00:00 - This program has been paid for by the sponsor and does not reflect

00:03 - the views of PCN.

01:01 - PSA. Belton denial is

01:04 - his case.

01:05 - His body was not viewable.

01:09 - The body was brought

01:10 - from Dover Air Force Base as normal.

01:13 - I would arrive at the funeral director

01:15 - in the hearse to the funeral home,

01:19 - what their family normally would do in that particular case.

01:22 - This case is going to be draped with the American flag,

01:26 - but the families normally would put a picture

01:28 - of the individual on the casket

01:31 - since it couldn't be opened.

01:34 - I'm going to be present everything that takes place

01:38 - from the time he leaves the Air Force base,

01:41 - until the time he's placed in a great service the night before.

01:45 - Then the next day, that was the funeral.

01:48 - He had a fiancee.

01:50 - I don't remember her name either, but they were able to be married when?

01:54 - When he got back.

01:57 - Of course he didn't get back

02:01 - after the service at the church.

02:02 - And I ride again with the hearse to the cemetery.

02:07 - The pallbearers were placement hurt.

02:10 - The pallbearers will take him out of hers, and I'm standing there at the time.

02:15 - Pallbearers bring the body

02:18 - placed around over the grave

02:21 - and then they would exit.

02:22 - Once that's done, I would take my place behind the family.

02:26 - I am way out of sight.

02:28 - The minister would perform a service

02:32 - and after the service, and he would turn it

02:34 - over to the Marines for the military honors.

02:38 - At that point, I would take my place at the head of the casket.

02:41 - Pallbearers lined up on each side.

02:44 - They take their time and all of play perfectly.

02:48 - Senior pallbearers

02:50 - kind of folds it up, makes it nice and neat.

02:53 - And he presents it to me.

02:57 - He steps in front of me

02:58 - to present the flag to me.

03:02 - I salute, and then I accept the flag.

03:05 - He takes a step backwards.

03:07 - He salutes, and then he exit.

03:09 - I turn and I approach the next of kin.

03:14 - In this case, this mother was miscast as stimulus.

03:17 - I remember her

03:19 - as she was buried.

03:20 - All the child

03:23 - I would present the flag

03:24 - to the Nazis came to Wisconsin's.

03:28 - We tried to say something confident to Nancy Campbell.

03:31 - We present the flag to me.

03:35 - I didn't memorize something and say to her,

03:38 - that's just not the way I do things.

03:41 - There was always something that was personal.

03:44 - In this particular case, I don't remember exactly what I said,

03:49 - and I

03:50 - wouldn't tell you if I did because it was between me and her.

03:53 - I would lean.

03:54 - Oh, and I whisper this in the air and say something confident about it.

03:58 - They would acknowledge that they heard it.

04:00 - I would step back and I would salute the flag,

04:04 - and I would exit the funeral director or somebody at the airport,

04:07 - notify the people present not to be alarmed because there was going

04:11 - to be a military salute, which included the rifle salute.

04:16 - The signal was given and you were here in a distance.

04:19 - There would be an eight man detail and seven rifles

04:24 - and the noncommissioned officer in charge, and you would hear him

04:28 - yell commands ready, aim,

04:31 - fire for three times,

04:34 - and that would be the 21 salute.

04:37 - And then he would get here and give the order

04:40 - for present arms with some military

04:44 - military rifle salute.

04:48 - And at that point in a distance,

04:52 - slowly and quietly,

04:55 - very clearly.

04:59 - You will know what began taps.

05:05 - And at that point

05:07 - the family always fell apart.

05:10 - And I would do my best to remain composed if I could.

05:15 - And I'm supposed to be saluting at the time,

05:18 - but often I end up hugging the family member

05:22 - because it's like a goofball at that point.

05:28 - And that's pretty much where it went.

06:31 - A lot of people don't realize,

06:33 - during the debates in the English Parliament

06:35 - about the American colonies in the American Revolution,

06:39 - that the Irish statesman Edmund Burke basically makes a comment in his speech

06:43 - about the two great jewels of the British Empire,

06:46 - the entire Indian subcontinent

06:48 - and the city of Philadelphia,

06:51 - from Race Street to South Street, river to River

06:54 - Philadelphia, during colonial times and through the federal era,

06:58 - was arguably one of the most powerful economic

07:03 - institutions in the world.

07:06 - As Philadelphia begins to expand and you move up into neighborhoods

07:10 - like a Kensington or a Gianna where Edison students would have come from,

07:15 - you see some of the first factories built.

07:21 - But Thomas Edison High School sits in the Fair Hill

07:24 - section of Philadelphia, and of course, it served the surrounding community.

07:29 - However, Edison's reach was far and wide.

07:35 - We had young men coming in

07:36 - from as far as two miles to the east,

07:40 - the West Kensington Fishtown area.

07:43 - We also had young men coming in

07:46 - from as far as two miles to the west Strawberry Mansion area,

07:50 - and we also had young men

07:52 - from the north central Philadelphia, and that's where I live.

07:57 - It was a wide area.

07:58 - I myself had to take two busses to get to school,

08:03 - whereas some

08:04 - students lived practically across the street.

08:08 - If you look up and down the I-95 corridor

08:11 - along the Delaware River, it was heavily manufacturing oriented.

08:16 - It's like from having two airports.

08:18 - We also had shipbuilding.

08:20 - We had oil refineries, we had auto manufacturers, we had heavy manufacturing,

08:24 - light manufacturing, heavily blue collar oriented,

08:29 - but we also had lots of headquarters, so we didn't.

08:33 - It wasn't just blue collar, it was we had headquarters of Scott

08:36 - Paper, of Sun Oil, of DuPont, of Rome and Haas.

08:39 - So it was a really interesting blend up and down that corridor.

08:44 - As we got older, my dad worked at Bud's

08:48 - and they employed maybe 3 or 400 people, maybe more than that, I don't know.

08:52 - And so did Tasty Cake.

08:55 - They were good jobs in the neighborhood.

08:56 - Everybody knew and they would all have manufacturing jobs.

09:00 - And once a once a jobs where you could go from

09:03 - if you got fired from one job or you quit one job,

09:07 - you could walk down the street and get another job.

09:15 - One of the challenges that comes with the factories

09:17 - long term is much of the industry up there is from the textiles.

09:23 - A textile factory does not necessarily

09:26 - have to take up a big geographic space.

09:29 - It can be a piece it together as you go up, floor by floor, great places.

09:34 - If you're assembling anything that had sort of component parts

09:37 - that you were building.

09:39 - And that was largely the sort of industries

09:42 - that you saw along that part of the city.

09:45 - It also explains how there could be narrow streets, how people could walk to work,

09:48 - how it really wasn't a car friendly atmosphere.

09:51 - What begins to happen, however, is that industry

09:55 - becomes to be challenged much more internationally.

10:01 - World War one, World War II to give Philadelphia

10:03 - a little bit of a boost because soldiers need textiles.

10:08 - Soldiers need clothing.

10:10 - Soldiers need socks.

10:13 - Soldiers need these sort of items,

10:14 - just like they were making bullets at the Frankford Arsenal.

10:18 - They were making all sorts of other things

10:20 - to support the military services and World War one, world War two.

10:24 - But by the time you're getting to Korea,

10:27 - the textile market is largely moved to Asia.

10:29 - You're watching the almost inevitable demise

10:32 - of of that sort of work.

10:36 - The other great challenge with it

10:38 - is that prior to World War Two,

10:41 - the area of Philadelphia above Oxford Circle is largely agricultural.

10:46 - As a result, it's sort of a safety valve for the city in the sense that people,

10:50 - if they're not happy with their situation

10:54 - in a place like a Jeanna or a Kensington and they can afford to move out.

