Stories of Honor 2021

A SPECIAL PUBLICATION FOR THE DAILY JOURNAL/FARMINGTON PRESS/DEMOCRAT NEWS

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JULY 2021

A simple thank you for your service

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ovelist Tom Clancy said, “The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they’re protecting us.”

We, the staff at the Daily Journal, are pleased to honor our military and our veterans with this simple Stories of Honor project.

Like many of you, veterans are our friends, our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons.

Daily Journal Sales Manager Michelle Menley said, “We’re blessed to live in a country where every day we wake up and are free to live that day however we choose … we get to encourage our children to pursue their dreams … no matter what those dreams are.

“We have these freedoms because of the sacrifice of our veterans.”

Menley said her grandfather, father, and big brother are all combat veterans.

Her grandfather fought in World War II. Her father fought in Vietnam.

Her brother served in the first Gulf War. “My great uncle, Wilfred Adams, whom “I read a quote once … my father and brother are both named after, I can’t remember who died in the battle of Normandy and is buried wrote it … but they said in the American Cemetery near Brittany, France,” she said. “I can’t really put into that America without words my feelings towards veterans … I just have so much appreciation and respect for her soldiers would be them. like God without his “I read a quote once … I can’t remember who wrote it … but they said that Amerangels. That, to me, ica without her soldiers would be like God sums it up perfectly.” without his angels. That, to me, sums it up Michelle Menley, Daily Journal perfectly.”

“We’re proud to bring the Stories of Honor project to the Parkland,” said Michael Distelhorst, Daily Journal president/director of sales. “In our first year with the project, we’ve honored 12 local servicemen of the Armed Forces and told their unique stories.”

“It’s especially important now to tell the stories of the local brave men and women who have sacrificed and dedicated themselves to service for our country. No two stories are the same.

“From a young age, I learned the value of hearing stories about my two uncles. Both were pilots in World War II and lost their lives in action.

While I never met them, I can vividly recall the stories of their bravery and sacrifice told by my dad, mom and grandparents. I cherish those memories and the honor of their service.”

Daily Journal Editor Teresa Ressel Inserra appreciates everyone who has served the nation.

“My son Joseph and daughter-in-law Angel are serving in the Army,” she said.

Many in our community feel the same way.

They support our veterans. They honor our veterans.

It can be as simple as a “thank you for your service.” Or it can be a gesture of a free coffee or a haircut.

In the area, we see groups like Camp Hope and Camp Valor Outdoors who help veterans facing challenges after service.

Camp Hope, located outside Farmington in southern St. Francois County, is a retreat for military veterans wounded in the War on Terror.

Veteran Mike White, one of our veterans featured in the Stories of Honor, and his wife Galia, created Camp Hope as a tribute to their son Christopher, who was killed fighting for our country in Iraq.

The mission of Camp Hope is to honor the fallen by helping the wounded. They offer all expenses-paid adventures and comradery for our service men and women who gave selflessly for our freedoms.

Camp Hope offers beautiful rolling hills and hardwood ridges, perfect for hiking, four-wheeling, hunting, fishing, and exploring. Visits by honored guests often center on deer and turkey seasons. They offer first-rate facilities for combat-wounded veterans — in ADA-approved, handicapped accessible cabins.

Camp Valor Outdoors is another non-profit organization dedicated to military veterans. They recognize and honor ill, injured, and wounded disabled veterans and their families through adaptive and competitive activities such as “Warriors are never guided fishing, hunting, shooting, archery, 4-wheeling, or just simply relaxing around alone on the battlefield the campfire. and shouldn’t be alone “Warriors are never alone on the battlefield and shouldn’t be alone when they come when they come back back home. Healing in the great outdoors home. Healing in the with Camp Valor Outdoors and reconnecting with fellow warriors is therapeutic and great outdoors with essential to healing.”

Camp Valor Outdoors There are the Patriot Guard Riders. They and reconnecting were founded in 2005 to shield families of fallen heroes from those that would disrupt with fellow warriors the services of their loved ones. The Patriot is therapeutic and Guard Riders has grown to include thousands of members across all 50 states in the essential to healing.”

US. They are a 100% volunteer 501©(3) organization.

They also honor first responders, as well as veterans. Additionally they have an active Help On The Homefront (HOTH) program, which provides assistance to veterans and their families.

There’s the AMVETS Riders who are a “dedicated and patriotic group of motorcycle riders who hold true to an unwavering respect for our Nation, our Flag, and our Military...past, present, and future. We are committed to the freedom of this Nation, to provide community service and fellowship, and to preserve and support the aims and goals of the AMVETS Organization.”

These are just a few of the organizations in and around the community geared to helping veterans.

Those included in our Stories of Honor in 2021 are Leonard Miller, Fred Renshaw, Andrew Moore, Timothy Gibson, Steven Godsey; John Francis; Mike Pierson, Mike White, Randall Head, Ryan Retzer, Jon Page and Dr. Ralph Leigh.

Thank you for your service.

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Jon Page

Randall Head

Ralph Leigh

Leonard Miller

Ryan Retzer

Steven Godsey

Mike Pierson

Andrew Moore John Francis

Mike White

Fred Renshaw

Timothy Gibson

JULY 2021

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BOMBS AWAY

Vietnam vet recalls his time as a munitions specialist SARAH HAAS

‌H

shaas@dailyjournalonline.com‌

e might not have seen heavy combat in Vietnam, but as a munitions specialist, he was definitely involved in the action, earning an Air Force Commendation medal.

Leonard Miller of Desloge recently reminisced on six years — four active, two in reserve — that he served in the Air Force, stationed in Thailand at the Nakhon Phanom (NPK) Royal Thai Air Force Base for the first stint 1967-68. He was back in service 1970-71 at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.

Originally from Cobb, Oklahoma, Miller grew up on a cotton farm the youngest of five sons and two daughters. His dad was 50 when he was born, most of his siblings were already grown. He earned money picking cotton to pay for school clothes, including his Converse tennis shoes.

Miller was into basketball in those years, and Chuck Taylors would come in handy for roundball on the base. But back home, he was ready to graduate from high school, heading briefly to college. He worked for an oil company.

Then came a life-changing chat with his dad.

“My dad and two of his brothers were in World War I. I got four brothers and all of them were in the military,” he said. “I was in college in Oklahoma, and these guys were graduating, walking off the stage and getting drafted.

“I drove a Euclid for a seismograph, the big earth movers, the tires were huge. In ’66, I was making about $20 an hour for Sinclair Oil. “I told my dad about it, and he said, ‘That sounds great.’ I said, ‘They want to send me to Chile and double my pay while I’m over there, pay for all my expenses.’ And he said, ‘…You know your brothers and your uncles all went in the military…’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ That kinda made me feel bad, so I went into the Air Force instead of going to Chile.”

Enlisting at 19, Miller went to basic training in Amarillo, Texas. At 6 foot 3 and 181 pounds, he found boot camp was “easy.”

At Loughary Air Force Base, he went through six weeks’ training on bombs, missiles, and other munitions.

Soon, Miller found himself stationed at NPK in Thailand where he inventoried, handled and escorted ammo to various strategic points.

“I flew escort for bombs from Vietnam, to Tan Son Nhut (Air Force Base),” he said.

“They were storing a bunch of old World War II bombs at Tan Son Nhut in Saigon and we were flying them out to Thailand, so we could fly them back to Vietnam and drop them. One of the windows was shot out on that plane. It was so noisy, I’m sure that’s part of the reason my hearing got so bad.”

Miller said his last year, he was head of inventory of the bomb dump. “These are the bombs I escorted back,” he said, pointing to a picture with hundreds of bombs.

“They’re all metal and oil bombs from World War II. It was just shrapnel inside of them.” He said he was responsible for unloading upwards of 40,000 tons.

He pointed to another bomb photo.

“That’s what I got the commendation medal for. That was a top secret test bomb at the time, it’s full of about 18,000 pounds of propane, and it’s got igniters that go around the back,” he said. “It would crack open, all the propane would spill out and the igniters would shoot out when it hit the ground, it would light and take all the oxygen out of the air in a square acre. Just suck all the air out of you from inside out, in an acre.

“I worked with the civil engineers that put it together. They’re the ones who put me in for the commendation medal.”

But life wasn’t all bombs and missiles.

Miller had a dog named Killer and a pet monkey named Bojo. He also played basketball.

“In Thailand, we won (the base’s) basketball championship. It was one of the sports we played. And tag football,” he said. “We all started lifting weights and played flag football, and the other squatters wouldn’t play us because we looked like pro football players.”

His wife of almost 50 years, Belinda, chimed in: “He didn’t have a neck anymore, he looked ridiculous.” They both chuckled.

He and Belinda met after his two-year stint at NPK. He was helping on the Oklahoma family farm when his dad fell ill and died. Then he got orders for Vietnam.

“I wrote a letter to my congressman and he got me out of the first set of orders because I was helping my Mom on the farm every weekend,” he said. “I got another set of orders about a month later and I figured after I had less than a year to go, they wouldn’t send me back. I wrote my congressman again to get out of it, but the congressman wrote me back and said, ‘Son, that place is for sale.’ My mom had put it up for sale and didn’t tell me.”

Before he left for Vietnam, he decided to take his mom to visit her sisters in Farmington, where his cousin fixed him up on a date.

“All the guys I knew were being drafted or joining,” Belinda said. “They were halfway drunk when they left, and when they came back, they stayed drunk for six months or more. He was telling me all these stories

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SUBMITTED‌

Leonard Miller became a munitions specialist, serving at the Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand and Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.

SARAH HAAS, DAILY JOURNAL‌

Leonard and Belinda Miller of Desloge have been married for almost 50 years. They met between Leonard’s stints in Thailand and Vietnam.

about drinking, and I’d just laugh at him, like: You sound like everyone else I know at this time.”

They went on less than a dozen dates.

The flame was lit.

“We wrote the whole time he was in Vietnam. I was writing him letters and he was answering questions I asked him,” she said. Then she had a scare. “All of a sudden, I wasn’t getting answers back. Come to find out, the mail had gotten bogged up. Then, all at once, he went to his mailbox and it was jammed up.”

“I was relieved,” Miller said.

“In basic training, I’d gotten a ‘Dear John letter’ from a girl I was dating. When I came home, she was married and living next door to my brother,” he said with a laugh.

Belinda had another scare when her mom told her Cam Ranh Bay had been bombed.

But, Miller said, it was three gigantic fuel tanks that had been targeted.

“Put satchel charges on them and blew them up, it was near our barracks ... we could feel it in our hooch (living quarters),” Miller said.

After almost four years, he was discharged and entered inactive reserve for two years. But he and his fellow soldiers returned to a national cold shoulder.

“We wouldn’t wear our uniforms in public when we came home or when we were on leave. When we flew home, we’d land at Travis Air Force base in San Francisco, change and put civilian clothes on before we’d get on the bus to catch a plane home,” Miller said.

“It was a controversial war, and we’d been lied to so much after Kennedy died,

by Johnson and all of his cronies,” Belinda said. “People didn’t understand what was going on. He had a hard time finding a job, people weren’t hiring Vietnam vets.”

Miller found work with a Korean War veteran who owned a concrete block factory, earning $62 a week.

“I could draw $60 unemployment from the VA, but I went to work instead for $62,” Miller said.

He eventually landed at Sunnen Products in St. Louis and became a senior engineering tech, retiring after 26 years. Facebook has helped him maintain contact with

SARAH HAAS, DAILY JOURNAL‌

Pictured is Leonard Miller’s commendation award and medal for working on a top secret bomb in a war no one was supposed to know about back home.

Pictured is Downtown Nakhon Phanom in the late 1960s, Thailand.

SUBMITTED‌

Shown here is the bomb that earned him a commendation.

those who served at NPK. “I went to a reunion in Dayton, Ohio, a couple years ago, that’s when I learned what I didn’t know as a 19-year-old,” he said. “I found out from four-star generals and ex-CIA officials who told us what was really going on.”

Miller said he remembered some of the bombs dropped up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail had sensors in them. He said when the sensors hit the ground, they’d open and unfold to blend into the foliage.

“So the war we were fighting in Nha Ka Phanum, we found out, was a secret war in northern Laos, where the Ho Chi Minh trail came out of North Vietnam and it circled through Laos and came back into the demilitarized zone,” Miller said. “We weren’t really fighting in Vietnam, we were flying mostly secret missions in Laos, because President Kennedy promised the Laotian president we would help protect them against the North Vietnamese. It’s a shame, because when it all ended, we left the people of Laos stranded, we just pulled out.”

Miller said another reunion topic was Agent Orange. He heard reports from men who sprayed the herbicide, and saw pic-

tures of its effect on NPK. Miller said it might help explain why he has eight stents in his heart, COPD, and neuropathy in his legs “where I don’t feel my feet.” He also wears hearing aids, “and if I don’t wear the hearing aids, I have tinnitus from flying in planes, escorting bombs, with the windows broke out.”

