Vietnam Vets First to Spot Times Square Car Bomb
On May 1, two Times Square street vendors, Vietnam veterans Lance Orton and Duane Jackson, were hawking their T-shirts and handbags on a typical Saturday evening in New York’s busy theater district when they spotted smoke coming from an illegally parked vehicle at the corner of 45th and Broadway. Both men alerted New York police, who cleared the area and discovered the car contained a homemade bomb. A bomb squad used a robot to get into the car to defuse the bomb, which turned out to be a dud. Jackson and Orton each received calls from President Barack Obama congratulating them on their action.
At a news conference, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of Orton, “Lance, you know, served his country once before in the Vietnam War, and today he is looking out for his fellow Americans and fellow New Yorkers.” Bloomberg had dinner May 2 with Jackson, who started his handbag business 21 years ago, and NYPD mounted policeman Wayne Rhatigan, who was the first officer on the scene. Orton, a street vendor for 22 years, was invited but declined dinner with the mayor. Both Orton and Jackson are disabled veterans with special sidewalk vending privileges in the city.
Bones Found in Cambodia Determined Not to Be Flynn’s
Human remains found in a Cambodian village in April, which some claimed were those of missing war photographer Sean Flynn, have been tested in Hawaii at the Pentagon’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) and do not appear to be those of Flynn, U.S. Embassy spokesman John Johnson said in Phnom Penh.
In 1970 the son of actor Errol Flynn was on assignment for Time magazine when he and CBS News journalist Dana Stone went missing in Cambodia after they encountered a Khmer Rouge checkpoint near Phnom Penh. They are among 36 journalists killed during the war in Cambodia. Flynn was officially declared dead in 1984.
Over the years, there have been several efforts to recover the missing journalists. In early April, two amateur “bone hunters,” Australian Dave MacMillan and Briton Keith Rotheram, made international headlines when they announced that they had found Flynn’s remains in rural Cambodia. Some of the remains were given to U.S. officials in Phnom Penh and sent to JPAC, which then began its own search at the site, finding a few more pieces of bone. Johnson said the remains were damaged when they were initially dug up and that preliminary tests indicate they do not belong to a Caucasian, but may be indigenous. Neither MacMillan nor Rotheram are believed to have backgrounds in archaeology.
Names of Six More Chiseled into Black Granite
The names William L. Taylor, Ronald M. Vivona, Edward F. Miles, John E. Granville, Clayton K. Hough Jr., and Michael J. Morehouse were added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in May. The names are of veterans who survived serious injury in the war, but were determined by Defense Department officials to have “died as a result of wounds [combat or hostile related] sustained in the combat zone” that required drastic measures, such as amputation. Relatives and friends of the veterans were present during the names’ engraving onto the black granite Wall.
“It’s kind of like an acknowledgement that in some ways he never came back,” said Ron Main of his old friend Marine Corps Cpl. Vivona, who lost both his legs after his platoon was ambushed at Khe Sanh. The additions become official during the annual Memorial Day ceremony at The Wall on May 31. Including them, the total number of names is now 58,267.
Wisconsin Vets Turn Lambeau Field into LZ
As many as 30,000 Wisconsin Vietnam veterans, along with family, friends and supporters, were expected to attend the May 21-23 “LZ Lambeau, Welcome Home” event in Green Bay. Organizers credit Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) with spurring the event with its new three-hour documentary film Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories, which features the oral histories of more than 100 Wisconsin veterans. Plans being made for a public screening of the film mushroomed into the three-day celebration at the Green Bay Packer’s legendary Lambeau Field in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs and Wisconsin Historical Society. The film premiered May 24 on WPT.
Navy Names Two Ships After Vietnam Veterans
Northrop Grumman’s newest Aegis guided missile destroyer was christened William P. Lawrence (DDG-110) in April, after the late U.S. Navy vice admiral who was the first naval aviator to fly twice the speed of sound and who spent nearly six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. During the ceremony at the Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard, Lawrence’s widow and two daughters each broke a bottle of champagne over a rail of the ship’s bow. “Sail with the honor of the man whose name you bear,” they said in christening the ship.
Lawrence, commanding officer of fighter squadron VF-143 aboard the aircraft carrier Constellation, was captured when his F-4B Phantom II went down after completing a strike in North Vietnam in June 1967. Released in March 1973, he earned the Distinguished Service Medal for his leadership to fellow POWs, and went on to serve as superintendent of the Naval Academy, commander of the Third Fleet and Chief of Naval Personnel. Lawrence died in 2005.
At another ceremony in Pennsylvania on April 26, the Navy named its newest San Antonio Class amphibious transport dock ship, LPD-26, after the late John P. Murtha, who died in February and who served the country as a Marine in Korea and Vietnam, and as an 18-term U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania. The support ship Murtha will carry about 700 troops along with equipment and vehicles. A battalion intelligence officer with the 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division in Vietnam, Murtha received the Bronze Star Medal, two Purple Hearts, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal.
The naming was not without controversy, however, because of Murtha’s criticism of the Iraq war, in which he accused Marines of murdering Iraqi citizens after an incident in which a Marine was killed and two were wounded by a roadside bomb in Haditha in 2005. In a recent statement, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said the Pentagon held deep respect for Murtha. “His unwavering support of our sailors and Marines, and in particular our wounded warriors, was well known and deeply appreciated,” Mabus said.
Originally published in the August 2010 issue of Vietnam. To subscribe, click here.