11:00 - There's housing being built,

11:02 - but the bottom line becomes that more appealing housing stock

11:07 - and the fact that industry realizes or to survive,

11:11 - it's got to go where the workers are, land cheap,

11:14 - and they can go out and build new facilities out there in the far

11:18 - northeast or even beyond, on the edges of Bucks County and Montgomery County.

11:21 - So there's a variety of factors, sort of driving the deindustrialization

11:26 - of those neighborhoods in North Philadelphia.

11:33 - Had a profound impact on people of color.

11:36 - Couldn't find any jobs, no decent jobs, paying any any good wages.

11:41 - So we had to take what we could get in a lot of instances or create your own job,

11:45 - which was

11:46 - really not that good of a thing to do because you didn't have the backing.

11:50 - And, at that point, family started to deteriorate

11:54 - because the head of the household was not making any money.

11:58 - He was not supporting his family.

12:00 - It had had a huge impact on just the relationship within the family.

12:06 - We had to try to make things get better

12:09 - and the best way we could,

12:11 - and had made a lot of them give up

12:14 - and and go into some criminal aspect, you know, of life.

12:18 - But, it was all about making ends meet.

12:23 - We tried our best.

12:27 - The other reason you begin to see racial

12:29 - tensions emerge in North Philadelphia

12:32 - is not simply deindustrialization.

12:36 - That is one major factor.

12:37 - People are scrapping for jobs, and the jobs are harder to come by.

12:42 - But also, we have to acknowledge the fact that the wars each played a role

12:47 - because as African American males went and served overseas and in World War One,

12:52 - they see Paris in World War Two, their sons see Paris.

12:55 - They see a France that is much more accepting of African-Americans.

13:00 - They get to enjoy French culture.

13:02 - They get to do things they would never get to do in the United States.

13:08 - And when they return and are basically told they have to return to

13:14 - the sort of social

13:14 - situation that that their.

13:18 - That structural racism,

13:21 - they rebel against it.

13:23 - You know, the civil rights movement doesn't begin in the 1960s.

13:26 - It begins right after the Civil War.

13:29 - And there's just iterations of it throughout different periods of U.S.

13:32 - history.

13:33 - And we know that African-Americans serving overseas

13:37 - and those experiences really drive them to start

13:40 - to raise legitimate questions when they come back home.

13:44 - And there's also the consideration that as many whites went overseas

13:48 - and served, factories were desperate for workers.

13:52 - So they, you know, pull in women

13:55 - and minorities.

13:56 - And then when the war's over,

13:57 - they're firing these women and minorities and hiring back the whites.

14:01 - During the war, it was obvious that the African-American men could do the job.

14:05 - So they wanted to keep the job.

14:07 - And as you know, they see these sort of generational fluctuations

14:11 - between valid employment and unemployment

14:14 - and that unemployment being part racially based.

14:19 - There's a natural

14:20 - pushback and there's a natural anger,

14:23 - which helps to explain, in part,

14:25 - things like the Columbia Avenue riots.

14:30 - When they're willing to work, they want to work.

14:32 - There's not the resources there.

14:35 - They're living in what we would think is a ghetto.

14:38 - It is a matter of time before that proverbial powder

14:41 - keg explodes.

14:51 - The history of Thomas Edison High School was a controversial one.

14:54 - The building we attended, we referred to as the Castle,

14:57 - had a medieval shape to a Gothic shape.

15:00 - When the building was was built in 1904,

15:03 - is called the Northeast Manual High School.

15:06 - In 1913 they reduced

15:08 - the name to the Northeast High School.

15:11 - It was an all male high school that pretty much stayed the same

15:14 - until around 1956,

15:19 - with the sole purpose of preparing a workforce

15:22 - for the factories or an industrial complex in Philadelphia.

15:26 - After World War Two, things started to change

15:29 - and the northeast was starting to develop,

15:33 - and a lot of mostly white families were flocking to the northeast.

15:39 - The school board had made a decision

15:41 - that they need a new school, and they need a new northeast.

15:45 - The geographic southeast of the city of Philadelphia was changing

15:49 - as the northeast was developing, and they decided

15:52 - to build a new northeast.

15:56 - At Cottman and Argonne.

16:00 - Where it is now.

16:04 - So there's the dilemma.

16:06 - You have kids in the original northeast down at the castle.

16:09 - And what's going to happen to them?

16:11 - So in 1956,

16:13 - the principal from the castle and two thirds of the staff went

16:17 - up to the new northeast.

16:19 - They took anything that had the name northeast on it.

16:22 - They took trophies, memorabilia,

16:27 - and they had a condition.

16:29 - And the condition was

16:32 - if your father or grandfather

16:34 - went to the old northeast castle,

16:39 - then they could transfer

16:40 - to the new northeast.

16:44 - However, that didn't apply to the current student

16:46 - population that was at the school because there

16:50 - in the surrounding neighborhoods, things were changing.

16:54 - You had a lot of minorities moving into the area.

16:58 - You had blacks coming up, migrating from the south.

17:01 - You also had Puerto Ricans moving to the islands.

17:04 - Factories were closing.

17:05 - Things were deteriorating.

17:07 - And these students

17:09 - just didn't have that qualification.

17:13 - So they were stuck at the school.

17:16 - When I first stepped

17:18 - into Edison High School, what really amazed me

17:21 - the most of the place was the structure of the castle.

17:26 - I would never forget the woodwork.

17:29 - I never forget that auditorium.

17:33 - Hardwood floors.

17:36 - The school was built to last.

17:40 - The staff and school were very friendly.

17:46 - A couple of really useful teachers.

17:48 - That taught me a lot of things.

17:52 - What to expect,

17:54 - how to be there and how to behave.

17:59 - For 50 years,

18:00 - the origins of the castle was ripped away

18:03 - when the new northeast was built.

18:07 - In 1957.

18:10 - You had a new principal walking tour.

18:13 - His name is Doctor Robert Wayne Clark.

18:18 - No one really knew, but he was bitter.

18:21 - He was bitter? What was happening at Edison.

18:24 - But he was there to make the most of what was left.

18:28 - I met Mr. Clark.

18:31 - He was a gentleman,

18:33 - tall, slim and tough.

18:36 - But he was, very, conscience

18:39 - about everything that was going on in school.

18:42 - Most of those students, minority students, had no other place to go.

18:46 - They were there.

18:48 - They had a new

18:49 - principal, and he had a new course.

18:53 - And he stayed there for ten years from 1957.

18:56 - And he retired in June of 1968.

19:00 - He was there to build a spirit,

19:04 - a spirit of a new Thomas Edison High School.

19:09 - By greeting all the students every day

19:13 - as I love you boys,

19:14 - I love you young men of Edison High School.

19:18 - And heaven help

19:19 - the student who had his shirt outside of his pants.

19:24 - He would come up to you

19:25 - and tuck them right inside

19:28 - so that Dick Clark, he had a monumental task for those ten years.

19:33 - And if you think about all the guys who went to Vietnam

19:37 - and especially the Edison 64, the guys who did not come home,

19:42 - they only had one principal

19:45 - that was Doctor Clark,

19:47 - and everyone respected him and admired this man.

19:50 - Now it's very important

19:52 - the spirit of schools was being uplifted.

19:55 - The name of the school was changed to Thomas Edison High School,

19:59 - and the students were starting to gravitate

20:03 - and build up on the school spirit of the new Edison.

20:15 - So let's talk about Philadelphia

20:16 - in the 1960s, and it probably is a good microcosm of the country.

20:22 - We certainly had the draft.