He’s been declared disabled by the military. “It took him 14 years to get to this point. They don’t want to acknowledge that the disability came from fighting that secret war,” Belinda said. “The people who were in Thailand are having a hard time proving they were in the Vietnam War, exposed to Agent Orange.”

The almost 50 years since he made it back have made Miller philosophical about that time — and sometimes, Belinda said, the situations he experienced returned in nightmares that tortured him while he slept.

Amid all the albums, the fond memories, the terrible ones, the challenges he overcame and the relationships he made, he still marvels at the experience.

“It was a different time, an unpopular war,” he said. “But I’m not sorry I enlisted.

I don’t regret it. All these wars since then, Afghanistan, Kosovo. What’s the purpose?

These leaders who decide when a country goes to war, why are we really going? Makes me wonder.”

Life wasn’t all bombs and missiles. Leonard Miller had a dog named Killer and a pet monkey named Bojo. He also played basketball. “In Thailand, we won (the base’s) basketball championship. It was one of the sports we played.

And tag football. We all started lifting weights and played flag football, and the other squatters wouldn’t play us because we looked like pro football players.”

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FOR LOVE OF COUNTRY Fred Renshaw has no regrets about his 35 years of service

AL KOPITSKY

‌C

akopitsky@democratnewsonline.com‌

ommand Sgt. Major Fred Renshaw is a patriot in every sense of the word.

He knew at an early age that he wanted to serve his country like his father had.

“I was considering going into the service since I was in grade school, watching John Wayne movies and the cavalry and seeing the colour sergeant majors, my ambition my whole life was to be a sergeant major in the Army,” Fred said. “I knew I was going to be in the Army. I hoped I would make sergeant major.”

Fred’s father fought in World War II in the Navy in the Pacific.

“He is the reason all of us boys served,” Fred said. “And my (two) sisters also married military men.”

Three of the Renshaw boys, Fred (the oldest), John, and Vernon served in Vietnam. Vernon was in the Navy on the USS Kitty Hawk in the Gulf of Tonkein. Fred and John, who was in the Navy and then the Army, served together.

Gary was an Army medic at Fort Leonard Wood, and Danny was in the Navy.

“My dad instilled in all of us a real sense of patriotism and a sense of service to our country,” Fred said. “All of us loved our country. All of us are very patriotic. All of us knew from very young that when we were old enough we would join the military some way.”

Fred was born Oct. 7, 1948, in St. Louis.

He said his family moved a lot. His family was living in New Mexico when his parents decided to move back here. Fred went to five high schools.

Fred went to Potosi High School. Then the family moved from Cadet to Doe Run and he went to Doe Run High School for ninth grade.

“In 1963, when I was going to high school in Doe Run and going steady with my wife, that’s the year President Kennedy was killed,” Fred said. “At that time Vietnam was going on and they were talking about the domino effect of communism and if we didn’t stop it in Vietnam then we would stop it in our own country.”

Fred said he knew then that when he graduated out of high school, he was going to go in the Army, because communism had to be stopped.

“We thought and we were told that if you let the communists take over South Vietnam, then there would be a domino effect and we would be fighting them in our country, and I didn’t want to fight them here,” he said. “I would have fought them anywhere, but I didn’t want to fight them in our country. And I know that was the way me and my brothers felt.”

The family moved to St. Louis, and he went to McKinely High School and Roosevelt High School. He graduated from Kingsburg High School in Kingsburg, California in 1967.

Fred said after high school graduation, he came back to St. Francois County to see his mom and dad. He enlisted into the Army on his 19th birthday, Oct. 7, 1967, in Farmington.

He went to the reception station in St. Louis and spent the night and was in Fort Leonard Wood the next day. It was at Fort Leonard Wood that Fred began his first 1012 weeks of training.

“It was good,” Fred said. “Of course it was hard, but I enjoyed it. The discipline and the closeness you got because you were all going through the same thing. It was like you had battle buddies.”

Fred’s first training was with US Army Air Defense Command, or ARADCOM, working as an operator with the Nike Hercules missile system. He was stationed at ARADCOM in California.

Fred said he wanted to go to Vietnam, but was not going to be able to go to Vietnam, because they didn’t have that position, there, so he volunteered to be trained as a combat engineer for another 10 weeks at Fort Leonard Wood again. After that training, he went straight to Vietnam, late in 1968.

“When you first get there, you go to a place called Tan Son Nhut Air Base,” Fred said.

The air base was located near Saigon in southern Vietnam. The United States used it as a major base during the Vietnam War, stationing Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine units there.

The 25th replacement company was there, and Renshaw was assigned to the 87th engineers at Cam Ranh Bay. His duties included building, mine detecting, and guard duty.

“But I wanted more, so I volunteered to go up north to one of the companies north of Phu Bai,” Fred said.

At the same time, Fred’s brother, John, was stationed in Da Nang and Marble Mountain.

Fred had become a corporal by this time.

He said his job at Phu Bai was “to mine detect on roads, provide road security watching so they didn’t get shot and you would be available for any duty that came up. When those duties came up that were being a guard on a convoy that was going to Da Nang or something, that’s what I always volunteered for, so I could go see my brother. But you did whatever they had for you to do.”

Fred said he first saw combat at the end

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PROVIDED BY FRED RENSHAW‌

Fred Renshaw was in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969.

PROVIDED BY FRED RENSHAW‌

When Fred Renshaw was assigned to the 87th engineers at Cam Ranh Bay, his duties included building, mine detecting, and guard duty.

ALAN KOPITSKY, DAILY JOURNAL‌

Command Sgt. Major Fred Renshaw served more than 35 years in the U.S. Army. of March and early April in 1969. He recalls how he felt when he first saw combat.

“Oh yeah, you’re nervous, you’re scared,” Fred said. “If you’re not scared, you’re crazy, because it’s scary; that somebody’s trying to shoot you, somebody’s trying to kill you. You’re trying to kill them so you can go home, and they’re trying to kill you, so they can go home.

“But I don’t hold any animosity toward the soldiers that we fought against because they were in the same boat we were. We were just trying to survive and get home back to our country, just like they were trying to do.”

Fred said he remembers the boredom waiting for something to happen, and then when something did happen, being scared.

“And that happens all the time,” he said.

“You never know, minute to minute, when you’re out on a patrol or something, that somebody could have you in their sights, but it’s just part of being a soldier. Everybody goes through it that was over there.

As far as it was all memorable. I didn’t enjoy the actual combat of it, but you enjoy the people you were with and things like that.”

Fred does recall meeting and speaking to General William Westmoreland and talking to him. Westmoreland was commander of United States forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968, and was chief of staff of the United States Army from 1968 to 1972.

“He just asked how we were doing and where we were from,” Fred said. “We told him where we from and how we were doing. He asked me if I was going to make it a career. Even at that time, I knew I wanted to make it a career.”

Fred’s grandmother died and he was sent back to St. Francois County in August of 1969. Fred and John both came home.

John extended again which prevented Fred from going back because brothers were not supposed be in country at the same time.

While he was back in Farmington in 1969, he happened to run into his old girlfriend from Doe Run High School, who he hadn’t seen in six years. Not long after that chance meeting, Renshaw proposed.

He married Carolyn Sue Lunsford Oct. 11, 1969. She is from St. Francois County and has lived here her entire life. The couple have four children, Terri Michelle is the oldest, then Fred T. Renshaw II, John Eric, and Amanda Marie. Fred and Carolyn also have 13 grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

Fred was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood and went to drill sergeant school at the fort.

He reenlisted in 1969.

“I volunteered to go back after we were married and it was winding down, and they didn’t need people over there as much,” Fred said.

Fred was with the 5th Engineers until he went to drill sergeant school. He graduated from drill sergeant school in July 1970 and stayed at Ford Leonard Wood through 1972.

Fred said he did have some negative interactions with civilians when he returned home from Vietnam. He recalled people trying to pick fights with the soldiers and protesters trying to enter the fort.

“That was a sign of the times,” Fred said.

“Half the country was against it and half the country was for it. I don’t hold any animosity toward them. They did what they felt was right, and we did what we felt was right.”

Fred got out for a couple of years in 1972 and went to Yorkville, Illinois and worked for Caterpillar.

Then he went in the reserves in 1974.

He and his wife returned to this area when their parents were getting older. Fred went to college to become a special education teacher, but the pay was not as good as being active reserve or active Army. So he stayed in the Army and he became a staff sergeant.

Fred graduated from the sergeant major academy in January 11, 1990. It was a seven-month school.

“It was a really good school,” Fred said.

“I learned a lot there. It was like the war college was for officers. It’s the war college for NCOs.” Fred was appointed command sergeant major in April 1996. After 35 years, four months and 18 days in the United States Army, Fred retired in 2002.

“I’m most proud of just serving,” Fred

PROVIDED BY FRED RENSHAW‌

Brothers Fred Renshaw, left, and John Renshaw got together for this photo in Da Nang, Vietnam on Feb. 3, 1969. Fred wrote on the back of the photo: “Nice place for a reunion.” said. “I was very proud to be a soldier. My dad raised us to be patriotic and to have a sense of service and I did that and I’m proud of that. My kids are all proud of me. They know what a toll it takes over the years.”

It was the his oldest child, Terri, who asked that Fred’s story be told.

“Although he didn’t talk much about his experiences in the war, he did tell us some stories,” Terri said. “My father gave everything for this country and he deserves to be recognized for his years of service. He has always been and always will be my hero.”

Fred was not injured in Vietnam, but does have health issues as a result of his time there.

“The Army gave me more than I’ve ever given it,” he said. “It gave me a chance to go and see things. It gave me an education.

It gave me a sense responsibility, a sense of duty, a sense of patriotism, even more than what I had.

“I love our country. I would do the same thing all over again, even though me, John, and Vernon all suffered from some of the effects of Agent Orange.”

Fred has ischemic heart disease, congestive heart failure and COPD. He also has hearing issues as result of the loud explosions.

“I’m very proud of our country,” Fred said. “I’m very proud of the people who served. I think it is a good thing. I don’t regret it at all. I would do it again.”

Fred also said he would encourage anyone interested to consider serving in the military.

“I would be all for it,” he said. “I would tell them there’s good and there’s bad. I think there’s no better thing than to serve your country. It’s patriotic.”

Fred is a lifetime member of the VFW and the DAV, and he is a yearly member of the American Legion.

Fred Renshaw said he first saw combat at the end of March and early April in 1969. He recalls how he felt when he first saw combat. “Oh yeah, you’re nervous, you’re scared,” If you’re not scared, you’re crazy, because it’s scary; that somebody’s trying to shoot you, somebody’s trying to kill you … ”

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FOR FREEDOM …

Moore recalls 22 years in the National Guard

KEVIN R. JENKINS

‌I

kjenkins@farmingtonpressonline.com‌

t’s obvious that Sergeant First Class Andrew F. Moore, U.S. Army Retired, is proud of the 22 years he served in the Missouri Army National Guard.

The Farmington resident recalled his time in the military as an opportunity to serve his country and give back for the many freedoms all Americans enjoy.

“I grew up in Perryville, Missouri, with five brothers and three sisters,” he said.

“Only four family members served in the military. My father, Staff Sergeant Robert G. Moore, served in the Air Force during the Korean War; my older brother, Lieutenant Colonel Michael C. Moore, served in the Marine Corps as a pilot; and my older brother, Master Sergeant Thomas G. Moore, served in the Air Force as an independent duty medic.

After hearing about his older brother Michael’s training experience while attending Marine Corp ROTC at the University of Missouri-Rolla, Moore, who was in grade school at the time, decided the military life wasn’t for him. That all changed, however, once he began attending college at Southeast Missouri State University in 1990.

“I got married and started a family right after graduating high school from St. Vincent de Paul in Perryville,” Moore said. “I worked several full-time jobs after graduation while attending college full time.

That’s when I first considered the military and decided to join the Army National Guard to help pay for college. I enjoyed the military so much I lost interest in college and decided to make it my career.”

Moore’s first duty station was with Co B, 1140th Engineer Battalion (Combat), Missouri Army National Guard in Perryville.

“I attended basic and advanced training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri,” he said. “I graduated as a combat engineer. My father, being an Air Force veteran, did not approve of my choice to serve as a combat soldier in the U.S. Army. It wasn’t until 10 years later, after Sept. 11, 2001, that I fully understood why he didn’t want me to serve in combat.

His uncle, Private Thomas Moore, served in an Army unit in World War I and died from pneumonia in France.”

After two years of college and attending weekend drills and annual training with the 1140th Engineer Battalion, Moore intended to enlist in the regular Army. It was when he was offered an active duty position with the National Guard that his plans changed.

“One unique thing about belonging to an engineer unit was the humanitarian missions that our battalion performed over the years in Central America,” he said. “I served in the Republic of Panama on three different operations and my last trip was to Honduras. Our battalion built miles of road in the jungle, medical clinics and even schools in remote locations. We conducted all types of horizontal and vertical construction. We also helped build road for the Metlakatla Indian reservation on Annette Island, Alaska.

