconds over a three-mile course to take top individual honors and lead the Chargers to a Channel League title. Last week he placed second in his division and fifth out of all runners by running 15:11 over 5k en route to pacing the Chargers to a third place in last week’s Division II Southern Section Preliminaries.

“We have been feeling really good these last few weeks, all of us,” the soft-spoken Sushchikh said.

While initially needing prodding to talk about his own running, the 17-year-old acknowledged that he was having a good year so far and expressed hope that it was a stepping stone to a running future that included competing for a Division I university. While taking college level calculus and English, he has maintained good enough grades to draw the interest of Syracuse University. That school, along with the University of Colorado and the hometown UCSB are among the schools he is considering.

He added that all of this wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for his coaches, especially Miller, the man who guided former American record holder in the mile, Steve Scott. Sushchikh credited the longtime coach, who was inducted into the UC Irvine Hall of Fame in 2006 as well as headed up the Arizona State program, as the coach who helped put him on the path to success.

“During my sophomore year, Coach Miller came along and something clicked,” Sushchikh said. “I just have so much respect for him as a coach.”

Miller said that while he couldn’t compare the runner to anyone he has coached, but he did recognize a common bond.

“Every runner is unique,” Miller said. “The great runners that I’ve coached have common threads that are part of the whole fabric. From Steve Scott on down to the great half milers I had at Arizona State, Sergey has all the personal and emotional qualities that my greatest runners possessed. He handles setbacks really well and accepts that nobody is going to win all the time. As his career progresses and someone beats him, instead of being depressed, he’ll try and figure out what he has to do to be better prepared the next time. Plus he is not intimidated by anyone. That’s why I think he will succeed.”

The one thing that Miller and his teammates alike appreciated about Sushchikh is his humility said Bartholomew, who shares captaincy duties with his teammate.

“We all know he is the best guy on the team, but he never goes around telling people that he is,” Bartholomew said. “He’s an admirable guy who’s dedicated to running, but is not above having fun and sharing his humor.”

Yet he is afforded immediate respect by his peers because of the example he has set for the younger runners, according to Fernandez, one of the three sophomores on the team, was the second fastest of the Chargers while finishing fifth in the division in 15:34 had the second fastest time on the team last week.

“He has taught us younger guys to let stuff like bad races go,” Fernandez said. “He just brushes it off and kills it the next time. In workouts, he is great at challenging us, always trying to break us. What it does is push us to another level. He is a great talent that I think will go far.”

On Wednesday afternoon, as the group gathers for a photo, the banter was light and fun with Sushchikh’s teammates willingly giving up their leader when asked if he had a nickname (which incidentally is the Russian Rocket, which was bestowed upon him by his middle school coach John Sprague). Yet when it came time to actually take the shot, each member filed respectfully behind Sushchikh even though he hadn’t uttered a word.

And when it was time to talk about an ideal race on Saturday, he responded in perfect sounding Russian and then translated it into English.

“Saturday is going to be a great day,” Sushchikh translated. “We’re all going to run really fast. And we’re going to go to the State Meet.”

While the language needed translation, the message most certainly did not.

Hubert Wolfe 82nd Airborne, 504th Regiment-All American All the Way

By Mike Takeuchi


(Reprinted Article)

Little did 12-year-old Hubert Wolfe know that when his father caught him trying to jump out of a three-story building with an umbrella, Dad was only delaying the inevitable.

Before long, Mr. Wolfe was fighting with the 82nd "All American" Airborne Division at Anzio in Italy, in Operation Market Garden in Holland, and later, the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium during World War II.

Earlier this week, inside his Lompoc home with his wife Pat, and his son Robert -- a historian of the famed division who was sitting nearby -- the 85-year-old told the story of being a member of B Company in the 504th Paratroop Infantry Unit of the 82nd. Called the "Devils in Baggy Pants" in a dead German soldier's diary, the elite division spent most of their time dropping behind enemy lines to strike and later hold their ground.

"I was a very small part of a very special group," Mr. Wolfe recalled.

Growing up in Pasadena, Mr. Wolfe chuckled that he always had an itch to try and jump out of things since the day his dad Lee Roy stopped him, and later, when he and his friend David Waters -- who also later joined the 82nd -- jumped off the roof of a house while each held two corners of a blanket.