20:24 - Starting in 64, we had people, you know, going to Vietnam, which was,

20:28 - by some people's measure, unfavorable, others unnecessary,

20:33 - but certainly no place anybody wanted to go.

20:36 - The average citizen couldn't find Vietnam on a map

20:39 - if you paid them.

20:41 - As the 60s progressed, we started to have the beginnings of race

20:46 - riots and racial inequality issues that were pervasive throughout the 60s.

20:50 - So you had race issues. On the one hand.

20:54 - And you

20:55 - had the war on the other, both of which were traumatic

20:58 - to the population.

21:01 - Then in 68,

21:02 - I believe, we had the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr.

21:06 - Robert Kennedy,

21:08 - and then the war was even at its height

21:10 - in 1968, thereabouts, with the Tet Offensive.

21:14 - So we had what's going on

21:16 - and me as a Philadelphia native,

21:19 - going to high school in that period and then college in that period,

21:23 - the unsettling nature of the world was really disrupted.

21:27 - And for the first time, we started to see, the war

21:30 - portrayed on television on a daily basis,

21:34 - albeit maybe a day late,

21:38 - but nonetheless, it was day to day

21:39 - daily coverage of the war in Vietnam.

21:43 - So now all of the sudden became familiar with what the hell Southeast

21:46 - Asia really was.

21:58 - I don't

21:58 - wanna throw it up that I mean, we don't want to integrate.

22:02 - No racism in 1960 complete.

22:07 - And racism today is very different.

22:12 - Racism today is much more disguised.

22:14 - The racism was back in 1960.

22:21 - The city was divided on racial lines.

22:26 - The blacks didn't trust the whites.

22:28 - The whites didn't trust the blacks.

22:30 - It is a terrible and inexorable law that one cannot deny

22:33 - the humanity of another without diminishing one's own impact.

22:37 - And even going to school,

22:39 - you would see the different, different ways you were treated.

22:42 - The news coverage was all you could see.

22:45 - Back then, I think my teacher, for the most part, was, doing treating us fairly.

22:50 - But then you come outside with the other kids and you see the difference.

22:54 - We had protests, we had riots, we had buildings burning.

22:59 - But once you got in class, you were all on the same setting or the same footing.

23:03 - So it was a little less in the classroom, but coming out of the classrooms,

23:06 - even going back home, you know, you hear the kids calling you the N-word,

23:10 - you know, and you really wonder why.

23:13 - You know, when I just sit down next to this kid in school

23:15 - and try to learn on the same platform that he was learning on

23:19 - as a man of color.

23:21 - When I had to go places like down Kensington

23:25 - and K, Port Richmond or Brownsboro,

23:28 - I had a lot of trouble down there because name calling,

23:33 - throwing stones, fights and other

23:36 - things like that.

23:39 - I felt very uncomfortable going on as a man of color.

23:42 - And when you had to go places like that, you feel very uncomfortable

23:46 - for you even leave because you know what the situation is.

23:51 - And the same situation would be for the white people when they come on

23:54 - this in, you know, Philly, we call and said things through stone.

23:58 - The same identical thing they did to us.

24:01 - You watched what neighborhood you went into.

24:03 - You were careful what lines you crossed.

24:06 - You always knew where you were at.

24:09 - Black person moved in on your neighborhood.

24:11 - People would chalk up their house, throw paint on out on the pavement,

24:15 - and it does not.

24:17 - A lot of times I excelled more than he did

24:20 - because I knew I had to try harder, being who I was, you know, being black.

24:24 - So I know

24:24 - there's a lot of things that I had to do even better than my white counterparts.

24:28 - It was quite a time of, of tension throughout the city

24:33 - and purely on race based lines.

24:38 - And I think most of the whites in our area were oblivious

24:41 - to any of the racial problems of the blacks outside of our everyday.

24:50 - That's how racism does.

24:54 - Flection to me,

24:57 - it reminds me of a lot of what was taking place now.

25:01 - The Black Lives Matter,

25:02 - the friction and accusations and all available stuff and that and the protest.

25:10 - All that has happened before.

25:13 - I was 11 years old when the 1964 race riots

25:18 - occurred on Columbia Avenue.

25:22 - At times you could smell the smoke from burning stores.

25:25 - There were over 200 stores.

25:27 - No, didn't burn.

25:30 - 300 people were arrested.

25:33 - You know, there were 700 people injured.

25:36 - It was a very shocking moment.

25:38 - This is when I was 11.

25:41 - However, as I got older and I became a student

25:43 - at Edison High School, a lot of that went right to the schools.

25:48 - What I was happening in the streets happened in the school.

25:51 - There were protests at our school.

25:53 - We wanted the word boy taken off the boys bathroom because

25:58 - we thought it was being disrespectful.

25:59 - And we protested about that.

26:02 - We also wanted more African-American black teachers.

26:07 - There weren't many at our school,

26:09 - and we walked out and we walked to City Hall,

26:12 - and we protest about that.

26:15 - It was a radical element

26:17 - that was in our school.

26:20 - Sort of,

26:21 - you know, created the spirit that we had.

26:25 - We all loved to say we were from Edison

26:28 - High School.

26:33 - We used to have newspaper roots.

26:35 - We used to deliver papers in the morning and in the evening.

26:40 - Sometimes we would.

26:41 - And we would have to go at the end of the week to collect for those papers.

26:46 - And the gangster were out in the street, instead of going out

26:49 - and doing the same thing that we were doing to earn a living.

26:53 - They would come out and try to rob us for the little money that we were making.

26:58 - I got held up several times doing that.

27:00 - In 1960, the gang war situation in Philadelphia

27:06 - was very, very, very serious.

27:10 - I was in a gang, and, you know, I participated in a lot of that.

27:13 - You know, the shenanigans.

27:15 - I mean, every neighborhood had a gang.

27:17 - Everybody needed to be respected in every neighborhood.

27:20 - So if you weren't part of the gang,

27:21 - you were subject to getting beat up every day.

27:24 - It was violence all around, but you were more protected within the gang.

27:27 - There was a system there.

27:29 - The gangs.

27:29 - In the 60s, we started coming in with Zulu Nation, eighth and diamond.

27:36 - Some only is east of Kensington.

27:42 - We protected each other within a gang.

27:44 - We did have re-route or gone

27:47 - to school, or even taken a bus.

27:50 - We will wait till all the bad kids got on one bus and we took the other bus.

27:53 - Even though I ended up

27:56 - being late to school, whatever happened in the weekend in their neighborhoods,

28:00 - they came and boarded to the high schools.

28:05 - You know, they bought Edison.

28:08 - It was a way of having another family, and we had our own family

28:11 - that we were related to.

28:12 - But the gangs were your protection.

28:15 - So we kind of respected and loved each other, you know, for who we were.

28:19 - Then guys asked where you live and were you from who you know,

28:25 - because, you know it's going to be a confrontation

28:28 - if you're a white kid and like me, I went to Edison.

28:32 - If you didn't stick up, you had a run.

28:34 - And if you didn't run and

28:36 - you would get hurt, you get beat up.

28:39 - And a lot of guys got beat up and and didn't want to go back.

28:43 - Even in a bathroom, they had to fight in the bathroom trying to learn in school.

28:47 - And I had to fight of gangs for the miracle at 10th and diamond.

28:51 - I had to fight those guys or else they destroy you.

28:55 - You had to stand up.

28:56 - So many gangs.

28:57 - All the guys that you don't even know.

29:00 - We didn't get too much of a good education because we had to worry about fighting.

29:04 - When you come outside fighting to get to school and fighting when you come out,

29:08 - pretty much your education wasn't too much

29:09 - on the top of your mind.

