Buhler ? To understand the drama of Fred Navarro’s life, it’s best to divide it into chapters, like a book.

Some parts are fractured, desperate, but there is always someone special who steps in to save the Hutchinson native. The amazing part of Navarro’s story is that it’s nonfiction.

Fred Navarro, center, laughs with his adopted sister Phyllis and her husband Warren Pebley at Hutchinson’s American Legion in this Sept. 29 photo. Navarro met Warren at the age of 10 at the Twin Oaks Boys Home, which at the time was a Reno County orphanage.

‘Adopted family’

Begin in the present: Navarro is sitting outside Hutchinson’s American Legion, talking with Phyllis and Warren Pebley, two people who share a history with him. He calls them his “adopted family.”

Navarro, who currently lives in San Antonio, came to Kansas recently to visit the Pebleys and attend his Buhler High School reunion. At 68, it’s Navarro’s first time to return for a reunion; he has 50 years of catching up to do with his classmates.

Looking tan and relaxed, Navarro wears denim shorts and a polo shirt. As he introduces the Pebleys, the story quickly jumps to the past. Back to a memory of being a 10-year-old boy in one of Hutchinson’s roughest neighborhoods, where the abuse was so bad he ran from the house into the snow wearing only his underwear. His first rescuer was Bob Johnson, the man for whom the youth shelter is named. Known as a caretaker of kids, Johnson took Navarro home, and his wife, Barbara, cleaned, clothed and fed him. Before long, he was living in Twin Oaks Boys Home, which was a Reno County orphanage at the time.

That’s where Navarro met Warren Pebley, who was also in the home with his two younger brothers. Navarro said the home had a reputation as the place bad kids were sent. But mostly they were boys who had been abandoned like Pebley or abused like Navarro. Through the ensuing years, the home ran into management trouble. And by the time Navarro was a sophomore in high school, it was shut down. Everyone had found a place to go but Fred. He made a quick call to Pebley, who was older than Navarro and now married to Phyllis. She called her parents, Abe and Emma Thiessen, Buhler, and asked if they could help Navarro. Without a second’s hesitation, they said yes.

Again, kind people came to his rescue.

A saved life — again

Moving to Buhler, he finished high school and was on his way to Hutchinson Community College, when he impulsively decided to enlist in the military.

It was 1961, and a war was brewing in Southeast Asia.

Flip the pages forward to Easter Sunday, April 11, 1966. By now he’s Sgt. Navarro, and the squad leader and member of the First Infantry Division taking part in Operation Abilene, 45 miles east of Saigon.

According to an April 23, 1966, Hutchinson News report of the incident: “While plodding through the jungle, the 178 men in the company walked into a murderous VC (Vietcong) ambush. Bullets rained from the trees like firecrackers tossed in a fire. Word of the carnage flashed across the world.”

The man who saved Navarro’s life, William Pitsenbarger, wasn’t even on duty that day. An Air Force pararescue jumper, Pitsenbarger volunteered to go in and help save the wounded. Then he dropped from the sky, and together he and Navarro fought side by side, trying to stay alive while tending to the wounded. They ran from soldier to soldier, and then Navarro was hit from behind in the lower hip. He fell, and Pitsenbarger piled two dead U.S. soldiers on top of him. Then as Pitsenbarger ran away, Navarro watched as his rescuer also took a bullet and died.

“I think he did that so I wouldn’t get hit anymore,” Navarro said. “He saved me.”

Navarro lay in the middle of the bloody massacre for 24 hours. The shooting stopped and after dark he couldn’t see a thing. All he could hear was the moaning and cries of the wounded.

While he was recovering from his injuries, Navarro received the Purple Heart. Then Navarro performed an act of kindness by nominating Pitsenbarger for the Medal of Honor. But President Lyndon Johnson didn’t approve it.

Distancing himself

Navarro’s next chapter is about haunting bad dreams and moving constantly with the military, estranged from his first marriage and out of touch with his family and friends. Asked why he didn’t stay in touch, he said, “I was traveling the world. I didn’t have time.”

In 1989, Navarro retired from the Army. He spent the next 16 years driving a school bus in Texas. It was in the late 1990s that family in Kansas tracked him down, and he had a reunion with his self-proclaimed adopted family. Every Christmas since he has come to Kansas to spend the holidays with the Pebleys and his three other adopted sisters.

In the next chapter, though not the last of Navarro’s story, the focus is on “The Last Full Measure.” It’s a famous quote from Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, that all gave their lives to the very end.

Finally, 34 years after Pitsenbarger’s death, President Bill Clinton approved the Medal of Honor before leaving office. Pitsenbarger’s father accepted the medal for his only son. Navarro was in the audience that day to honor the man who saved his life.

Based on a true story

For several years Warner Brothers has been making a movie about Pitsenbarger and the battle in which he saved Navarro but lost his life. It’s called “The Last Full Measure.” Andy Garcia will be playing the role of Fred Navarro, and the cast currently includes Bruce Willis, John Cusack and Morgan Freeman, according to box office data. The movie is still in production and should be in theaters by 2011.