“When we were not busy with humanitarian operations overseas, we were often activated for state emergency duty back home. I helped out around the state after floods in 1993, 1995, 2011, a tornado in 2005 and an ice storm in 2006. The president activated our unit for the two hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana in 2005. In

KEVIN R. JENKINS, DAILY JOURNAL‌

After 22 years spent in the Missouri National Guard, Andrew Moore says he’s happy that he had the opportunity to serve his country. Now retired, he recalls with pride the men and women he served beside while in the military.

SUBMITTED PHOTO‌

Here is an early photo of Andrew Moore after he joined the Army National Guard to help pay for his college education. He ended up enjoying the military so much, he lost interest in college and made it his career. the Army National Guard, you get to serve your state when the governor calls and your country when the president calls you to augment active duty forces.”

Following Desert Storm, the military restructured the National Guard from a strategic force to an operational force.

“The Army cannot accomplish longterm wars without the Reserve and National Guard forces,” Moore explained.

“This was demonstrated during the Global War on Terror.”

Moore’s unit in Farmington — the 1138th Engineer Company (Sapper) — deployed every two years conducting combat mis-

sions in Iraq for two deployments and one deployment to Afghanistan.

“Our mission as engineers was route clearance operations,” he said. “Combat engineers work with the infantry and often in front of the infantry to clear obstacles.

This means we tried to keep the supply routes and alternate supply routes safe by clearing IEDs and EFPs — improvised explosive devices and explosively formed penetrators — off the roads.

“For our first combat deployment in 2004 and 2005, I was a newly promoted platoon sergeant for 3rd Platoon, Co A, 1140th Engineer Battalion (Combat). Our company patrolled in excess of 68,000 kilometers of routes in and around Baghdad. We cleared hundreds of improvised explosive devices and unexploded ordinance without the loss of personnel from our company.

“On the 29th of April in 2004, while supporting 4th Battalion 27th Field Artillery 1st Armored Division, a suicide VBIED (vehicle born improvised explosive device) detonated on a squad providing security for 1st Platoon. Eight U.S. Soldiers were killed in action that day providing security for our unit. I would like to think that our collected efforts helped save lives keeping coalition forces and Iraqi civilians safe while traveling routes in Iraq. We did our best to find the roadside bombs and eliminate them.

Often, unfortunately, they found many other units patrolling and convoying in Iraq.”

Moore’s second deployment to Iraq was in 2007 and 2008 with Farmington’s 1138th Engineer Company (Sapper).

“Our mission for that deployment was the same, with the exception that all our efforts finding roadside bombs were in the city of Baghdad. Our unit lost two great soldiers — Staff Sergeant Bradley Skelton and Sergeant Matthew Straughter — from EFPs (Explosively Formed Penetrators), known earlier on as IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). The majority of our unit also suffered from many concussions resulting in mild traumatic brain injury and traumatic

brain injuries. Many soldiers were transferred to wounded warrior units to recover after our deployment. The Army provided us with armored counter IED vehicles to accomplish our mission. The personal body armor and the armored vehicles we were issued saved many lives for personnel in our unit.”

After his last deployment to Iraq, Moore served three years with the 35th Engineer Brigade, MOARNG, in Fort Leonard Wood as operations sergeant for the S3 section.

“One of my additional duties there was serving with the Command and Control Element of the Missouri CERFP (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and high-yield explosive Enhanced Response Force Package, or CBRNE. Then I served with the 880th Engineer Team (Haul) in Perryville for two years. My last year in the military, I served as rear detachment commander for 60 soldiers while the forward unit was in Afghanistan conducting route clearance operations. I had no officers in the unit; therefore, as highest ranking NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer), I assumed command of the unit. The flag on my mantle is the flag that flew over the armory in Farmington during my command. The unit returned from Afghanistan in June, then I retired at the end of July 2013.”

Since retiring from the National Guard, Moore has held jobs that included delivering mail, driving a school bus and working as a security officer.

“The job I enjoyed the most was working as a Disabled Veterans Representative (DEVOP) for the state of Missouri for two years,” he said.

Half the time he served in the military — 11 out of 22 years — Moore spent away from home for military schools, training operations, temporary duty and combat operations.

“Now it’s time for me to enjoy retirement by spending some time with my five daughters and six grandchildren,” he said. “My youngest daughter, Senior Airman Drew Anne Jenkinson, also served as a medic in the U.S. Air Force. She is currently stationed at Travis Air Force Base with her husband and my new granddaughter. My wife, Teresa, is retiring next month from the Farmington R7 School District. She has served over 30 years as a counselor for the district and will continue serving the community after retirement. She has her own counseling business — My Turning Point Counseling.”

Asked if there was anything else he wanted to share about his years of military service, Moore said, “This Memorial Day I would like to thank and think about all the soldiers I served with over the years.

“I don’t need any specific day for that. Daily they are in my mind and in my heart. They are my extended family and I miss serving with them every day. I don’t need thanks for my service. It was a privilege for me to serve my state and country. Instead thank the family members of the service men and women. They too make the greatest sacrifice when their loved ones leave home in the service of our great nation.”

Kevin R. Jenkins is the managing editor of the Farmington Press and can be reached at 573-756-8927 or kjenkins@ farmingtonpressonline.com

SUBMITTED‌

Soldiers from 3rd Platoon, A Company, 1140th Engineer Battalion (Combat), Missouri Army National Guard, Farmington, Missouri, pose for a picture in 2004 at Butler Range, east of Baghdad, Iraq, after firing an M58 Mine Clearing Line Charge (MICLIC). MICLIC is a rocket-projected explosive line charge which provides a “close-in” demining capability for maneuver forces of the United States Army and Marine Corps. Pictured in no particular order are SPC Jeremy E. Neece, SGT Dennis L. Sweet, SGT William H. Halbrook Jr., PFC Jason D. Jones, SGT Jeffrey A. Dement, SPC Chad M. Darnell, SPC Richard B. Moss, SSG William W. Kollmar, PFC Joshua L. Jenkins, SPC James G. Avery Jr., SSG Joseph A. Craft, CPT Craig Phillips, SGT Austin C. Conyers, SPC Jason W. Pierce, SFC Andrew F. Moore, SGT Christopher A. Pettus, SSG Terry L. Swofford, SGT Harold W. Hurst and 1LT Peter J. McCann.

“One unique thing about belonging to an engineer unit was the humanitarian missions that our battalion performed over the years in Central America.”

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Andrew Moore

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A FAMILY TRADITION

Timothy Gibson followed in footsteps of his grandfather on down PAM CLIFTON

‌F

Contributing Writer‌

or many families, service in the military is continued from generation to generation, where strength, bravery and heroism weave together the past, the present and the future.

For Bonne Terre resident Timothy Gibson, he joined the U.S. Army to continue the family tradition of military service set forth by his grandfather Jesse Gibson who served in World War II; father Steve Gibson and uncles Tommy Dunlap and Lynn Coleman who served in Vietnam; and additional family members Scott Gibson and Robert Smith who also served.

Gibson was only 17 when he joined in February 1992.

“I joined because of family tradition and service,” said Gibson, “and for the opportunity to better myself while being able to travel and experience new cultures and countries.”

He said basic training was “more fun than hard” once he got into the right mindset. He enjoyed the challenge of learning all the new things soldiers learn when they first join the military.

At that time, Gibson felt the Army provided the best opportunities for jobs and travel when he was younger.

Gibson began his military career as a combat engineer where he learned about explosives, route clearance and obstacle creation.

He then became a cook who was in charge of feeding different elements of the force while also ensuring rations and supplies were appropriate.

Although he enjoyed the steak and shrimp, by far the worst military food he ate was the T-Ration meal, or “T-Rat,” canned spaghetti.

“I hate spaghetti to this day,” said Gibson.

He gained many more skills during his military service, including from how to lead soldiers to being able to create and organize spreadsheets and various data in recruiting.

During his 23 years of service, Gibson was stationed in Fort Carson, Colorado, twice and Flagstaff, Arizona. In addition, he was stationed in Schweinfurt, Germany, a city in the middle part of the country Gibson experienced two years of combat in Iraq which included tasks such as convoy security and living in small base camps in AR Ramadi to Tal Afar and border security. He was deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom for 12 months from April 2003 to March 2004 and then redeployed to Iraq from March 2005 to February 2006.

In addition, he was deployed to Kosovo from July to December 1999.

“My most frightening times were the many days and nights in Iraq filled with ambushes and rocket attacks,” he said.

“Just driving down the road in fear of IED (improved explosive devices) every day or having mortars impact the roof where you slept was always frightening.”

He said he and his comrades learned to laugh about it and make jokes in order to cope with the fear and constant threat always on their minds.

Sometimes there were a few pranks, too. Gibson recalled one night when he was sleeping. A fellow soldier threw a CS Grenade, often used for crowd control in outdoor situations, into his tent to “choke everyone up and watch everyone run out blindly, stumbling in the dark, just for a good laugh.”

One of Gibson’s most memorable experiences in the military was being with his fellow soldiers in Iraq on the 4th of July.

“Our colonel had the field artillery shoot powder bags that would explode a big fire in the sky over the city as our firework display,” he said. “I just remember thinking you can’t get much more patriotic than being in a combat zone for America and seeing such a beautiful sight on our Independence Day so many miles from home!”

He said that event still remains one of his most favorite memories of all.

Gibson ended his military career as a recruiter in Festus, where he looked to recruit new soldiers and inform them of the many opportunities with the Army.

“I wish people would realize the Army is an opportunity, not a last chance,” he said.

“The opportunities for experience, travel and education are second to none!”

Gibson retired in June 2015 after 23 years of service. During his military career, he earned the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal; four Army commendation medals; eight Army achievement medals; seven Good Conduct medals and campaign medals from Iraq and Kosovo; and numerous ribbons and military decorations for retired A Sergeant First Class E-7.

He said after returning home from Iraq, the transition was easy as he was surrounded by fellow soldiers and experiences. But now that he is retired, that has been more of a struggle.

“For the first time in 23 years, I wasn’t a soldier anymore and it took a while to adjust,” Gibson said. “Some days I still miss it as it’s what I am and will always be.”

He said one of the hardest parts of being a soldier was losing “many family members while serving and I have lost many friends to the Iraq conflict and attacks.”

Unfortunately, he is still losing friends to this day due to veteran suicide.

“This is a huge problem among our nation’s finest,” he said.

Through his military experience, Gibson

SUBMITTED PHOTOS‌

Timothy Gibson is shown here while stationed in Tal Afar, Iraq, in 2006.

Timothy Gibson retired after 23 years in the military.

Timothy Gibson is pictured with daughter Hannah in 2007.

Timothy Gibson is shown here with wife Kelly, daughter Hannah and Raegan at his retirement ceremony in 2015.

Timothy Gibson is shown here with his daughters.

learned that true leadership is “about helping people up and giving them the tools to be better than you.”

“I learned that the right team can accomplish any mission, and that family is anyone you choose it to be,” he said. “I also learned dedication and loyalty are traits that serve you daily.”

Gibson also met many special people during his military career who are his “brothers-in-arms to this day,” he said. “I love each and every soldier I deployed with and many I talk to weekly.”

He added that he wishes people knew the nation’s veterans have served their country well and it “isn’t a title to be looked at softly.”

As honorable veterans, he said these men and women have done what was asked of them, and many went above and beyond that they should be cherished.

“It is because of them that we live free,”

Gibson said.

He met his wife, Kelly, when he was stationed in Colorado. The couple has two daughters, Hannah, an RN in Potosi, and Raegan, a sophomore at North County High School. He enjoys spending time with his family, kayaking and going to concerts.

In reflection of his service in the military, Gibson was certain of one thing: “I wouldn’t change anything about my military service because it’s made me who I am today, and I am very proud of that.”

Gibson experienced two years of combat in Iraq which included tasks such as convoy security and living in small base camps in AR Ramadi to Tal Afar and border security. He was deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom for Timothy received his associate’s degree at 12 months from April 2003 to March 2004 and then redeployed to Iraq from March 2005 Mineral Area College in 2019 when daughter Hannah also graduated from nursing school. to February 2006.

“For the first time in 23 years, I wasn’t a soldier anymore and it took a while to adjust. Some days I still miss it as it’s what I am and will always be.”

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Timothy Gibson

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DREAM PURSUED Godsey serves 17 years, perseveres through struggles

NIKKI OVERFELT-CHIFALU

‌T

noverfelt@dailyjournalonline.com‌

he US Navy has always been a tradition in Steven Godsey’s family.

As far back as he can remember, he says. His grandfather, great grandfathers, uncles, all joined the Navy.

But not his dad or any of his dad’s brothers.

“It actually skipped that generation,” he added.

His grandfather was a tail gunner on a bomber in World War II. “They saw the horror in him coming back from World War II,” he explained. “I don’t know why. That’s just kind of what I suspect is reason they didn’t join.”