29:13 - They made plans and you had your leaders

29:15 - and you're going to meet here, and this is what we're going to do.

29:17 - We're going to get this guy or get the whole gang.

29:21 - And of course, I work both ways on each side.

29:23 - There were still

29:24 - not many shootings back at the time, but there were a lot of stabbings.

29:28 - Obviously, there were one on ones where we just took that out,

29:32 - which is a term for having a fist fight, what they called the fair one.

29:36 - You didn't fight them, guys.

29:37 - And word get on you neighborhood that you backed off.

29:40 - You got another problem down there.

29:43 - And back in the

29:44 - day, we could have a fair one.

29:47 - We had to go to all that.

29:51 - So that was pretty tough on them days.

29:55 - Everybody had to, you know, have a have a position.

29:57 - We had to fight for ourselves.

29:59 - When we go to different neighborhoods, we knew who would who would be protecting

30:02 - us, who would run out similar to the military.

30:05 - I'd say.

30:07 - Because we had, a system and a structure

30:09 - in between that the white students recorded it

30:13 - and they would come and take their frustrations on them.

30:16 - Sometimes, come down the steps, you might get bit in the back of the head,

30:20 - or they knock your books down where they bang you up against a lock.

30:24 - I was intimidated after a while.

30:26 - I mean, I got into a few fights, but then after a while,

30:29 - I decided that, hey, it's not worth it to me.

30:33 - So with a lot of the white kids did, they would go out the side door,

30:37 - cut the last period, you know, make an excuse to leave early.

30:42 - And they would just leave.

30:44 - They go out the side door to fire escape or whatever.

30:46 - Any way to get safety.

30:51 - Wasn't always in the hallway.

30:52 - Sometimes it was in the classroom

30:55 - and the teachers,

30:57 - they would just try to break it up.

30:58 - Sometimes I, you know, I don't know, they they let it go.

31:02 - It wasn't uncommon to have a buddy killed in a gang related

31:06 - situation.

31:10 - I could see why a lot of guys out at Edison

31:13 - got tired of that nonsense all the time, and that could have drove a lot of them.

31:17 - Guys from Edison to make that decision of going to the service.

31:21 - Gangs were a way of life.

31:23 - Gangs were part of my life for the beginning of my life.

31:26 - But it was the way we had to survive during those times.

31:29 - Then we sought the military just as an escape

31:33 - from a lot of the things that we were going through.

31:34 - We saw that as being the only the only avenue to get out.

31:40 - There were several guys that I knew that one went in the Navy,

31:44 - the other went in the Marines, and they both ended up in Vietnam.

31:49 - I lost several friends, people that I knew

31:54 - in Vietnam.

31:54 - So it sort of, you know,

31:57 - scared the bejesus out of me to have that.

32:00 - The idea that I was going to go to Vietnam.

32:06 - Not saying that they were looking to go to Vietnam

32:09 - to put their life on the line,

32:11 - but just trying to get away

32:14 - and something better.

32:18 - The gang violence that was involved in the 60s

32:22 - inspired me to go into the military in the 70s

32:28 - and become a medic.

32:30 - I needed to redeem myself.

32:34 - I was involved in some things that, harmed other people

32:39 - as I was harmed due to gang violence,

32:42 - and I needed to redeem myself.

32:44 - And going into the medical corps was a way for me to redeem myself.

32:50 - I would later go on to serve

32:52 - 17 years in Medical Corps.

32:56 - Saving lives in three different countries.

33:00 - Literally treating tens of thousands of people.

33:04 - Being among the first individual to receive Humanitarian Service Medal

33:08 - or medical support for the evacuation of Vietnam.

33:14 - Many, many times

33:16 - the violence that I had experienced.

33:21 - And I've been shot and stabbed

33:24 - with a baseball bat had been beaten with a car antenna.

33:28 - I carried these Marxist guys with me, and I carried them into the military.

33:33 - And they

33:35 - were scores of learning, scores of experience.

33:37 - But the scars I have in the military, scars of honor and scars, the respect.

33:42 - I'm disabled now because of the good that I did.

33:46 - It was important for me to do good in life

33:49 - because I had already done bad.

33:52 - I did not come from a poor family.

33:56 - I did not come from a family

33:58 - who didn't have both parents.

34:01 - My mother was a great woman.

34:03 - My father was a strong man.

34:06 - He served in World War two and Korea.

34:10 - I had a great big brother, wonderful little sisters.

34:14 - We had a house that was very nice.

34:16 - We had we had no economic problems.

34:19 - I married early in life and stayed with her until God took her away 20 years later.

34:26 - Money problems were

34:29 - the gang life, racism and fear.

34:33 - And the fear made me

34:37 - and redemption made me join the military.

34:53 - If you look at the statistics of the 80s

34:55 - in 64, 77% of them enlisted.

34:59 - You also you hear people say, oh, they were drafted.

35:01 - They weren't prepared. And that wasn't the case.

35:03 - These guys took the oath to defend their country,

35:06 - you know, against foreign and domestic enemies

35:10 - actively going after underprivileged poor

35:15 - environments far as heavily populated

35:17 - by African-Americans and Latinos.

35:22 - The critics were in the building, from what I was told.

35:25 - The way that they approached the African-American

35:29 - about getting into the service at that time

35:32 - was giving them opportunities

35:35 - and better life with them.

35:36 - When they come out of the service,

35:39 - or they could even stay in the service

35:42 - telling them about things that would be better in future,

35:47 - whether they

35:47 - family, they get the same kind of treatment in life

35:50 - in there with the family, housing, kids go to school.

35:55 - Everything that the American dream that we all was looking for

35:57 - at that time.

36:02 - The 64

36:03 - that was killed in Vietnam, only a third of them graduated from high school.

36:08 - Two thirds of them dropped out.

36:10 - Many of them, you know, come back to school proudly, wear the uniform

36:14 - and they would tell the teachers that I feel like I'm someone now,

36:18 - and if I'm going to die, I'd rather die in uniform

36:21 - instead of dying in an alley, you know, for some gang activity.

36:24 - So you had a purpose.

36:30 - During the 60s,

36:32 - there was a lot of racial tension in the United States.

36:38 - When you got

36:38 - drafted and when I got drafted and went to boot camp, that disappeared.

36:42 - There was no.

36:43 - Oh, this is a group of them people, and we're a group of this people.

36:47 - It didn't make any difference for what you are.

36:48 - You had to fight and you fought together.

36:52 - Once you got overseas, Vietnam,

36:55 - then your life was dependent upon somebody else.

36:58 - And they depended upon you.

37:01 - If you were to be in a foxhole at night and you didn't care what color

37:04 - the other person was or what religion the other person was,

37:07 - or whatever they were, they were there to help you,

37:11 - and you were there to help them defend all the other people.

37:16 - The whole concept, brotherhood and team

37:19 - are installed at a very early point in that military career.

37:27 - And we also had to remember that at times they're tough.

37:30 - You're going to have to rely upon these people.

37:31 - It doesn't matter whether you like them or not know what their racial.

37:36 - You not only had to depend on your brother,

37:38 - which you lived with, your brother,

37:41 - you ate with them, you slept with them.

37:49 - We we cried together.

37:51 - We laughed together. We became family

37:54 - just wasn't there.

37:55 - It didn't happen.

37:56 - And we thought about it because we read about it.

38:00 - I mean, I understand the demonstrations.

38:04 - But the violence was just beyond

38:08 - better ways to do things.

38:10 - But that's what we did in the Army.

38:11 - We just got along

38:13 - and respected everybody for what they were.

