My fearless friend Len

Len Burgeson, a native of the San Fernando Valley, worked on my house in Tehachapi seven years ago when I first moved in. He laid pavers, plumbed an outdoor sink and built cabinets just the way I wanted, which often did not make sense to the former union carpenter turned handyman. Len built himself a couple of houses in Sand Canyon. I had not seen him for a while when I encountered his smiling face at Save Mart with his wife Chelie Constantine. A veteran of a 1967 tour in Viet Nam that exposed him to Agent Orange, he was not shy about telling me he has an inoperable brain tumor and that he's looking mortality straight in the eye.

But he's a happy guy.

After struggling with sometimes bungling treatment at the veterans Administration, and being confined to bed at home unable to walk, he found hospice care that has brought him back to life. He sings the praises of the non-profit Hoffman Hospice.

"It's amazing what they did," Len said. "They've been angels of mercy." Hoffmann personnel came out the same day they called and came back again a few hours later. With new medication to stop swelling in his brain, the nausea, vomiting, headache and dizziness stopped, and he was out of bed the next day.

Hoffman personnel visit regularly. Len is able to work around his property, making laminated wood canes in his open-air workshop, which he gives to anyone who needs one.

Len, 67, joined the Navy in 1966 just out of high school. His father had been an Air Force gunner in World War II.

The Navy assigned Len to the U.S.S. Duluth LPD-6 amphibious assault ship. It carried boats and helicopters. One of his jobs was as a machine gunner to protect the Marines when they hit the beach. They worked the coast from Da Nang to the DMZ.

Agent Orange was sprayed from helicopters to kill the crops. The toxic stuff, Len said, "Was everywhere." The Marines they picked up on the beach had it on them. "It was a sickening sweet smell. A deadly, deadly, deadly gas."

A cousin who was in Viet Nam at the same time died three years ago, he said, and others he knows are debilitated or dying.

"They said it was harmless."

But for now, Len is living life to the fullest, enjoying visits from children and grandchildren. His son Doug, 41, served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His son Dennis is 39. Their daughter Sandy Toye, 47, lives in Montecito.