But Godsey decided to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps.

Growing up poor in rural southeastern Missouri – he’s originally from Kennett but now lives outside of Farmington—he saw the Navy as his way to continue his education and see the world. His dream was to be an art teacher.

“At least I get to travel the world to see all the art that I’ve only seen in books,” he said.

He won his first art show in fifth grade in Zalma, appropriately with a drawing of Uncle Sam. His art teacher slipped his drawing in with the high school show and he won that one, too. He went on to win in a district and state competition.

NIKKI OVERFELT-CHIFALU PHOTOS, DAILY JOURNAL‌ “That’s really what got me into art,” he added.

Steven Godsey served 17 years in the US Navy and Army. Now he’s a recent graduate of Mineral Area College.

Then in high school, it was his art teacher, He even attempted suicide one time.

Diana Simmons, who helped him to reach his goals when he was struggling.

But then Dr. Pamela Wallen, a psycholo“She really pushed me and she turned my gist at the Farmington VA clinic, suggested life around that senior year and made me prolonged exposure therapy. realize my worth,” he explained. “I thought, He said he’s one of the first patients in if I could ever do that for just one kid — and the state to try the therapy. hopefully more than one — but if I could do According to the US Department of it for one kid, then my life would really have Veteran Affairs, PE therapy teaches you to gradually approach trauma-related memmeaning on that side of things.”

So to help him pursue his dream of teachories, feelings, and situations that you have ing art, he joined the Navy in 1988 at 17 been avoiding since your trauma.

“Oh, I hated that,” he recalled. “I hated years old. her for the longest time. She would call me It was a family affair. His brother and two of his cousins joined on the same day. at the house like if I missed an appointment.

He graduated from Greenville High ‘Oh, no, you’re not missing this appointSchool in 1989 and shipped out. ment. We’re going to do it over the phone if nothing else.’ Like the anniversaries, differLife in the Navy ent things that happened, she’d be calling Godsey was assigned to the USS Trenme to double check and make sure I was ton (LPD-14), a Gator freighter/amphibious doing things like should.”

But eventually a light switch went off. transport. They shipped out to the Mediterranean.

“I thought the world of her after that,” he Then he came home for about a week and said. “I think she’s a miracle worker.”

That was about a decade ago. shipped out to Panama.

“For the drug wars down there,” he “She taught me the tools and everything added. to manage it,” he continued. “If it wasn’t for He was a boatswain’s mate. her, I wouldn’t be here.”

“We run the ship, steer the ship,” he exHe wanted to help other veterans with plained. “We ran the guns.”

PTSD, so he and four other veterans The gun he operated was the CIWS, a founded Veterans with Hope in Farmingradar-guided Gatling gun. ton. But they had to close the doors after In 1990, he returned home for a few days a few years. The president died of a heart before heading out to the Persian Gulf and attack and they struggled to find a replacethe beginning of war there. ment.

“We were the first boots on the ground,” Then in 2016, he suffered another sethe said. “First ships in the vicinity. We back. He was in a car accident in Festus. spent 11 months over there.”

A tractor trailer pulled out in front of him, On their way home, they were rerouted his seat belt didn’t lock and he flew through back for Operation Eastern Exit in early the windshield.

“It really messed me up,” he said. “They 1991.

This photo of Steven Godsey in basic training for the US Navy is the only picture he has left didn’t think I would survive.”

“We went and evacuated the embassy of his time in the military. He lost all his pictures and medals in a house fire at his parents’ He suffered a traumatic brain injury and that was surrounded by rebel forces in So- house in the early 2000s. Among the medals he lost from his time in the Navy were his malia,” he explained.

National Defense Service Medal, Southwest Asia Service Medal, and Kuwait Liberation Medal. couldn’t remember his name most days.

He spent six months in rehab at Jackson The USS Trenton was involved in evacuating about 300 people from the US EmBarracks VA in St. Louis. Since the accibassy in Mogadishu. dent, he’s had numerous surgeries on his “The whole ship got letters of commenface, spine, knees, shoulders, and ankles. dation and stuff from the ambassadors and “I live with pain every day,” he said. “But dignitaries,” he added. pain’s your friend. It tells you you’re still He did two more tours in the Mediteralive.” ranean before suffering a spinal injury in a car accident as he was leaving work in 1992.

Life as a student/future art After they accident, he moved to supply teacher duty.

And the time at sea began to take its toll.

After the accident, Godsey started think“Once I got there, I loved it,” Godsey said ing about teaching again. of joining the Navy. “I absolutely loved it. I “I knew that if I didn’t give myself was planning on making a career out of it. something like a future plan a future goal, I wouldn‘t recover,” he said.

I don’t know. After spending 40 months at sea out of 48, it was just too much.”

When his dad passed away in 2017, he When he found out his next orders would became really serious about it.

“He always wanted me to finish school,” also be at sea, he decided he was done. He he added. got out of the Navy in May of 1993.

During his time, he said, he was certified With the tuition help of a VA program, he for more than 30 different jobs and he travgraduated from Mineral Area College last eled to 28 countries. week after just starting in January 2020 and He also got to be the artist on the ship for taking three honors classes. insignias and such.

“I study anywhere from six to eight hours This is one of Steven Godsey’s drawings.

And all the traveling allowed him to see a day, every day,” he said. “That’s the only art around the world. He visited the Louway that I can, I guess, rehabilitate my brain “I physically couldn’t go any more with so that I can get the grades that I have.” vre in Paris, Pompeii and the Colosseum in He continued to bounce around for a few Italy, the Pyramids in Egypt, the Pyramid years, serving in Popular Bluff as supply my spinal injury,” he explained.

Right away, he’s starting classes at the of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon in and the Napa Valley area of California as He did try to re-enlist again in 2007 in University of Missouri-St. Louis to be a Mexico, and castles in England and other a truck driver.

Farmington, but they wouldn’t let him. secondary art teacher. He also hopes to go part of Europe.

In 1994 in Popular Bluff and again in 1997 “They said I was too old and too injured,” on a get his doctorate.

“Every ancient site that was even any- in California, he tried taking some college he added.

For him, his art has always been theraclasses, but he didn’t stick with it. where remotely near the port,” he said. peutic, whether it’s his pencil and charcoal “To me, art is not just painting or sculp“My PTSD was just kicking me in the Life after the military drawings or tattoos, which he did before his ture,” he continued. “It’s architecture and teeth,” he explained.

Godsey had spent the last 17 years in the accident. everything.”

After the accident, his art doesn’t come But he was able to do a little teaching. military. It was only when he got out that After leaving the Navy, he tried starting During his time in California, many schools he started to deal with his PTSD. as easily, but he isn’t giving up.

“It was it was strange because the PTSD a business but couldn’t readjust. The Navy were cutting art programs to reduce their “It isn’t at the level I want it to be, but never affected me until after I got out,” he your brain is a muscle,” he added. “You’ve wasn’t taking priors, so later in 1993, he budgets. joined the Army.

“I actually went around and volunteered said. “Then I was just struggling, trying to got to exercise it. That’s the only way I’ll to teach art at some of these smaller schools hold down a job and trying to readjust and get back to where I used to be.”

Now he hopes to inspire the next generLife in the Army like a day or two a week,” he said. everything. It’s like being slapped in the ation of artists.

In 1998, his dad got sick, so he decided face a little.”

Godsey served for two years with the acto transfer closer to home. tive Army Reserves.

He tried in-house hospitalization twice, He ended up in Dudley, where he served one-on-one therapy, group therapy, and Nikki Overfelt-Chifalu is a reporter for The same day he got out, he joined the the Daily Journal. She can be reached at National Guard in Arkansas where he was as a generator mechanic. medications.

In 2006, he got out. noverfelt@dailyjournalonline.com. in the infantry.

“Nothing seemed to work,” he added.

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In 1990, Steven Godsey returned home for a few days before heading out to the Persian Gulf and the beginning of war there.

“We were the first boots on the ground. First ships in the vicinity. We spent 11 months over there.”

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FRANCIS MOTTO …

‘Give the glory to those that work for or with you’

VICTORIA KEMPER

‌L

vkemper@democratnewsonline.com‌

t. Col. John Francis, U.S. Army Aviation Retired, spent more than 28 years serving his country and to this day, he still gets up, puts on his fatigues and goes to work as a JROTC Instructor at Fredericktown High School.

Francis said he began planning his return to Fredericktown, and specifically Fredericktown High School, eight years before his retirement.

“I love my job here with the Fredericktown School District,” Francis said. “This organization has amazing employees that have the service mentality I love. Everyone wants to help where they can and it makes my job easy because of it.”

Francis said he loves teaching and wanted to come back to his hometown to show others that you can do something great even though you are from Fredericktown.

“I remember thinking I would never come back to this town when I left,” Francis said. “It’s funny that you find in life the greatest people helped make you who you are.

“My travels around the world helped me to understand how good we actually have it here. If you look at all the hate and anger in the world and compare it to Fredericktown then it becomes a no-brainer. Fredericktown tops the list.”

Francis said his dad always told him to find a job you love, and you never work a day in your life.

“I’ve always enjoyed the military and thoroughly enjoy teaching the cadets in JROTC,” Francis said. “They are great students and thrive in the program.”

Francis enlisted in the Army National Guard in September of 1988 at the Fredericktown armory. His father and mother were in the military, both of whom he highly respected.

“I enjoyed the thought of helping others who could not help themselves,” Francis said. “The military has a tradition of honor and integrity. The structure and order appealed to me.”

Throughout the years, Francis climbed in ranks and spent nearly 10 years in the regular Army before returning to the Army National Guard as a captain. He would finish out his active duty in November 2016 as a lieutenant colonel.

During his military career, Francis was a combat engineer and an aviator who flew Blackhawks, Hueys, Kiowas and the King Air. When asked what his favorite part of serving was, he said being able to change what others thought impossible.

“When you take a talented group of mission-focused soldiers and challenge them to be more than they think they can be, it will always turn out better than you thought, if you motivate them correctly,” Francis said. “Not all soldiers think the same or are stimulated to achieve until you establish a solid relationship with them.”

Francis said he has loved working with others to achieve throughout out his time in the service and now as an instructor.

“Each time/rank has awesome memories and all of them revolve around working with the greatest people in the world,” Francis said. “Soldiers have huge hearts and thrive on being part of the solution and not the problem.”

Francis said he likes to teach this to the JROTC students he instructs.

“If they can take that lesson, to focus their life in helping others, then this world will be a better place to live in,” Francis said. “Life is also about contacts. We don’t do anything in life without the help of someone else.”

Francis said it is nice to have people you know wanting to be part of something that makes the community better.

“I’ve worked with soldiers and civilians of all ranks and walks of life and one thing is clear, we all have talents that no one else has,” Francis said. “We were made specifically for a greater plan in life. I always tried to find out what each person’s talent was so when the time came they could shine. Use your talent.”

Francis has an unbelievable ability to see the good in everyone and in all situations.

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY JOHN FRANCIS‌

John Francis poses for a photo in Iraq.

Pictured is Lt. Col. John Francis with his wife Sherry.

John Francis takes part in deployment training.

He even found a sense of peace during deployment.

“I was deployed in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq but had a sense of peace during the deployment based on my faith,” Francis said. “Obviously, there is always a sense of anxiety of the unknown, but the resiliency training I received in the military helped me cope with the emotions.”

Francis said having a loving wife and family praying for him also brought him strength to move forward with the mission without fear. His family undoubtedly provided the support and love Francis needed to be the best he could be, but time away from them was the hardest part.

“Family is the most important part of remaining in the military,” Francis said. “I strive to balance family time and the job.

This would be important in any career chosen.”

Francis said many jobs require you to spend long periods of time away, but keeping in touch and letting them know they are loved is critical to maintaining a solid relationship.

“My wife is an angel to put up with me and my job,” Francis said. “She always kept me grounded and brought reality to an otherwise chaotic and stressful profession.”

Francis said he is married to the most amazing wife in the world, Sherry, and has an awesome daughter, Melody.

“We really have a great relationship with each other and I am extremely blessed to have them in my life,” Francis said. “They have come to love the military life also.

“It gave them experiences they may not have gone through without being in it. My wife came over to Egypt when I was deployed there and was able to see the Holy Land with me.”

Francis said his family has been able to travel all over the United States and see a lot of the country’s history.

“This is important in the development of our pride in American history,” Francis said. “I wish everyone had the opportunity to see the nation and the world as I have.”

Francis said he thinks the nation would have a lot less problems if others could see the United States and its history as he has.

John Francis on Christmas guard duty in Kuwait.

When asked what advice he would give to someone considering joining the military Francis said, “Go in with the attitude that you want to do for others no matter how tired you are.”

Francis said the “what’s in it for me” attitude will draw people away from you but once you start doing for others people will want to work with you.

“This is what makes someone a great leader,” Francis said. “Give the glory to those that work for or with you. You don’t need glory. Remain grounded with the thought of how can I make this environment better for those I serve and work with.”