38:17 - I think it is still important today as the military is

38:22 - the DoD in general,

38:24 - probably the most diverse organization we have in the world.

38:28 - And that's really a good thing,

38:31 - especially now that we don't have the draft anymore.

38:32 - So it's an all volunteer force, which was different than the 60s.

38:36 - Race, I think, becomes a non-factor in the military,

38:39 - although it probably continues to be an issue depending on your geography

38:44 - and your neighborhood.

39:01 - I served with a black guy in Vietnam.

39:03 - His name was Eugene White.

39:05 - He was from Philadelphia.

39:07 - He was killed in action January 14th, 1967,

39:12 - on the raid upon Lon.

39:16 - Which was in the Golden Boy

39:18 - Island area of Vietnam.

39:23 - It was a raid to attack a village

39:25 - where a lot of the NVA honchos were meeting,

39:30 - and it was pretty violent.

39:32 - And we went in and helicopters right into a rice paddy enemy ambush.

39:38 - As we were getting off the 46 and C nights.

39:43 - He was shot and killed.

39:48 - Almost instantly.

39:51 - The one right in the shoulder and chest, so to speak.

39:55 - We had flak jackets on and he and I believe also in that he had a head wound.

40:00 - Eugene was a well-liked guy.

40:05 - You know, like anything like that.

40:08 - The day before or night before.

40:12 - We were in lockdown, as they call it,

40:14 - before we went to battle.

40:18 - You spent a lot of time talking about what's next and family.

40:22 - And, you know, because you kind of know you're going to some place bad

40:27 - and I spent some time with him.

40:31 - A lot of us telling jokes and whatnot.

40:34 - It was funny guy. So it was kind of a shock.

40:39 - That it

40:39 - would happen so fast that we had to move on.

40:42 - And we had the corpsman came up and

40:46 - I did not get back to see him after that.

40:50 - Lo and behold, I come back to Philadelphia a year later.

40:54 - There's a dedication of the memorial, and there's his name.

40:58 - So I knew he's from Philadelphia, but it was kind of a surprise,

41:02 - and I was really honored to say I knew him.

41:16 - Throughout most of the 20th century,

41:19 - the notification as to whether or not a soldier

41:23 - was gravely injured or killed in action or missing in action

41:28 - was done by telegram from the Department of Defense.

41:32 - In 1965, some woman at Fort

41:35 - Benning, Georgia, led by Julia Moore,

41:40 - who has been was commander

41:42 - of first Battalion of the seventh Calvary

41:46 - at the Battle of Iraq.

41:47 - Wrong and Vietnam in 1965 petitioned the Department of the Army

41:53 - that a more compassionate, humane

41:57 - honor system should be instituted

42:00 - throughout the service services

42:04 - to notify next of kin, and to also assist

42:07 - the next of kin in bringing home their their service member

42:12 - and providing proper honors, as well as assisting

42:16 - with the benefits, etc..

42:19 - In 1968, in the summer, I was posted to

42:24 - Philadelphia, was in a detachment of about eight officers.

42:28 - All of us had been to Vietnam at least once at that point in time.

42:33 - When we were on a roster

42:38 - to notify next of kin and to assist families

42:42 - in receiving their loved ones, as well as filing

42:47 - for the necessary benefits that they were due.

42:51 - In that process,

42:54 - that process comprised of two agreements.

42:57 - The first was the notification of next of kin.

43:00 - We would receive notification from Army

43:04 - headquarters as to a potential deceased or gravely

43:08 - ill or missing, and action soldier or airman or a marine, etc.

43:14 - we had four hours to to make the initial notification of the next of kin.

43:20 - The next of kin was determined by an emergency that a card

43:24 - that was filed in each of the soldier's personal record jackets.

43:29 - We would determine where the the residence was,

43:32 - and we would secure the services of a chaplain

43:37 - where possible.

43:40 - We did not make any notifications

43:42 - between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m.,

43:46 - we would go to the home seek entry.

43:50 - The first thing we verified was that the people who

43:54 - we were with were in fact the next of kin

43:59 - then, and a most professional and compassionate way.

44:04 - We would notify them as to the circumstances,

44:07 - as best we understood them at the time,

44:10 - how their service member was injured or killed in action and alike.

44:16 - We would stay with them for a period of time and ascertain

44:21 - whether or not they needed, services of their family physician

44:26 - or whether or not they wanted us to contact clergy, you know, to be with them.

44:31 - ET cetera.

44:33 - And the next 24 to 36 hours, we would attempt

44:36 - to get additional information where possible.

44:39 - And, of course, communication

44:42 - in the late 60s was not as it is today.

44:45 - And so there was some time lags and the like.

44:49 - The next thing we we tried to ascertain is what was the,

44:53 - the homeward bound movement of, of the loved one?

44:58 - Generally they came out of

45:00 - Panzanella or Cameron Bay or Danang and would go in to Travis

45:05 - Air Force Base or McChord Air Force Base for onward movement.

45:11 - Sometimes, they would come to the Philadelphia

45:14 - area, on commercial charter or other times

45:18 - they would go through McGuire Air Force Base.

45:23 - A reception that we generally got from

45:27 - families was very uplifting.

45:31 - At times, though, there were folks that were not happy

45:35 - with the fact that their service member had actually gone into service.

45:40 - And then

45:42 - having been killed at Sanders.

45:44 - So there were some, some hard feelings, regarding that, you know,

45:50 - we had situations where, you know, we were knocked off the steps

45:54 - or the like.

45:58 - On other occasions, we became the lost son.

46:03 - I had just, you know, been

46:04 - notified had passed away.

46:11 - Ellison High

46:12 - School has a slogan, and it's pretty much like a battle cry.

46:16 - It's called Edison mambo. Olé, Olé.

46:19 - This is something that we used to say

46:20 - in all the games, you know, we wanted to do our our thing.

46:23 - On to victory.

46:25 - And there was times when we had to get physical, you know,

46:29 - unfortunately, you know, sometimes a fight might occur.

46:32 - The strong spirit that we had sort of reflects,

46:36 - in my opinion, you know, and the guys who went off to Vietnam.

46:42 - I like to talk about

46:44 - Robert Roberto Torres.

46:49 - He was a good friend of mine.

46:51 - Great day before him.

46:53 - And we met up

46:55 - while I was in basic training.

46:57 - I think he looked up to me and he says, you know, that's what I want to do.

47:01 - And he went back and volunteer.

47:05 - And his family

47:06 - also is close friends of my family, too.

47:10 - Once I found out that Sammy was killed

47:12 - and remind you that I was on a hill in Vietnam at that time.

47:17 - From that point on, I was devastated, scared out of the woods.

47:22 - While in Vietnam, I was scared

47:25 - for every moment that I was there

47:28 - until the day I got hit.

47:33 - My brother was 65.

47:35 - We call him the Gentle Giant.

47:37 - He had a heart of gold.

47:38 - Is nothing in the world he wouldn't do for you.

47:41 - I remember one year I wanted.

47:43 - I wanted his shoes.

47:44 - They had a little heel on them and my parents couldn't afford them.

47:48 - And he got it a paper route job.

47:51 - And he went out, deliver papers, got paid.

47:54 - He came home

47:56 - and he says, Dana, come, go with me.

47:57 - And I says, where are we going?

47:59 - He says, just come, go with me.

48:01 - That's okay.

48:01 - We went on the air and on Germantown Avenue, he took me to the shoe store.

48:06 - He said, where the shoes, you want it?

48:08 - And I looked up at him and I says, I like these shoes.

48:11 - I says, But mom won't get them for me.

48:14 - I says, because they can't afford them.