After the war broke out, he had to wait to come of age.

"Of course we were all itching to do our part," Mr. Wolfe said. "But I had to wait because my parents wouldn't sign the form that would let me go in early. And when I finally could, I knew I wanted to be in the airborne. "

Basic training at Camp Roberts (near Paso Robles) was followed by jump school at Fort Benning in Georgia (the division's permanent home at Fort Bragg, N.C., was established later) and then to North Africa for more training before their first combat assignment as part of Operation Shingle in Anzio at the end of January 1944.

Despite being trained to jump out of airplanes, his regiment entered the Italian seaport area in a landing craft where they were greeted not by enemy soldiers, but by the strafing of the Messerschmitts of the German Luftwaffe. With the craft to his right taking a direct hit, Mr. Wolfe and his unit scrambled out.

"When I saw the boat next to us take a hit, I was thinking let's get off this damn thing," Mr. Wolfe said. "But the water was still deep, I had to help hold my corporal above the water because he was so short."

At Anzio, Mr. Wolfe saw much action as B Company completed several patrols in an area called the Mussolini Canal.

Although the enemy suffered 10 times the amount of casualties as his division, the 504th was decimated to the point that it couldn't participate in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day.

The Allied command had other plans for them, however. In an attempt to end the war by 1944, the group jumped behind enemy lines into Holland in September as part of the ultimately failed Operation Market Garden -- the largest airborne operation ever that was made famous by the movie "A Bridge Too Far."

While the main body of the 82nd was famously trying to cross the Waal River from Nijmegen in canvas boats, Mr. Wolfe suffered what he thought was an ankle sprain upon landing en route to an attempt to capture the Heuman Lock Bridge.

After four days of heavy fighting, a local gave him a cane and when the pain was too severe, another resident put him on the handlebars of his bike and rode the injured soldier to an aid station.

When Mr. Wolfe took off his boot, his ankle swelled to twice its size. He had fought for days without being aware that he had actually suffered from a broken a bone in his foot.

"Everyone had some kind of wound or another, it was actually rarer if someone didn't get killed or hurt," Mr. Wolfe said.

The Purple Heart recipient admitted he was one of the lucky ones. At the end of fighting, the 82nd lost nearly 1,700 men at Market Garden, including his buddies Capt. Bob Petit, Fred Granger, Robert Stern, Lawrence Blazina, Jerry Murphy and Maurice Marcus, a former weightlifter who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Mr. Wolfe said.

"It was hard losing your friends, but you had to move on to survive," Mr. Wolfe said. "I tried not to think about it too much."

After a short recovery, he and the newly replenished 82nd entered the Ardennes Forest area in November in what would later famously become the Battle of the Bulge. Here, on Dec. 20, near a town called Cheneux, Mr. Wolfe was pinned down from heavy fire and was struck in the back of the head by shrapnel from a large German machine gun.

Rendered partially paralyzed on his left side, the private dragged himself out of his trench to try and reach medical treatment. From out of nowhere he said, an unknown guardian angel grabbed him and carried the severely injured soldier back to the aid station where a Bronze Star, another Purple Heart, and a five-month hospital stay that included the insertion of a steel plate in the back of his head, awaited.

"I never knew the guy's name," Mr. Wolfe said.

It would be nearly 38 years until his savior was finally revealed. When Pat Wolfe overheard a conversation between two members at an 82nd reunion in Philadelphia in 1982, she began asking questions and became immediately excited when she learned that the man standing before her, Ian "Red" McKee, was her husband's very rescuer.

"I just hugged him for the longest time, and the first thing he said was, 'He's not going to want to hug me too is he?' " Pat Wolfe laughed.

Now, years later, and after another different but special reunion in Holland in 1982 (alas, his helpers there remain unknown), Hubert Wolfe said that despite what he had gone through, it was a rewarding yet difficult experience to be a part of.

"Whenever I wear my 82nd cap, people come up than thank me, which sometimes is overwhelming," Mr. Wolfe said choking back tears. "Because they can appreciate how difficult it was seeing and doing what I did. But I don't dwell on it. I am proud of what I did, but not particularly proud of taking lives."

Photos provided courtesy of Hubert Wolfe