Victoria Kemper is a reporter for the Daily Journal. She can be reached at 573-783-3366 or at vkemper@democratnewsonline.com

VICTORIA KEMPER, DAILY JOURNAL‌

Fredericktown JROTC Instructor Lt. Col. John Francis looks over his cadets as they board the Black Hawk this spring.

“I enjoyed the thought of helping others who could not help themselves. The military has a tradition of honor and integrity. The structure and order appealed to me.”

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Lt. Col. John Francis

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JULY 2021

A SPECIAL PUBLICATION FOR THE DAILY JOURNAL/FARMINGTON PRESS/DEMOCRAT NEWS

Serenity is commi�ed to honoring the many local veterans who have served our country.

Serenity is a level 3 “We Honor Veterans” agency which means we have met the requirements of a na�onal program which ensures that veterans receive the honor they deserve at the end-of-life.

We provide assistance with VA benefits. We also have Veteran Volunteers to offer companionship and share comradery. We proudly present every Veteran on our service with a framed cer�ficate of apprecia�on for his or her military service.

WHY SERENITY? LOCAL Serenity was the first, and is the longest standing hospice in the area; your hometown hospice since 1989.

INDEPENDENT Serenity is not part of a large chain or major corpora�on. We are able to make decisions regarding what is best for our pa�ents quickly and efficiently.

NOT-FOR-PROFIT Serenity provides excep�onal end-of-life care to all pa�ents. We believe everyone deserves the support of hospice, regardless of their ability to pay.

SPECIALIZED VETERAN CARE Every member of our staff is specially trained to know and understand the specific needs of veteran pa�ents, including those who have seen combat.

A TEAM ASSIGNED JUST FOR YOU Serenity provides a team of professionals to support you and your family on your end-of-life journey.

Each pa�ent is assigned a nurse to provide medical care and a C.N.A. to provide assistance with bathing and personal care, if needed. You also have a Social Worker to provide emo�onal support, bereavement care, connect you to resources in the community and offer assistance with final arrangements. You also have access to a Chaplain, a Music Therapist and a Volunteer if you so choose.

NEVER RECEIVE A BILL FROM SERENITY Many people think they cannot afford end-of-life care, but most major insurance companies DO cover the cost of hospice services. Serenity bills insurance, when available, but as a non-profit agency with very generous donors, we cover all hospice expenses not covered by insurance. That means even if you are uninsured or underinsured, you will never receive a bill from Serenity HospiceCare. That covers visits, supplies, hospice medica�ons and even necessary medical equipment.

CALL TODAY FOR MORE INFORMATION 573.431.0162 • www.serenityhc.org • 800.876.0162 00 1

A SPECIAL PUBLICATION FOR THE DAILY JOURNAL/FARMINGTON PRESS/DEMOCRAT NEWS

JULY 2021 |

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STEWARD OF HOPE White carries on legacy of service to veterans

SARAH HAAS

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shaas@dailyjournalonline.com‌

ike White has a 32-year career in the U.S. Army, but what he’s probably best known for, what his most meaningful military-related service could be, is the building and operation of Camp Hope, south of Farmington.

A sprawling, wooded compound of lodge, cabins and outbuildings, Camp Hope invites wounded veterans to take advantage of free rest and relaxation, return to nature, hunt, fish and bond with other vets to continue healing from the traumas of combat. He and his wife dedicated the veterans’ resort to his son, Christopher Neal White, a Marine who was killed in Iraq in 2006, when he was on loan to a platoon.

After losing his younger son, White was sitting in the woods, thinking about how Chris liked to help people, and he loved to hunt and fish. White began wondering what he could do to honor Chris’ memory, and came up with the idea of helping veterans find rest and relaxation through his free resort.

“I know what (disabled veterans) went through, as far as some of the situations people were in. We just wanted to try and turn around and help them as thanks for what they did for us. It’s our way of life,” he said. “We have to support that whether we think it’s right, wrong or indifferent. We still have to stand behind our folks who are out there doing it.”

White’s father was also somewhat of a casualty of war, having served in Vietnam.

“He died at 53. At this time, it’s called Agent Orange, but at that time, the VA wasn’t looking at it as anything wrong,” White said. “Vietnam changed him. They weren’t looking for PTSD, but he definitely had it. I know that now for a fact, after dealing with it here. We did not take care of our Vietnam veterans like we should have.”

White said his own military service does not include direct combat. A 17-year-old from Valles Mines, he joined the deferred entry program in 1978 after the Vietnam War, leaving St. Francois County for basic training in January 1979.

“I had gone with a buddy to his hometown of Lawton, Oklahoma, and we went out to dinner with his family, and there were all these guys in the bar,” White said. “I asked, ‘Who are all these guys?’ and they said, ‘Well, those are G.I.s from Fort Sill. They’re all over town all the time, trust us, they have a good time when they’re out.’ I thought, you know what? Ain’t a whole lot happening in St. Francois County, so it’s time to look into it.

“I went and seen the old trusty recruiter, he got me some tests, and I got a lot of opportunities to pick different jobs. I picked something I thought I’d enjoy and I stuck with that for about 10 years in the military.”

He was sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey, after he complete his combat and infantry training.

“I was a light wheel vehicle mechanic. I did that from ’79 to I don’t know, probably ’83,” he said. “I got a letter from the Department of Army changing my job to generator mechanic, so I had to go to school for about seven months for that, and I did that for the remainder of the time that I stayed in active duty.”

Stationed in Panama with the 193rd Infantry Brigade from 1979 to 1982 — his assignment recorded in a yellowed news clipping from The Daily Journal — he worked hard and made the best of his free time, fishing and eventually meeting his now-wife of 40 years, Galia.

“Her father was a university professor there, and had quite a few connections,” White said. “(Manuel) Noriega was president at the time and her father knew quite a few people. I once went to the home of Noriega’s pilot, which was interesting.”

White wasn’t around for Noriega’s ouster, although he knows the background.

“I got a lot of history and I know a lot about the insides and out of that country. A lot of things happened,” he said. “There’s a lot of things I know that a lot of other people don’t know. You’d have kids riot and things like that, and other than that, that’s about it. Panama was — and is — still friendly to Americans, there are a lot of people who are retiring there.”

But service in the military is seldom stationary. After Panama, White relocated to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with the 44th Medical Brigade, which set up hospitals “and they need a lot of power, which was my thing,” White said. He was there for about nine months, reenlisted and went to Germany for three and a half years.

“Germany was good, it was a different kind of duty, different kind of unit for me, it was armor and I was in an artillery unit, so I learned a lot about that side of the artillery and armored portion,” he said.

The 1985 Gramm-Rudman Act sought to rein in America’s massive budget deficit, and military spending was slashed. “So instead of my three years, they put me there for four, but since I had a school date I got to leave six months early.

“You’re pretty much at their mercy, wherever they tell you to be, that’s where you’re going to be, so you just make the best of it, pull up your bootstraps and move on.”

White returned to the U.S., serving at Fort Knox and choosing not to reenlist after a couple of years, although he was registered with the National Guard.

SUBMITTED PHOTO‌

Mike White takes a break during exercises.

A 1979 clipping from the Daily Journal details White’s Panamanian assignment.

Mike White, stationed in Panama, pals around with an REO speedwagon.

SARAH HAAS, DAILY JOURNAL‌

Mike White stands in front of the Wall of Honor at his Camp Hope, located south of Farmington. The man with 32 years of service in the U.S. Army invites wounded soldiers and their families to a free vacation of rest and healing amid the woods.

“I stayed for about, oh, 12 years, in that area. For 10 years, I got away from the military and I was a director for the service areas for Omega car dealer, they sold everything but Mercuries,” he said. “One day, my wife said, ‘Why don’t you go back to work for the government, that way you have an eighthour day job.’ So I did, I put in for a job at Fort Knox with the 194th Armored Brigade and it wasn’t a couple weeks before they hired me, so I moved up to Fort Knox and I worked there doing power generation for headquarters until 2010.”

His next relocation was to North Carolina, where he worked for six years before returning to Missouri and Scott Air Force Base.

White said although he’s trained like all other soldiers for combat, he acknowledges his military experience has been mostly peaceful — although he came close to being shipped to the Middle East.

“All (my service) was peace time, I was real fortunate for that, but I did get deployed, I had to pack all my bags, take all my stuff for the first Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait,” he said. “Left home, did all the boohoos and all that with the family and work.”

When it came time to assess the troops before they were sent over, the powers that be realized they had two men reporting for the same duty.

“I got there, sat down, everyone went through what they were there for, and they got to me and said, ‘Well, we got two of you guys,’ and I said, ‘Well, OK, I’m out.’ I got up and left, I didn’t have to go,” he said.

White said he appreciates the skills, experiences and knowledge that trained him not only for life, but to take life’s challenges and negativity, and turn them into opportunities

and positivity.

“Military service is a good opportunity for young people, it was for me,” he said.

“There’s values instilled in you that’ll last you for the rest of your life. It guided me. It made me know that if you put your mind to something, you can get it done. But it also teaches teamwork. You have to have a team to get anything big or important done. It’s not a me-me-me world, although some might see it that way.

“It levels you out. And if you live by them standards, then things will go OK for you.

You might get kicked down every once in a while but that happens to everybody. You have to take that negative and turn it into a positive and just keep moving forward.”

All of those life-lessons learned in the U.S. Army have served him well in creating, operating and organizing Camp Hope, which is also a model of forming relationships, organization and results.

“I’m a logistical guy, that’s what I do for a living, that’s what I’ve done for basically the 32 years I’ve been with the Army. I figure things out. I take care of the troops who come here, I take care of their airline tickets and coordinate that, that way, we make one trip to the airport and pick everyone up,” he said. “Same thing with the trip home, I try to get them all on the same flights around the same time, so there are a lot of logistics to an operation like this.

“And yes, Uncle Sam did teach me how to prioritize certain things, and how to, in my mind, organize what goes on. It’s definitely a leadership role in order to do that, but you have to develop a bond with these vets and their families and friends so they feel comfortable when they arrive here. And

SUBMITTED PHOTO‌S

Mike White sports his first photo as a soldier in 1979. that’s part of the process of talking to (the veterans).”

White said they have a lot of help from local churches, non-profits, motorcycle organizations and schools, for which he’s grateful. He said he’s pleased veterans today are given more honor than in the Vietnam era, and he’s pleased to do his part to honor his son’s memory and legacy of helping other people.

“I know every single wounded vet who comes here would put the uniform on again, 100%. That’s it. They have that instilled in them, it seems. A lot of them were on pace to retire after 20 years, and they had that taken from them. Depending on who they were and their rank, it might not be a lot,” he said. “That’s why it costs them nothing to come and stay here with us for 8-9 days. It couldn’t have worked out better, we couldn’t have picked a better place for this, really.”

Sarah Haas is the assistant editor for the Daily Journal. She can be reached at 573-518-3617 or at shaas@dailyjournalonline.com.

“I know what (disabled veterans) went through, as far as some of the situations people were in. We just wanted to try and turn around and help them as thanks for what they did for us. It’s our way of life.”

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Mike White

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JULY 2021

A SPECIAL PUBLICATION FOR THE DAILY JOURNAL/FARMINGTON PRESS/DEMOCRAT NEWS

A MAN OF MANY TITLES Pierson: Father, husband, teacher, coach, mentor and soldier ALAN KOPITSKY

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akopitsky@democratnewsonline.com‌

or more than 35 years, Mike Pierson has found a way to juggle a family, a career, and his desire to serve his country.

He says the reason he has been involved in the military for 35 years is because he has not been burnt out.

“I can do my school job, and my coaching job, and still be a civilian,” Pierson said.

“Then, when it comes time to be a soldier, I can be a soldier.”

Pierson, the son of Michael J. and Dorothy M. Pierson, graduated from Fredericktown High School in 1985. He attended Mineral Area College for two and half years and graduated from Southeast Missouri State University in 1991.

Like many veterans, Pierson’s desire to serve in the military came from a relative.

In this case, his father.

“I guess when my dad would come home from angel training and he’d bring us little presents and Army stuff, things like that, I just knew,” Pierson said. “I wasn’t for sure, but I knew it was definitely a possibility.

“I liked what my dad did. I liked that he would come home wearing camouflage.

Since my dad would let me be around tanks, there’s nothing like 58 tons rolling down the street and feeling the ground shake when it goes by. That’s just awesome.”

Pierson enlisted in December 1984, in Farmington as a 19E armor crewman in the U.S. Army Reserves.

“They were drill sergeants and they were armor,” Pierson said. “That means if we went to war, we would train people coming into the Army to be tankers and then we would ship off with them. That was the idea behind that unit.”

In the summer of 1985, he did basic training and AIT (advanced individual training).

“They take your basic training everyone goes through and then your specialty training, whatever you’re going to do in the Army, your job, and they combine it for tankers,” Pierson said Tankers are armored crewman on a tank.