48:16 - He says, but you going to get them?

48:17 - He says, get them.

48:19 - I says, but I can't, I don't have any money.

48:22 - He says, I'm going to get them for you.

48:24 - And he bought me the shoes and he was loved.

48:27 - He was well loved in the neighborhood.

48:28 - He was very kind, had a good heart, very good heart.

48:33 - Everybody looked up to him.

48:34 - They liked them, and there was nothing in the world he wouldn't do to help you.

48:37 - You know, he was a good a good guy.

48:40 - He really was a good guy.

48:43 - When we were informed of his death,

48:46 - my family fell apart.

48:48 - My mom stop eating, my dad stop eating.

48:53 - He would go to work.

48:54 - He'd come home.

48:55 - And I had a brother that was older than myself.

48:58 - He kept to himself.

48:59 - He was quiet and the youngest one who was two.

49:03 - I had to take care of him.

49:04 - Nobody could take care of him,

49:07 - so I had to do it. It was just.

49:08 - It was bad. My whole life changed. My.

49:11 - My family's life changed.

49:13 - When we got notice of my brother's death.

49:18 - My mother never lost a child.

49:19 - My father never lost a child.

49:21 - And it was devastating. It was devastating.

49:23 - I think they went into a depression.

49:25 - At the time, we didn't know what depression

49:27 - was, you know, we didn't know what being traumatized was.

49:30 - It wasn't until later when I thought about it.

49:33 - I know I was traumatized because we were close.

49:36 - We were all close. My brothers and I were very close.

49:39 - My parents say they love their children and to lose their child.

49:43 - The oldest child, it was devastating to watch

49:46 - my mother walk around with the pain in her face constantly.

49:51 - Up until the day she died, she talked about her son.

49:54 - My father did the same up until the day he died.

49:56 - He talked about his son.

49:58 - You know, they just never let it go.

49:59 - They never got over it.

50:02 - It was hard.

50:02 - It was very hard.

50:03 - It was hard on the family.

50:13 - Laurel Blevins was funny.

50:15 - He had a great sense of humor.

50:17 - He could.

50:17 - And because he was from Philadelphia, he had the attitude

50:20 - that Philadelphia people are better than most other people.

50:24 - They knew everything, even people from Brooklyn or wherever you were from.

50:29 - He would find something funny to say about the town you lived in,

50:33 - which always made it light.

50:34 - And in a situation where people are dying and you're having to go out

50:38 - and walk around in the jungle

50:41 - and you're doing guard duty at night, shooting people,

50:43 - shooting at people, they're shooting at you.

50:47 - Humor is a big thing.

50:50 - When we would play cards,

50:52 - oh my gosh, he would cheat like crazy.

50:55 - But it was funny because he made it funny.

50:57 - He would put

50:58 - put some of the cards he was holding and turn them around so you could see them

51:02 - and ask you to do the same thing and then say, well,

51:04 - I can beat you.

51:08 - It was just fabulous.

51:10 - There's a sense of humor.

51:11 - And he was also very serious.

51:13 - He knew what the job he had

51:16 - as a foreign observer was very serious,

51:18 - because if he was off calculating where the

51:23 - the measurement should be, he could kill his own troops.

51:26 - And certainly you don't want to do that.

51:30 - Okay. I'm coming from Philadelphia.

51:32 - As I said, he had the attitude.

51:34 - He knew that he was good

51:36 - and he always made fun of other people, but in a humorous way.

51:41 - It wasn't to downgrade them.

51:43 - He didn't.

51:43 - There was no race.

51:45 - Oh. You're a Puerto Rican.

51:47 - You're this. You're that

51:49 - wasn't there

51:50 - because you had to depend on other people, and he depended on you.

51:55 - You have to.

51:57 - You can't say, well, I'm not going out with him because he's black.

52:00 - Hello.

52:01 - You have to go out with them

52:02 - because they're going to save your life, or you're going to save their life.

52:05 - And he was a big proponent of that.

52:07 - He knew that race did not belong.

52:12 - Laurel Blevins was a very brave soldier.

52:16 - We are all very brave.

52:17 - We do what we did. But he stood out.

52:21 - It was my auto.

52:23 - I was a Kilroy Ford Observer with the 101st Airborne Division

52:28 - in the air show, a valley area.

52:31 - He carried my radio,

52:33 - and every time I had to call in a fire mission,

52:37 - I would get the receiver call in the mission

52:41 - and adjust it.

52:44 - A lot of times we would do like four hour missions

52:48 - every evening before we bed down in the middle of the jungle.

52:52 - And of course, every time we were in contact with the enemy,

52:55 - I had to call in artillery fire mission.

52:58 - One day he came to me

53:02 - and he said,

53:04 - when we're going to go up this ridge line.

53:09 - The enemy was dug in really heavy,

53:12 - and he had his buddies and he said, look,

53:17 - we never can see.

53:20 - The artillery, when it's landing.

53:25 - We go by by hearing it.

53:36 - And we can't walk in it closer and closer,

53:39 - but we never see where it's landing.

53:43 - So he says, I want to go up with the lead,

53:45 - but two and I can help you adjust it more accurately.

53:50 - So that way I can get as close to the enemy position as possible.

53:56 - So I was

53:57 - with Delta Company, the first of the 327

54:00 - entry, 101st airborne.

54:03 - And we did down

54:04 - a combat assault up the actual valley.

54:08 - And I lost 40% of my platoon

54:11 - to North Vietnamese artillery fire

54:14 - in about five seconds.

54:17 - After that, we went after the guns

54:20 - and we climbed up what was called the Dong.

54:23 - So ridgeline, which was a ridgeline connected

54:27 - with Dong at Mia and Dong at Bear,

54:30 - was later to be known as Hamburger Hill.

54:34 - When we get to the top of the ridgeline

54:38 - and we are told by my company commander

54:42 - for my platoon to lead a combat assault.

54:46 - We were about 17

54:48 - and number armed with M-16, and we were put against

54:52 - a heavy weapons company that was entrenched behind bunkers.

54:57 - Obviously, we didn't make it far up that hill

55:00 - before we were pinned down and started suffering heavy casualties.

55:06 - I was the first lieutenant

55:09 - and I've had some experience calling in artillery.

55:13 - An airstrike, but I was no means a pro.

55:18 - So I immediately request from our company commander,

55:22 - just give me someone, a forward observer

55:25 - who can help me call in the artillery.

55:29 - I'm sitting there and watching my men die,

55:33 - and all of a sudden this black guy comes up running

55:37 - beside me, sits down and gives me one of these salutes.

55:41 - Like this.

55:43 - Well, I didn't know what to say,

55:45 - but he was really had supposed

55:48 - to have left the country three days before.

55:51 - But he was dedicated to his band of brothers,

55:55 - and he was damned if he was going to leave his company

55:59 - and his friends alone on that mountain without proper fire support.

56:06 - So Laurel started

56:07 - calling in the fire for four,

56:10 - and he took a position that exposed himself.

56:13 - We were returning fire, and it killed a number of the

56:17 - in the air that were in the bunker, but they were basically letting us have it.

56:20 - And I lost another 30 or 40% of my work

56:25 - not killed, but seriously wounded.

56:29 - Raul gave us the fire support from Cobras

56:33 - and from Air Force

56:36 - to get off the mountain.

56:38 - We were out of artillery range, or at least I believe

56:41 - that is.

56:44 - I was wounded during that process,

56:47 - spent, the night in the field, heavily

56:50 - sedated, and was medevac the next day.

56:54 - And every night I listened with our new first sergeant, Top Hanson,

56:59 - to the radio broadcast of my company,

57:02 - where they would describe each day what Laurel Blevins did.

