Terry Kindlon, 78, has followed the road wherever it has taken him

Life and its twists and turns

Seventy-eight year old Terry Kindlon of Delmar can look back and see that circuitousness has been the straight road that got him to where he is today.

One edge that belongs to the senior is to see how twists and turns might well be the norm for life.

The most dramatic example of his winding road occurred after he dropped out of college and left his physical education major to join the Marines so that he could become a pilot.

“I felt it was an adventure that needed to take place, and it struck me as a worthy thing to do,” he said. “I went to my father, who had been wounded four times in World War II, and he thought it was the worst idea in the world.”

Ignoring the advice of his dad, Kindlon found himself as a rifleman or a “grunt” with four guns and two knives and limitless optimism during the height of the war.

“This was in 1967 and 1968, which was some of the most violent and brutal times of the conflict,” he said. “What I soon realized is that everyone was trying to kill me all of the time.”

Unfortunately, one bullet almost did, striking him on the head. He fell into a rice paddy and was about to drown when a fellow soldier carried him back to safety.

As fate would have it, his fellow Marine was shot in the spine and ended up in a wheelchair the rest of his life. Kindlon never found out who his rescuer was until decades later because there was no record and they were airlifted out on different helicopters. (This remarkable part of his story is relayed in detail on “The Age Sage Podcast,” which can be listened to on your phone or computer.)

“It was the sort of thing that left a deep and lasting impression on me,” he said. “Here I am an old man now, and I’m still thinking about it every day. It just doesn’t go away.”

The implications of his saved life are staggering.

“I have seven kids,” he said. “If my life had ended in that rice paddy, I would have had no kids.”

Needless to say, Kindlon never became a pilot … with the Marines, that is. That would come later.

What finally ensued was law school and a long and storied career in criminal defense. His physical education college mate ended up becoming a doctor. Again, circuitousness seems to be the norm and not the exception.

As he looks back, he sees how life weaves a story, but it is not one that even the most ardent and focused planner could predict.

And so it has been with “retirement” –  if you want to call it that.

When Kindlon’s wife, Laurie Shanks, who is a retired Albany Law School professor, was named a Fulbright Scholar, he quickly and deftly handed off the reins of his position as a supervisor and mentor of public defenders to another attorney and packed up with her for lectures throughout Chile.

While that official retirement happened around his 70th birthday, Kindlon doesn’t believe there is a magical number to segue into a different pace for fellow seniors. But even if there were some perfect day for retiring, it can be as circuitous as the rest of the stages of life.

A “case” in point was when he took on a pro bono suit that he thought would be limited and it ended up taking six months. Even so, the reward of that successful outcome for an inmate brutalized by correction officers seemed worth the effort.

“Volunteerism is the ultimate exercise of free will,” he said. “What I’m hopeful about is that my health holds out. The family joke is that I’ve had everything that could possibly happen. Broken tendons, blown-out disks, I’ve been shot … but most of the medical issues seem to be behind me now.”

Kindlon said he is blessed to have 11 grandchildren who are mostly local, and there is always something going on.

If all this wasn’t enough, he has returned to the classroom to get his master’s in history.

And even there, he will find that history itself is written with a crooked pen.

By Ribert LaCosta, Robert J. LaCosta’s “Age Sage” podcast is free on most platforms on smartphones and computers.

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