They drive the tanks, or they load the gun or they are the gunner.

Pierson graduated from Fort Knox as the No. 1 recruit while attending One Station Unit Training. He received the George S. Patton Jr. outstanding tanker award.

“They promoted me from E1 to E3, which is like private to private first class,” Pierson said. “I came back and started drilling with my new Army Reserve unit and did that for 11 years.”

He went to Drill Sergeant School and graduated in 1988, in Granite City, Illinois.

He also became an instructor at the Drill Sergeant School from 1989 to 1991.

The unit disbanded in the late 1990s, but before that Pierson joined the National Guard. He was a drill sergeant.

Pierson said he went back to the unit and it was getting close to disbanding time. An acquaintance was in the National Guard and he got Pierson interested in joining. In the summer of 1994, he joined the National Guard in Aurora, Missouri in an aviation unit. He worked in supply.

In 1995, he went to Officer Candidate School (OCS) through the National Guard.

He had already graduated from college and graduated from state OCS as a second lieutenant, in Jefferson City.

Pierson said he had several challenging and diverse assignments in the National Guard.

Pierson went to Panama twice. The first time he went, the unit built hurricane-proof medical clinics and schools. He said he broke his foot in a ladder accident.

“The second time was 2019,” Pierson said. “We went and trained the Panamanian army to defend the canal.

“We trained their staff on how to move in troops and fight a little war if they ever had guerrilla warfare down there. We had interpreters and we would take our guys and they would talk about how to set up defensive units. An operation officer like me would train their operation officer.”

He went to the Dominican Republic and fixed schools, poured concrete, tore down roofs, and built sidewalks.

They built the Alaskan Road Project at Metlakatla, Alaska.

“I cut trees for two weeks on a logger crew,” Pierson said. “It was fun, but it was a lot of work.”

The unit worked security for the 2002 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Pierson was deployed to Iraq in 2004 as a platoon leader for B Co. of the 1140th Engineers in Perryville. His platoon instructed an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps for eight months.

“I was assigned as first lieutenant, and during eight months of that tour, we trained the Iraqi National Guard and we were located out of Alkut, Iraq,” Pierson said.

That mission ended and he went to Baghdad and worked under General Petraeus with the Multinational Security Transition Command. He worked for that organization for four months.

“We ran the engineer section of that organization and we would go in and provide the engineer expertise to provide infrastructure and repair their bases,” Pierson said.

Pierson said they would get shot at when traveling between Camp Liberty and the

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY MIKE PIERSON‌

Pictured are the members of the First Platoon, Bravo Company, 1140th Engineers, April 15, 2004, in Iraq. Mike Pierson is standing in the back row, last soldier on the right.

Mike Pierson stands with his wife, Colleen, on the steps of the state capitol in Jefferson City following his graduation from officer candidate school in 1996 and his promotion to second lieutenant.

Mike Pierson enlisted in the military in December 1984.

Mike Pierson stands with parents, Dorothy and Michael J. Pierson, on the steps of the state capitol in Jefferson City following his graduation from officer candidate school in 1996 and his promotion to second lieutenant.

“Green Zone.”

He said he was “not nervous, because over there, you knew if your time was up, your time was up. You have just got to accept it.

There were some people who wouldn’t got out, mostly younger people. The older you get, you just realize, if it’s your time, it’s your time.”

Pierson said they lost some people he knew.

“All you can do is remember what they did for us,” he said.

He is currently assigned as the operations officer at the 35th Engineer Brigade at Fort Leonard Wood. It is part of a larger corps and in charge of any engineer task.

Right before joining the National Guard, Pierson married Colleen Kennel on June 5, 1993. The two met in the fall of 1992, when both were hired as teachers in the Lutie School District, in Theodosia, Missouri.

They taught there for a few years and Pierson taught for one year in Lesterville, before the couple both moved to Fredericktown to teach, beginning in fall 1997.

“My wife has been the most supportive person that there ever could be,” Pierson said. “I missed a whole year away from my children. Being away from your family for a whole year is tough.

He said the time away from his family was the most difficult part of serving.

“That’s the number one thing,” Pierson said. “You hate being away from your family. That’s one of the reasons I never joined the regular Army. I never wanted to do it full time. I never wanted to put my family though it.”

Still, Pierson said he has no regrets.

“I wouldn’t be in it if I had regrets,” he

said. “Would I do it all over again? Yes I would. Some of the missions are tough, when you lose soldiers and people get hurt.

That’s the hard part.

“You look at society and certain people do different jobs, and one of my jobs is being soldier. I could have chosen something different, but I didn’t.”

Pierson said his favorite part of being in the military is all of the friends he’s met from all over Missouri.

“I have met so many different people,” he said. “And now, I am still meeting new people. What’s great is when you reconnect with people that you haven’t seen for four or five or 10 years.”

One of those was Fred Renshaw, who was featured in the Stories of Honor on May 1.

“I saw that and I didn’t recognize him,” Pierson said.

Pierson said Renshaw was his first drill sergeant.

“Oh yes, I remember (Pierson) well,” Renshaw said. “He was very motivated. He was a good soldier. He did his job well.”

Pierson talked about leading by example and creating an impression on younger soldiers.

“You look back, when you have a reunion, I had a guy tell me ‘I have never seen you angry,’” Pierson said. “I said, ‘Well, you can’t do that in front of people.’ You can get upset in your own room. Your soldiers don’t need to see that, because all they need to focus on is the job at hand.

“When you pour all of your efforts into something and they’re there with you watching you do that, and back at the time I’m not their favorite person as the first lieutenant in charge of them, and you have

to get things done. But they still respect you, because you’re a hard worker. That’s one thing they understand.”

Pierson said it is very much the same as being a teacher or coach.

“The whole challenge of being a coach or teacher, even in the military is finding the words or the phrases you can use to motivate people,” he said. “You have to make them know that what you think is important should be important to them because it helps with the overall mission.”

Pierson retired from teaching after the 2019 school year. He continued to coach track at Fredericktown High School through this year.

Fredericktown Assistant Superintendent Shannon Henson said Pierson was one of the first people he met when he began working at Fredericktown 25 years ago.

“Mike will do anything for anybody, and I have always been amazed at how talented and skilled he is in a variety of areas. He is a gifted carpenter, mechanic and outdoorsman, as well as a coach and math teacher.

He often would use his mechanical and wood working skills to engage students in real life skills outside of math.

“As a track coach, he has successfully sent many students to the podium and the state track meet and has an affinity for watching an athlete’s technique and helping them work and adjust. Mike often served as a mentor for many young men who may not have had a positive male role model in their lives. I would often hear about the fishing trips. Mike was dedicated to the Fredericktown R-1 School District and at the same time dedicated to his country through his lifelong military career. He has definitely been an asset to our students.”

Pierson’s advice for anyone considering entering the military is simple.

“You always have to have it in the back of your mind, I might go somewhere that’s not so safe,” he said. “That’s number one, but you get out of it, what you put into it. It’s like anything else in life. It doesn’t matter if it’s soccer practice, or going to school or your job, whatever you do, know that you get out of the military what you put into it.”

While he has retired from teaching and (possibly) from coaching, Pierson, whose rank is now lieutenant colonel, is sticking with the military a little longer.

“I’m going to stay with the Guard five more years, until I turn 60,” he said. “That’s when they have to kick you out. Sixty years old, you’re done.”

Like many veterans, Mike Pierson’s desire to serve in the military came from a relative. In this case, his father. “I guess when my dad would come home from angel training and he’d bring us little presents and Army stuff, things like that, I just knew … I liked what my dad did. I liked that he would come home wearing camouflage. Since my dad would let me be around tanks, there’s nothing like 58 tons rolling down the street and feeling the ground shake when it goes by. That’s just awesome.”

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A SPECIAL PUBLICATION FOR THE DAILY JOURNAL/FARMINGTON PRESS/DEMOCRAT NEWS

JULY 2021 |

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CORPS VALUES

Retired judge attributes his success to the Marine Corps KEVIN R. JENKINS

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kjenkins@farmingtonpressonline.com‌

andall Head is well known in the community for practicing law, his time spent as Iron County prosecutor, and finally the 14 years he spent on the bench as associate circuit judge for Iron County in the 42nd Judicial Circuit.

What many people don’t know about the gregarious 69-year-old, called Randy by his friends, is that he’s a proud retired Marine who spent nearly two years on active duty in the West Pacific during the Vietnam War. His is a story of a young man with no direction in life whose destiny was changed forever by the time he spent in the Marine Corps.

“I graduated from Lutheran High School North at 17 and was kind of aimless, so I went to college and took a couple of classes,” he said. “Both of my brothers were in the service. Vietnam was going on and I wanted to join the Marine Corps. This was before the lottery.”

Head wasn’t especially impressed with college, so he joined the Marine Corps for a two-year enlistment in early 1969 at the age of 17. He was put on a plane in St. Louis and completed basic training in San Diego, California.

“I was a ‘Hollywood Marine,’” he said, grinning from ear-to-ear. “That’s what the people who go to Paris Island call us. After basic training I went to infantry training regiment at Camp Pendleton. At that time, Vietnam was still in full swing. Then, for about a month I went to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for my Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) training.”

After completing MOS, Head was put on a plane and shipped out to the West Pacific.

“They pulled three people off of the plane in Okinawa, and I was one of them,” he said. “I was stationed in Okinawa as a member of Platoon 1187. My primary base at Camp Hansen. From there I went on what the Marine Corps calls ‘floats.’ I guess you’d call them a deployment now. I went on floats to Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines and Vietnam.”

Head considers himself blessed that he never had to experience armed conflict while in the Marines.

“At that time I was 18,” he said. “I did everything I could to get to Vietnam and I guess God looks out for fools and young children — and I was a little bit of both at the time. The closest I got was on the U.S.S. Alamo on a task force that was supporting Marines who were withdrawing at that time from Da Nang, what they now call a quick reaction force.”

While Head didn’t participate in any battles while serving in the Marines, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t kept busy.

“I did lots of things,” he said. “I did supply administration. I did some shore patrol work. I did some driving. That’s primarily what I did.

“I got some special assignments, like what was called back then typhoon watch where we would go in and secure office buildings at night when the typhoons were coming in because everyone was confined to barracks. They needed people in the buildings in the event windows were blown out, doors blew in, troops blew off.

I always volunteered for that. I loved that duty because I was alone most of the time.”

When asked what country had made the most impact on him while on active duty, Head said, “I’d never seen anything like Hong Kong at the time. I stayed in Kowloon and got out to Hong Kong proper. It was like a James Bond movie or something.

I guess the best time that I had in dealing with the locals was either in the Philippines or in Japan.”

And what were his thoughts about Vietnam?

“Most of my time in Vietnam was spent on ship,” he said. “The lasting impression I have of Vietnam is that I was exposed to Agent Orange and still live with that to this day. Vietnam itself was a country torn, but in my opinion, it wasn’t that much different than the Philippines. There was a lot of strife in the Philippines at the time. You could have picked me up in one and put me in the other and I wouldn’t have known the difference which one I was in.”

Head spent 20 months and one day in the Marine Corps. Upon returning home, the reception he received was not a positive one.

“I didn’t recognize Los Angeles, which is where we flew into when we got back,” he said. “They told us before we went home to change into civilian clothes.

“I had nothing but bad experiences.

There were not the welcoming parades.

There was no welcome home or ‘thanks for a job well done.’ It was something to be hidden and it remained that way for years and years. When I went to college at SEMO, even though I was a member of a veterans organization — they called it a fraternity at Cape Girardeau — it was just us. It wasn’t like frat parties and having people in. It was us sitting around telling stories, relating to each other. It wasn’t something to be proud of, unfortunately, for this country.”

Head saw an immediate change in the country’s treatment of military veterans

KEVIN R. JENKINS, DAILY JOURNAL‌

Retired associate circuit judge Randall Head credits the Marine Corps for giving him the direction and discipline needed to have a happy and successful life. While he has many wonderful memories of his time in the service, Head said he still deals with physical ailments caused by his exposure to Agent Orange while in Vietnam.

SUBMITTED PHOTO‌

Retired Marine Randall Head, far right, is pictured at a 50-year boot camp reunion of Platoon 1187 held in 2019. The men were invited to the Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot in San Diego where they were guests at a boot camp graduation ceremony. Pictured second from the left is Rico Gil, one of Head’s drill instructors. Although the young Marine was “scared to death of him” all those years ago, Head said he and Gil are now “firm friends.”

SUBMITTED PHOTO‌

Randall Head is pictured on the far left wearing a T-shirt with a camera hanging around his neck. It was taken in the Philippines during Jungle Environment Survival Training he and his fellow Marines took part in prior to boarding the ship for Vietnam. after the first Iraqi war.

“I think at that point, people realized that ‘we didn’t treat these guys right when they came back,’” he said. “I can remember talking to my wife about it. It was so gratifying to see how those guys were treated when they came back after that short war.