57:07 - He led the next platoon up the next day,

57:10 - giving it fire support,

57:13 - making it possible to advance a little closer towards our mission

57:17 - of capturing those bunkers, which, by the way, we never did.

57:21 - And we retreated.

57:23 - And again, he covered.

57:25 - I think Sergeant Herman

57:26 - had been badly wounded, almost mortally,

57:30 - and he was evacuated.

57:33 - Laurel so really took over the platoon

57:36 - and got them out of danger.

57:39 - The next day he went up again.

57:42 - The platoon leader was wounded

57:45 - and he was calling in fire support

57:49 - from a very high boulder.

57:53 - There were two high boulders

57:56 - that, led to an alley that led to the bunker.

58:01 - And it was a perfect killing.

58:02 - So the North Vietnamese rescue

58:05 - couldn't get into that bunker before the machine gun fire.

58:09 - So he crawled up on top of the rock,

58:12 - and he was shot

58:14 - in the head,

58:16 - and he fell over

58:18 - a cliff.

58:22 - Or, you know, a big drop to somewhere.

58:28 - How I knew about it.

58:29 - I'm talking to him on a radio and he's telling me to walk.

58:33 - The artillery left or right, or little closer.

58:39 - So I'm calling him back

58:41 - and like 3 or 4 fire missions going on at the same time,

58:45 - I had to kind of remember

58:47 - where the last rounds were landed,

58:51 - and he would help me adjust it

58:52 - closer and closer.

58:56 - He would use

58:57 - one of the infantry radios called Call Me Back.

59:01 - I had his radio, and then I would call the fire mission and

59:04 - and the next thing I know they said,

59:10 - Okay.

59:22 - They said he was dog at six.

59:25 - Maybe he was Kia. And.

59:32 - Andy, what they said was

59:35 - an M60 machine gunner was killed.

59:38 - So he took over his M60 machine gun,

59:42 - and he started firing machine gun at the enemy

59:46 - as he was just carrying an M16,

59:50 - and he tried to lay down more firepower with the other killed soldiers.

59:55 - M60 machine gun.

01:00 - 03.366 As the story goes, one of the guys that were up there with him

01:00 - 06.369 said he took a bullet in the head and killed him.

01:00 - 09.872 Now, someone told me that he took a 51

01:00 - 12.842 caliber round in the head,

01:00 - 15.812 but then there was some question about it.

01:00 - 18.815 This is what I was told that day.

01:00 - 22.685 They told me over the radio what happened.

01:00 - 25.922 And then when they came back off the ridgeline,

01:00 - 28.925 they they they told me again what happened.

01:00 - 33.730 And then other people weren't sure exactly what happened.

01:00 - 37.133 But I remember, like, it happened today.

01:00 - 40.069 Exactly what transpired.

01:00 - 43.072 I mean, it was, a lot of firepower.

01:00 - 48.144 Even the captain that was with me in the command post was only about 75m

01:00 - 51.581 from the ridgeline, called a napalm.

01:00 - 55.318 And I remember the heat from the napalm hit me in the face.

01:00 - 57.020 That's how close it was.

01:01 - 03.259 Our company commander,

01:01 - 06.262 who was not a brave leader,

01:01 - 09.699 decided to withdraw the company

01:01 - 12.702 and left Laurel on the battlefield dead,

01:01 - 16.706 which the 101st never does. Do.

01:01 - 19.609 About six months later,

01:01 - 23.212 101st went back into that dong

01:01 - 26.215 abso ridgeline

01:01 - 29.285 and recovered Laurel's body.

01:01 - 31.487 He saved my life.

01:01 - 34.457 He saved the lives of the 50

01:01 - 37.460 or 60 people we had in the company,

01:01 - 40.763 and I felt he deserved the Medal of Honor.

01:01 - 56.946 So why did I participate

01:01 - 59.749 in having this building

01:01 - 01.350 for underprivileged housing?

01:02 - 04.353 In honor of Laurel Blevins, built.

01:02 - 08.891 It was housing for the underprivileged.

01:02 - 12.695 It was housing for the future Laurel Blevins.

01:02 - 15.898 It gave them a path to a better life.

01:02 - 18.901 And I did not think it was possible

01:02 - 22.038 to give something that had more meaning

01:02 - 24.741 than a building

01:02 - 28.044 that would help the Laurel Blevins of the future

01:02 - 33.716 find their way to a meaningful, productive life.

01:02 - 38.654 The original

01:02 - 43.893 site of the Edison High School, seventh and Lee high through Somerset.

01:02 - 49.031 Today, there is a powerful reminder

01:02 - 53.169 and the tribute, and a testament to the sacrifices

01:02 - 56.172 that 64 young men made

01:02 - 00.943 during the course of the Vietnam War.

01:03 - 05.414 There are 65 beautiful condos

01:03 - 12.388 sheltering 65 veterans needing help today.

01:03 - 15.858 So the connection is direct.

01:03 - 19.262 They need shelter, they need help, and they need support.

01:03 - 22.198 And and they're getting that.

01:03 - 25.201 The site provides several hundred meals

01:03 - 28.037 to veterans and non veterans.

01:03 - 30.840 If there's hungry people,

01:03 - 33.843 there are going to get fed.

01:03 - 47.390 Up. Veterans memorials are extremely important,

01:03 - 51.761 and not just to honor the service and sacrifice of veterans.

01:03 - 56.098 I have always honor

01:03 - 00.603 and respect all memorials, all honor for all veterans,

01:04 - 03.906 police force, firefighters, all did everything.

01:04 - 09.912 It brings us together,

01:04 - 13.850 sometimes only twice a year, and Memorial Day and Veterans Day.

01:04 - 15.351 Generations coming up.

01:04 - 18.454 You can't let them forget because war

01:04 - 21.424 is tribal thing.

01:04 - 25.761 To bring to the general public what these young men

01:04 - 29.365 have given up and an honor and service for their country.

01:04 - 32.535 A lot of those guys were drafted.

01:04 - 34.370 They were made to go.

01:04 - 37.740 A lot of them didn't want to go, but they they fulfilled their obligation.

01:04 - 40.743 That within itself, it should be honored

01:04 - 46.315 so that we can not only remember, but talk in the guidance,

01:04 - 49.318 in the light of the good things that we remember

01:04 - 53.723 for these people who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

01:04 - 58.761 My father served in World War Two.

01:04 - 02.064 He taught me to, you know, what it was about,

01:05 - 06.302 but you never really know until you're you're there yourself in a war.

01:05 - 09.906 However, it wasn't until I joined the United States Marine Corps

01:05 - 15.511 that I became more familiar with why they have all these memorials and honors.

01:05 - 18.814 When you

01:05 - 21.817 when anyone, you know, boot up,

01:05 - 26.622 put your uniform on and go out into, a war zone,

01:05 - 29.926 you know, you're putting your life on the line whether

01:05 - 33.229 whatever your occupation MLS was or is.

01:05 - 36.666 As of joining

01:05 - 39.669 the Marine Corps, I now really honor and respect

01:05 - 43.773 and everything that goes on to remember

01:05 - 47.043 those that have fallen for our country.

01:05 - 50.880 You got us in 64, you know, makes up almost 10%.

01:05 - 52.648 What a tremendous difference

01:05 - 56.419 from other schools that will probably never be matched.

01:05 - 59.055 You can go, for example, to our website.

01:05 - 02.491 You can see the neighborhoods there from the high schools.

01:06 - 08.030 They graduated from, and other information about their backgrounds.

01:06 - 12.335 So you get a real sense of who these young men were

01:06 - 16.472 and the neighborhoods that they come from, generations coming up.