I think that opened a lot of people’s eyes to

how Vietnam veterans were treated when we came back.”

Once he returned home, Head was motivated to move forward with his life.

“I went to law school and practiced in St. Louis for a year,” he said. “I did not like that. My dad was active with Farm Bureau in Iron County and John Cayfield offered

me use of an office there for weekends — like a Saturday morning practice. They didn’t charge me anything. I was there a month and I had so much business that I came down full-time. In St. Louis, I was a little bitty fish in a great big pond.”

Head credits his time in the Marines for any successes he’s experienced in his life.

“There’s no question in my mind that I wouldn’t be close to being the man I am today without the Marine Corps,” he said.

“I barely got out of high school — and it wasn’t because I was stupid. It was because I was bored and I didn’t have direction and I didn’t have discipline. The Marine Corps gave me both direction and discipline. It taught me that there is nothing that I cannot finish and that when you start something, you have to finish it.

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the Marine Corps, my drill instructor, the lessons that they taught me. I would not have gone through law school, I would not have finished law school, but for the Marine Corps. When I went in it was eight-week boot camp because they were shipping people off to Vietnam as quick as they could.

“I learned in that eight weeks that I could do anything. Yeah, I can take anything for probably any amount of time if I know that there’s a finish line. I’ve said it a thousand times since I graduated boot camp — if I can get through boot camp, I can do this.

And it’s absolutely true. It was the best thing to happen to me. Every military guy says ‘I wouldn’t do it again for anything, but I wouldn’t trade the memories for a million dollars.’ That’s absolutely true.”

An unexpected joy Head has experienced in recent years is the rekindled friendships he’s made with his fellow Marines — and a newfound relationship he’s developed with a person who scared him to death all those years ago.

“One of the blessings of my life is there were about eight or nine of us who still keep in touch 50-some-odd-years later,” he said. “Several years ago we reached out to our drill instructors (DI) and we’ve done two or three reunions with two of our drill instructors that have become some of our very best friends. Went back to San Diego for a 50-year reunion and got to sit in on a graduation where we were actually guests of honor. I was sitting there with my DI watching these recruits graduate. It was just surreal. My drill instructor, who terrified me when I was 17, is one of my very best friends now.”

Head retired as associate circuit judge in October 2019 for no other reason than he felt the time was right.

“I retired just because I wanted to do something a little different,” he said. “I practice law with Joe Goff in Farmington.

I’m called ‘of counsel’ and Joe and I consult on certain cases. He has his practice and I have mine. We have certain cases that we do together — mostly personal injury cases.

“I do mediation with a very terrific company in St. Louis, United States Arbitration and Mediation. That’s about all I do. Oh, and my wife Paula and I spend our free time in Colorado when we can.”

Kevin R. Jenkins is the managing editor of the Farmington Press and can be reached at 573-756-8927 or kjenkins@ farmingtonpressonline.com

“I was a ‘Hollywood Marine.’ That’s what the people who go to Paris Island call us. After basic training I went to infantry training regiment at Camp Pendleton. At that time, Vietnam was still in full swing.

Then, for about a month I went to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina for my Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) training.”

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Randall Head

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SEOUL STORIES Retzer remembers tour in South Korea

PAM CLIFTON

‌F

Contributing Writer‌

ollowing a family tradition is the reason Ryan L. Retzer joined the military.

He chose the Air Force because he wanted to go into a branch of service in which none of his family had chosen. His father served four years and an older sister retired from the Army. His brother enlisted in the Marines, and an uncle retired from the Navy.

After he graduated from high school, Retzer did not have a clear direction of what he wanted to do with his life. So, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1989.

Basic training was challenging. Even though it was only about eight and a half weeks, Retzer said it was a “revelation of trying to take a civilian who had no prior military experience to become a member of the world’s strongest armed force.” He said basic training was all about strict physical discipline, intense challenges to his mental capacity, and producing an emotional, stable individual who could handle the difficult warfare situations which pertained to defending the nation.

Retzer began his career in the Air Force in March 1989. After graduating from basic training, he moved to Sheppard Air Force Base for specialized training as his job in the military. He chose to be a heavy equipment and pavement specialist.

After graduation from Sheppard AFB, Retzer was assigned to the 51st CES at Osan AB in South Korea for a one-year tour. He was one of the first airmen (E-2) assigned to a South Korean airbase short tour first duty station.

“This meant they hadn’t in the past sent newbies on a short-tour assignment before being at a U.S. continental base,” said Retzer.

But he thoroughly enjoyed learning about a new culture. While he was there, Retzer became involved in teaching conversational English off base several times a week with local Koreans. The class he taught gave him opportunities for some personal tours of South Korea to where most Americans had never been. He was able to tour the 38th Parallel Line, also known as the DMZ which separates South Korea from North Korea.

After serving his time in South Korea, Retzer was then assigned to the Air Force Academy in Colorado for the remainder of his active duty career. During his stay at USAFA, Desert Storm broke out and they were immediately placed on standby for deployment. Because of the short duration of the conflict, Retzer’s unit was not deployed at that time.

Overall, Retzer was stationed in five different places during his military service, including Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas; Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas; Osan Air Base in South Korea; the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.; and Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Ill. During his career, Retzer earned several honors including the Air Force Training ribbon, Good Conduct ribbon, Air Force Commendation medal, and Marksmanship ribbon and Overseas Short Tour ribbon. He ended his rank as an E-5 staff sergeant.

As a heavy equipment and pavement specialist, Retzer was able to operate a variety of equipment, from using hand tools for concrete to operating a bulldozer.

Once he left active service, Retzer joined the Air Force Reserves at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois for two years until he retired from the service in 1996.

Overall, Retzer enjoyed his military experience.

“I would gladly serve my country again,” he said, “because part of my military experience has made me the man I am today.”

Retzer met and worked with many special people, including civilians and military personnel, who he worked with daily.

During his assignment at the USAFA in the early 1990s, he met Pastor Roy Strickland, who continues to be a vital part of Retzer’s life today.

He recalled many things from his military career, including the food.

“I was somewhat partial, but most members of the Armed Forces would say that the Air Force had some of the best food,” he said. “But some of the worst food I ever ate were MREs (Meal, Readyto-Eat).

Beyond the food, he remembered his first night of basic training and how he asked himself, “What have I gotten myself into?”

He also recalled when he flew 23 hours to South Korea. After landing, he realized, “I’m not in Bonne Terre, Mo., anymore.”

Other highlights for Retzer included watching all different types of aircraft land on the flight line, touring numerous beautiful sights of South Korea, and receiving his first care package from his mom.

He recalled the day he left South Korea and the mixed feelings he had about leaving.

He also remembered when he arrived at the USAF Academy and wondered “why a person of my physique could not climb stairs very well at 5,200 elevation until I got my lungs acclimated to the high altitude.”

Retzer recalled a funny story of when he operated a bulldozer all day in South Ko-

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SUBMITTED PHOTOS‌

After graduation from Sheppard AFB, Ryan Retzer was assigned to the 51st CES at Osan AB in South Korea for a one-year tour. He was one of the first airmen (E-2) assigned to a South Korean airbase short tour first duty station.

Ryan Retzer’s other relatives served in the military but he was the first to choose the Air Force.

Pastor Ryan Retzer leads Eastside Church of God in Leadwood. Pictured with him are his children Ryan and Samantha and wife Jane.

Ryan Retzer enlisted with the Air Force in 1989.

rea. He fell asleep in his dump trump while waiting for his sergeant to finish shutting down his bulldozer.

“He left me there on the job site in my truck for two hours,” said Retzer. “After it got dark, he came back knocking on my truck door laughing so hard. I didn’t think it was funny at the time, but later I did.”

A frightening experience for Retzer was when he was at the USAF Academy when he qualified for parachuting out of an airplane. He went through two weeks of vigorous physical training to parachute five times out of a plane at an altitude of nearly 4,500 feet. This particular jump required individuals to jump, count to 10 and then pull the cord.

“When you pull, the chute opens up with about 3 Gs,” said Retzer. “After the chute opens up, you are still falling at a rate of three feet per second.”

He said the first jump of parachuting has many unknowns that come with it, like jumping out of an airplane and not seeing the ground, turning the parachute in the right direction, compensating for the wind, and landing in the right zone and position.

“Let’s just say after doing two of the five required jumps, this was not for me,” he said.

Retzer said that overall, he learned “discipline, authority, more respect for veterans and our flag, my allegiance to our great republic, and teamwork.”

He said, “Probably with every service member, some more than others, will have a lasting effect until the day they die.

I think for me, small things like this happen every time the Pledge of Allegiance is given, that I find myself standing at attention with my left hand cuffed to the seam of my pants.”

For Retzer, the transition out of the military was a bit different, but the Air Force had some classes which helped him adequately transition.

“I also think it depends on how long you were in and if you had some war-time experience that would affect the transitioning,” he said. “I also have the support of the VA clinic.”

Retzer said there are a couple things he wished everyone realized regarding the nation’s military. First, the sacrifice military people give is important and the

fact that they’re given a limited salary and sometimes limited or no recognition for their service. The second is that military life is a “unique experience that a person would not understand unless they have served in one of the Armed Forces.”

After he completed his military service, Retzer’s life took a completely different path.

“I would have stayed longer, but God had pastoral plans for me,” he said.

Retzer, 51, and his wife Jane, son Ryan and daughter Samantha live in Park Hills.

He has been serving as pastor of Eastside Church of God in Leadwood for a little more than 10 years. He has been a pastor since 1996, with nearly 12 years of service at Chillicothe, almost four years in St. Peters and now 10 years at Leadwood.

“It was during my military years that God called me into the ministry,” he said.

Retzer is also employed as a paraprofessional for West County School District’s Rocky Creek Youth Ranch off-campus site.

Pam Clifton is a contributing writer for the Daily Journal

Basic training was challenging. Even though it was only about eight and a half weeks, Retzer said it was a “revelation of trying to take a civilian who had no prior military experience to become a member of the world’s strongest armed force.”

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RESPECT AND PRIDE Page proud of time with Army National Guard

NIKKI OVERFELT-CHIFALU

‌W

noverfelt@dailyjournalonline.com‌

hen Cap America’s Jon Page was finishing up at Fredericktown High School, he didn’t really know what direction in life he wanted to go.

He ended up enlisting in the Missouri Army National Guard in February of 2001.

He’d always been pretty patriotic, but it was a moment with Mr. Graham, his shop teacher at Fredericktown, which he credits as one of the main reasons he joined.

At a high school girls basketball game, he was talking and laughing with his friends during the playing of the National Anthem when Mr. Graham pulled him aside into the hallway and scolded him.

“He was in the military and he said, ‘I had friends die for this for this song and I don’t ever want you to talk again,’” Page said. “So it just kind of gave me the respect that you get whenever you’re younger. You have a respect — you don’t really know why — but you have a respect for that person or that area ... So, Mr. Graham, he was probably one of the main reasons I joined.”

After enlisting, he went to basic training at Fort Leonard Wood and did his advanced individual training there as a heavy equipment operator.

Page joined about seven months before 9/11. When he joined, being deployed was never a thought in his mind.

“I never joined the military to be like, ‘I want to go deploy and go do that,’” he explained. “Because if I did that, I would have joined the regular Army.”

He remembers seeing commercials of National Guard members helping with placing sandbags or helping with crowd control and he thought that wouldn’t be bad.

“Would you have said after I joined him in ’01, I would have been deployed in ’04,” he said. “I would have been like, ‘you’re crazy.’ But things happen.”

On 9/11, he was working construction on a site in Farmington. They were listening to the Howard Stern Show on the radio when he mentioned that first tower had been hit.

“I thought it was a joke at first because Howard Stern always plays practical jokes,” he said. “Then a little bit later, he said, the other tower got hit. So we worked the rest of the day and just listened to it.”

When he got home that night, he talked to a few of the guys in his unit.

“We’re like, ‘wow, like this is happening,’” he added.

Their unit was put on alert but not yet mobilized.

Brother in arms, brother by marriage During his time at Fort Leonard Wood, Page was reunited with Fredericktown classmate Marcus Laut.

They were just acquaintances in high school, but became close at Ford Leonard Wood. Laut was a rotation ahead of Page in his training.

“He always made fun of me because he could make phone calls and I couldn’t,” Page said about his time in basic training.

Their friendship grew during their trainings and drills and while riding four-wheelers.

In 2002, he attended Laut’s wedding and met his sister, Sarah.

She had also attended Fredericktown High but was a little older.

“I always make the joke — because she’s like, ‘I don’t remember you in high school’ — I said, ‘well, you were you were a lot more popular than I was and you didn’t have your eyes open very much,’” he added.

Sarah said their families were intertwined before they even met.

“My aunt worked for his family,” she said.

“And so Jon, as we look back, had spent some time with my cousins, had been out to her house, (and) had been to the lake house, all of these things. And it’s like, wow, we didn’t even really know much about each other at that point.”