01:06 - 22.078 You have to you have to remember that's why these memorials, Memorial day is,

01:06 - 26.248 very important.

01:06 - 32.888 The Philadelphia Vietnam Veterans Memorial is not just a prize

01:06 - 36.058 for the Philadelphia area and not just for Pennsylvania.

01:06 - 38.260 It really represents a national memorial.

01:06 - 41.263 Being Philadelphia is the birthplace of the country.

01:06 - 44.700 It recognizes 648 souls.

01:06 - 46.702 You know, our neighbors from the Philadelphia

01:06 - 48.871 area that died during the Vietnam War.

01:06 - 50.606 And there's also different segments of it

01:06 - 53.609 to recognize our South Vietnamese allies.

01:06 - 56.212 It Michael statue.

01:06 - 59.215 It talks about the Purple Heart section.

01:06 - 02.518 And then finally the memorial.

01:07 - 09.925 And the interesting thing about it is it's co-located down to that area

01:07 - 14.063 that's heavily tourist oriented, really near the World War two.

01:07 - 17.500 And the Korean, memorials in Philadelphia.

01:07 - 20.503 If no other area really seems fond of

01:07 - 23.873 showing their respect for those that died for our country.

01:07 - 28.544 So, you know, we are basically a a military of citizen soldiers.

01:07 - 31.814 We see that in the guard and the reserves, but basically that's what we're doing,

01:07 - 35.351 a lot different today, the back of the 60s when we had the draft.

01:07 - 38.421 But we also had a lot of people that enlisted are

01:07 - 42.491 these are the people that we're trying to remember that so many of them,

01:07 - 45.661 in their teens and early 20s,

01:07 - 48.664 died at a very early age in a conflict

01:07 - 54.103 that many people still don't understand, and especially at the time, really

01:07 - 58.441 didn't like people were anti-government, anti-military, antiwar,

01:07 - 02.111 and that by default anti anti-military and veteran.

01:08 - 05.548 So so these folks, you know, died for their country.

01:08 - 09.718 Thousands came back and couldn't even be proud of their military service

01:08 - 12.721 because we were so toxic.

01:08 - 14.957 And then you have Edison High School

01:08 - 18.794 that had 64 names on that wall, which is a huge percentage.

01:08 - 21.430 And folks wondered how that could happen.

01:08 - 24.433 You know, and maybe it's just an issue of circumstance.

01:08 - 27.336 Maybe it was a little bit of the culture of the school

01:08 - 30.573 where the students themselves talked about opportunity,

01:08 - 33.909 and that ended up being the best opportunity for them.

01:08 - 37.279 I remember in high school, I was lucky that what I went through

01:08 - 41.050 with us in the late 60s, a lot of us had the opportunity to go to college,

01:08 - 43.853 and everybody would talk about, where do you want to go to school?

01:08 - 47.056 And there would be this large chunk of people that would go to the same school.

01:08 - 50.426 And I have a feeling that maybe was happened at Edison,

01:08 - 53.429 which was a natural progression of going through high school.

01:08 - 55.231 What did the guys ahead of me do?

01:08 - 58.968 And I think I'll do that because some of them came

01:08 - 01.971 back, spoke highly of their military service,

01:09 - 06.275 felt that it was a good opportunity, it was reliable pay.

01:09 - 10.513 Oh, by the way, I might end up in combat, but nonetheless, it was an opportunity

01:09 - 13.516 that was available to them and they jumped on it.

01:09 - 22.558 I guess to this day

01:09 - 26.162 I still ask myself and question myself.

01:09 - 34.036 Why is hard to comprehend the effect of 64

01:09 - 37.373 people from one high school being killed in Vietnam?

01:09 - 40.142 I couldn't believe it.

01:09 - 43.145 So many young men.

01:09 - 44.446 High school I went to.

01:09 - 46.482 We lost one

01:09 - 48.017 coach, the high school I went to.

01:09 - 51.754 Maybe there were ten or so when we read the stats

01:09 - 56.959 of the Vietnam Veterans War, we will read about how many brothers died,

01:09 - 00.963 how many married people died.

01:10 - 04.166 But the Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia at eighth

01:10 - 07.169 and Lehigh has just the distinction.

01:10 - 10.773 The 64 young men that lost their lives in Vietnam,

01:10 - 14.310 a lot of them grew up with men.

01:10 - 17.680 A lot of them were right from my same neighborhood.

01:10 - 21.784 We were all at around the same age within a year or two.

01:10 - 25.154 They did not come from privileged backgrounds.

01:10 - 29.258 They did not really enjoy the benefits

01:10 - 33.462 which this great country bestows on some of its citizens.

01:10 - 36.632 You're probably talking to maybe three

01:10 - 39.902 classrooms that were lost in the war,

01:10 - 43.639 if you think of it in those terms, for each each person,

01:10 - 50.012 if you can fill up a church with people from one loss, you fill up 64 churches.

01:10 - 52.715 That's of awful lot of people that's going to be affected.

01:10 - 55.684 They were young, African-American,

01:10 - 58.654 Hispanic, Caucasian, Asian,

01:10 - 02.358 young, young men that went off the war.

01:11 - 06.095 Most of the people that were killed in Vietnam, over

01:11 - 09.064 33,000 were 18 years old.

01:11 - 11.267 And I said, wow.

01:11 - 13.202 But they grew up

01:11 - 16.805 poverty, gangs, discrimination,

01:11 - 21.110 injustice.

01:11 - 23.078 When I went in to serve that,

01:11 - 25.881 a lot of them were right by my side.

01:11 - 28.717 A thousand drops of water

01:11 - 33.289 is is so much more painful, spread over

01:11 - 36.725 time as opposed to dropped on you all at once.

01:11 - 41.196 I knew a lot of these kids, and they meant the world to me.

01:11 - 47.036 That number is not a number to brag about.

01:11 - 50.039 It's a number to remember.

01:11 - 53.175 The numbers.

01:11 - 54.243 That's just way too many.

01:11 - 57.146 I mean, it's the most in the country.

01:11 - 00.349 The closest count of loss

01:12 - 04.153 of any other school was father Judge and Colonel Daugherty.

01:12 - 05.020 Each had 27,

01:12 - 06.622 and that's more than

01:12 - 09.625 twice as many as any other school

01:12 - 13.262 64 mom, 64 dad, 64

01:12 - 16.598 brothers and sisters and cousins and neighbors and coworkers

01:12 - 21.103 lost their loved one that were teenagers.

01:12 - 25.507 The first casualty, Charles

01:12 - 30.112 Antonelli, was November 1965.

01:12 - 34.950 The last casualty was January 17th, 1971.

01:12 - 37.553 Early black men.

01:12 - 40.989 Some wanted to be pharmacists, some wanted to be lawyers,

01:12 - 44.893 some wanted to be doctors, some wanted to work in the factories

01:12 - 45.994 alongside their fathers.

01:12 - 48.997 When they came home.

01:12 - 50.132 They never had that

01:12 - 55.637 opportunity. Why?

01:12 - 00.409 Why is that number so high?

01:13 - 05.047 I can't imagine 64,

01:13 - 08.050 64 of those.

01:13 - 11.720 Their memories should always be kept alive,

01:13 - 16.759 because when you put the number 64 right next,

01:13 - 19.762 that should be the word freedom.

01:13 - 26.368 When?

01:13 - 33.442 They,

01:13 - 47.322 When?

01:13 - 57.933 These.

01:14 - 12.080 When?

01:14 - 23.792 When, when

01:14 - 33.035 When?

01:15 - 28.991 This program has been paid

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