After her brother’s wedding, they started dating and got married a couple of years later, the day before he and Laut deployed to Iraq.

“The joke was everybody says the first year is the most difficult,” Sarah said. “Well, it is, but he wasn’t even here!”

Before deploying, his unit spent a couple of months training at Fort Riley in Kansas, as he says, “to train in the snow for the desert.”

They got a three-day break before leaving for Iraq.

“In those three days, we got married on Valentine’s Day 2004 and then I shipped out a day later,” he explained. “So they always say that the hardest year is the first year of marriage. I was gone the first year of marriage, so it was pretty easy.”

Time in Iraq

Page, along with Laut, and the rest of the soldiers with Company A of the 1140th Engineer Battalion were deployed for a year in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

They were a part of Operation Iron Claw.

“If there was a town that needed to be assaulted, we would clear all of the roads leading into this town of IEDs,” he said. “We were one of the first route clearing companies in Iraq at the time.”

The combat engineers would use pieces of equipment called the Meerkat and Buffalo.

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SUBMITTED‌

Cap America Director of Knit Operations Jon Page joined the Missouri Army National Guard right out of Fredericktown High School.

SUBMITTED‌

Jon Page was deployed with Company A of the 1140th Engineer Battalion for a year in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

NIKKI OVERFELT-CHIFALU, DAILY JOURNAL‌

Jon Page met his wife, Sarah, at the wedding of fellow National Guard member Marcus Laut.

Sarah is Laut’s sister. Page and Laut became close friends during their time in the National Guard.

“Meerkat was a metal-detecting buggy,” he explained. “If the Meerkat found anything, it would spray paint it. And then the Buffalo would come behind it and had a big arm that would come out. You’re inside this big, heavily armored vehicle. They would dig it up, they would try to disarm it as as well as possible. And then they would go put C-4 on it and explode it.”

The heavy equipment operators like Page would follow behind.

“Then if they missed anything, we would find it with the bulldozers and the graders,” he added.

They did this through Nasiriyah, Tallil, and Baghdad.

“We would get pulled off on small, little missions here and there, but for the most part, that’s what we did,” he said.

Page said there was a couple of scary incidents where the heavy equipment operators found the bombs.

“There was a couple of our guys that got blown up, but they didn’t ever really get hurt,” he added.

One guy from Macon hit one, he said, and a large piece of shrapnel shot up between his legs and through the top, missing him by inches.

On a separate mission called Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah, Laut was injured, which earned him a Purple Heart. Page was not on assignment with him that day.

Laut was driving a tractor trailer with a piece of equipment on the back when they hit an IED. “He had some damage to his eye, his hearing, (and) had some shrapnel wounds,” Page said.

Page said he was scared when he found out that Laut had been hit. He wanted to go to the field hospital to see him, but they weren’t able to take him. But they did keep him updated on his recovery until he was able to rejoin the unit.

Another guy from central Missouri in their unit was also injured in the incident.

“Both of those guys got hit pretty hard,” he added. “And ended up, they made full recoveries. Those were the only two guys that got wounded out of our whole 150 people.”

Although no one in their unit died during their deployment, eight soldiers in the First Armored Division died on April 29, 2004.

That division was attached to their unit and provided security when they went out on clearing missions.

Part of their job was to stop other vehicles from entering the convoy. They stopped a vehicle that was outfitted with an IED that exploded. Page could feel the explosion in his bulldozer.

“That was the extent of the trauma that we saw,” Page explained. “The hardest part of that whole thing was there were some people from our unit that were dispatched to go, essentially, pick up the pieces. So there was a lot of these guys around here, that that was their job. That day, we had to go and we had to pick up what was left of what happened, put them in a back of a

SUBMITTED‌

Jon Page (right) was deployed with brotherin-law Marcus Laut for a year in Iraq.

dump truck and drive them home.

“It was just a bad thing to do. But those are the things that we don’t ever talk about it amongst ourselves because we know what each other did and we respect what each other did.”

The company was commanded by Capt.

James Phillips, from Cape Giradeau.

Page said he knew Phillips was special then, but he has a whole new appreciation now that he worked under others and now that he manages people.

“Imagine yourself with 125 hormone-filled, testosterone-fueled boys that are average from 18 to 25 years old,” he explained. “And they’re ready to go out and rip somebody’s head off and you’re trying to control this and you’re trying to get things done. He made it work seamless.”

Sgt. Norman Inman, from Ironton, was their section sergeant.

“He was in charge of just us, our little group of guys,” he said. “He was probably the hardest working man I’ve ever met. He never let things bother him.”

They talk about the same things. And so when they’d get care packages or they’d have phone calls home, that information that (they) may get from our side, (they’d) share.”

Page said their unit still has a reunion every year and is close.

“There’s only certain people you can talk to that understand what you’ve been through,” he said.

They community also rallied around to support them and their families during the deployment.

“You had churches, schools, organizations writing you letters and giving you things that it was almost overwhelming because you couldn’t you couldn’t pay them back enough,” Page said.

When he was home for his two weeks of leave time during his deployment, he stopped to help a lady change her tire. A month later when he was back in Iraq, he received a care package from her.

“That’s the support that we had,” he said. “There’s stories like that throughout the entire unit of people doing that. And it just made it a lot easier to get through.”

Sarah and their families had the support of the Family Readiness Group at the Fredericktown Armory while she worried about her husband and her brother.

“Having both of them gone was difficult,” she said. “But they had each other, too, which was kind of cool.”

When their deployment ended, their unit returned home to a hero’s welcome in Bangor, Maine, the first place they landed upon their return to the U.S., and in Fredericktown, where they had a parade.

“It’s a very humbling feeling and makes it worth it,” Page said.

Community support

Family time

SUBMITTED‌

Jon Page and Sarah got married on Valentine’s Day 2004, a day before he deployed to Iraq.

Page knows that his experience is the National Guard is different than that of the Army, but he likes the community bond of the National Guard.

“You’re taking 150 people from Fredericktown, Farmington, Ironton, Bonne Terre, Desloge — places like that — Ste. Gen, Perryville,” he explained. “And now if something were to happen, it affects that community even worse.”

The shared community made them a closer-knit group.

“I liked it in that aspect that everybody had each other back at all times,” he added.

Sarah said that many of the families already knew each other.

“You played ball together, maybe when you were younger and you had been serving together for some time prior to deployment,” she said. “So those bonds run very deep. They know the same people.

Page got out of National Guard in 2006.

During his time, he got to travel to Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Panama, and Alaska. He said he has no regrets about joining.

“I’m extremely proud of what we did and extremely proud of the people that we served with,” he said.

Now he’s balancing family life with work at Cap America, where he is the director of knit operations.

He and Sarah have two boys: Cooper, who is almost 12, and Cole, who is 6.

She also works at Cap America as the vice president of overseas operations.

“Without the military, I might not have met her,” he said.

Nikki Overfelt-Chifalu is a reporter for the Daily Journal. She can be reached at noverfelt@dailyjournalonline.com.

Jon Page said their unit still has a reunion every year and is close.

“There’s only certain people you can talk to that understand what you’ve been through.”

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LEIGH’S WAY

Jumping in to save lives at home and at war VICTORIA KEMPER

‌L

vkemper@democratnewsonline.com‌

t. Col. Ralph Leigh has lived and worked in the Parkland for the last 32 years as an emergency room physician but before that he was dedicated to serving our country.

Leigh, 76, was born in Peru and came to America as a child with his parents. After he graduated from college he was drafted into the United States Army during the Vietnam War. While looking at a group photo of his training brigade before they were all sent to Vietnam, Leigh took a moment to remember some of his fellow soldiers.

Leigh still remembered many of the men in the photo of close to 40 soldiers. Some never made it home, others came back with amputations and one inherited the family walnut farm and is living in California.

“He (Leigh pointing to a man in the picture) was a deep diver and did all the soldering underwater before he got drafted,” Leigh said. “He came back from Vietnam wounded. This (as he points at another man) is Alexander he was married and his wife had a baby while he was over there.”

Leigh was supposed to talk about himself but every face in the picture brought back a memory and each one of them deserved a moment to be remembered.

“I was drafted right after college,” Leigh said. “I had been an instrument nurse at the hospital but when I was drafted the Army needed company clerks so I was sent to become a company clerk.”

Leigh said at that time, anyone who had any formal education from a little college to a master’s degree was sent to become a company clerk.

“I remember the sergeant called me in and said ‘Leigh, what are you doing here,’” Leigh said. “I said ‘well I’m just waiting for assignment.’ What happened is he said ‘you are a medic’ and I said ‘no, no, no, no, the Army spent a lot of money sending me to company clerk training.’ Then he said ‘no, no, no, no, we heard that you were a scrub nurse, that makes you a medic.’”

Leigh said later he met a lieutenant colonel nurse who was in charge of the 29th Hospital in the Mekong Delta and asked her if they needed any scrub nurses because he had been one back home. After putting him through a few tests, Leigh proved himself and the orders were put in to keep him at the hospital.

“The first patients started coming in and had just arrived at the hospital,” Leigh said.

“The third patient was a craniotomy and this was the doctor’s first ever craniotomy.

He asked for the best scrub and they sent me since I was pre-med and wanted to be a doctor. We couldn’t get to the piece of metal so we left it in there. It was so hot, it was sterile. He survived and three days later he was walking but with a piece of metal in his brain.”

Leigh said the patients were flown to the hospital from the frontline and there were many amputations performed.

“All the limbs that were being amputated, we cremated all the limbs,” Leigh said.

“Someone would have to go burn the limbs and I would volunteer. So what I would do is I would take a scalpel and everything and I locked myself in with a bunch of arms, legs and with good light and I would dissect and practice my craft.”

Leigh said it was difficult at times because they were the limbs of his fellow soldiers but they were being cremated anyway and it was a great opportunity to learn.

After Leigh returned home from Vietnam, he went to medical school at Saint Louis University and earned his doctorate. At this point he had a decision to make: should he stay a civilian doctor or reenlist and become a flight surgeon?

Ultimately after considering pay and location, Leigh decided to go back to the

Pictured is Lt. Col. Ralph Leigh as a flight surgeon flying a “Cobra” in 1989.

PHOTOS PROVIDED BY HEINZ LEIGH‌

Lt. Col. Ralph Leigh said he would mark off the months on his helmet counting down when he would get to go home.

Lt. Col. Ralph Leigh poses in full paratrooper gear in El Salvador.

Pictured is Lt. Col. Ralph Leigh, left, special ops in a foreign war.

Lt. Col. Ralph Leigh poses with his son Heinz during an Honor Flight trip to Washington D.C. Army and was sent to Germany for what he thought would be three years.

“I was there a year and a half and I got a phone call from the Pentagon that they needed me in Central America because they needed a bilingual physician with special ops training,” Leigh said. “So we went from Germany, cold, to Panama, hot. What I was doing was hotter than hell.”

Leigh said he did not become a flight surgeon until after he finished up in Central America and El Salvador. Then he was sent to flight school and became the 7th group flight surgeon.

“There are 12 men because they can split into two teams or even four teams,” Leigh

“The first malfunction I had some problems with the main shoot and had to pull the reserve,” Leigh said. “The other one was not good. It deployed but I was already almost at the ground. My coccyx has been broken about four times. What happens is you hit and the energy goes up. That is why my whole spine is compressed and I have nothing but fusions. You just learn to live.”

Leigh never made it into the 150 jump club because many of his jumps were not recorded and documentation was needed.

He said if he had the choice to do it all over again, he definitely would.

Leigh retired from the U.S. Army, where he served with the Green Beret in Vietnam and Central America, as both active duty and reserve. He officially retired in 1993 but continued to work in civilian medicine until 2004 when he retired from Parkland Medical Center. Though he was retired, he continued to work part time around the area.

Leigh is a true patriot who still proudly flies the American flag, the Missouri State flag, the POW/MIA flag, the U.S. Army flag and his native Peruvian flag on his property. From war zones to a terrible case of COVID-19, he has seen and overcome a little bit of everything and anyone who meets him will surely leave with a good story and a smile.

said. “You jump with your group or in teams.

Sometimes one of my medics wouldn’t go and I would take over. The missions were real, I cannot tell you some, but they are real missions. You just jump wherever it is, in the middle of the jungle, wherever you need to jump.”

Leigh said he has jumped about 190 times and had a few close calls.

“I screwed up my neck on a jump when the Air Force threw me early and I landed on a tree and got hung up,” Leigh said. “I hung for 30 minutes until I undid everything and climbed down.”

Victoria Kemper is a reporter for the Daily Leigh said he had a couple parachute mal- Journal. She can be reached at 573-783-3366 or at vkemper@democratnewsonline.com functions during a few of his jumps.

Pictured is Lt. Col. Ralph Leigh with his training brigade before being sent to the Vietnam War.

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Ralph Leigh is a true patriot who still proudly flies the American flag, the Missouri State flag, the POW/MIA flag, the U.S. Army flag and his native Peruvian flag on his property.

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