Hicksville Vietnam War Era Memorial

While only 6 new names were added in February for a new total of 1,771, good progress continued in filling in missing data for many of the people on our List of Names. 

As in the past, you can continue to help this effort by scanning the List of Names; using your class year or years you may be familiar with as a reference, to see if you have a new name or some missing data to email to us.  Class years, where known, are specifically shown to make this effort easier for all our readers.

Work also continues to make the Memorial a reality by paving the way with local officials and other dignitaries we must enlist and in making various additions and choices for the design work that has been done so far for the Memorial's planned bronze reliefs.  Ken Strafer continues to work on the latter and Bill Walden is handling relationships for us with the important people who can help us in Hicksville and the surrounding area.  This past month, Ken has selected photos of a couple of our Veteran's (one male and one female) that would make good models for the bronze reliefs and he will now proceed with gaining official permission and release to use their likenesses.  After that is done, the photos will be sent to a monument company who can mold the reliefs for us.  This will produce a finished bas relief for our Memorial's center stone; a rendering of which will be used by Bill Walden as a visual aid to help gain the official approvals we need to finalize site selection and Memorial construction plans.

Memorial Qualifications:  A person must have been on active duty in one of our Armed Forces during the Vietnam Era.  The person did not necessarily have to serve in Vietnam, because by being in service at that time he or she faced the possibility of being sent to Vietnam and was an integral part of strengthening our Armed Forces during a time of war. 

Overall qualifications include:

  • must have been a resident of Hicksville at some time before entering our Armed Forces
  • must have attended a public, private or parochial high school while living in Hicksville (attendance at HHS not required)
  • must have served on active duty anywhere in the world during America's Vietnam Era (February,1961 through April,1975)
  • Both men and women qualify (We're stating this since, while continuing to add a number of women, we still have relatively few on the current list overall)

While we have now accumulated 1,771 names, there are still more people out there who served and meet the above qualifications, but have yet to be identified.  Rough estimates made at the beginning of this project indicated we should be able to collect between 2 and 3 thousand names, so we are getting close to that goal.  We have access to official records in Washington, D.C., but have found that many people left Hicksville before entering the service and show a different town or city as their home at the time of entry.  So, we need to continue this grass roots effort and will also continue to use official records as a means of confirmation of all personnel on the list. 

Our Project Team consists of the following members:

·        Ken Strafer, Founder (HHS '62)

·        Joe Carfora, Master List (HHS '62)

·        Carl Probst, Input Data, Class of '59 & Others (HHS '59)

·        Tony Plonski, Input Data, Class of '64 & Others (HHS '64)

·        Tommy Sullivan, Press Release Editing (HHS '63)

·        Walter Schmidt, Hicksville Local Coordinator & Town of Oyster Bay Veterans Services Officer (HHS '65)

·        Joe Ingino, Veterans Advocate, Hicksville & Long Island (HHS '67)

·        Jay Tranchina, Input Data, Class of '64 & Others, plus local press contact (HHS 1964)

·        Bill Walden, Cmdr of Hicksville VFW Post, Site Selection/Approval & Fundraising Leader (HHS '65)                                                   

Here's what we continue to need from each person reading this to do:

Please click on the following link to review the current list of names: Click here.

If you know of someone who is not listed, or if you have information we are still missing, please send what you have to Joe Carfora at jcarfora1@nc.rr.com.  Please use the information contained on the current list as a guide for the data we need.

Thank you!

The Vietnam War Era Memorial Project Team

Footnote extracted from www.vietnamwar.com:  During 15 years of military involvement, over 2 million Americans served in Vietnam with 500,000 seeing actual combat. 47,244 were killed in action, including 8000 airmen. There were 10,446 non-combat deaths. 153,329 were seriously wounded, including 10,000 amputees. Over 2400 American POWs/MIAs were unaccounted for as of 1973.

FLASHBACK TO WORLD WAR II

German Wehrmacht General Anton Dostler is tied to a stake before his execution by a firing squad in a stockade in Aversa , Italy , on December 1, 1945. The General, Commander of the 75th Army Corps, was sentenced to death by an United States Military Commission in Rome for having ordered the shooting of 15 unarmed American prisoners of war, in La Spezia, Italy, on March 26, 1944. (AP Photo)

Gaunt and emaciated, but happy at their release from Japanese captivity, two Allied prisoners pack their meager belongings, after being freed near Yokohama, Japan, on September 11, 1945, by men of an American mercy squadron of the U.S. Navy. (AP Photo) 

Aerial view of Hiroshima, Japan, one year after the atomic bomb blast shows some small amount of reconstruction amid much ruin on July 20, 1946. The slow pace of rebuilding is attributed to a shortage of building equipment and materials. (AP Photo/Charles P. Gorry)

A Japanese man amid the scorched wreckage and rubble that was once his home in Yokohama , Japan . ( NARA )

Red Army photographer Yevgeny Khaldei (center) in Berlin with Soviet forces, near the Brandenburg Gate in May of 1945.

A P-47 Thunderbolt of the U.S. Army 12th Air Force flies low over the crumbled ruins of what once was Hitler's retreat at Berchtesgaden, Germany, on May 26, 1945. Small and large bomb craters dot the grounds around the wreckage. (AP Photo)

 Hermann Goering, once the leader of the formidable Luftwaffe and second in command of the German Reich under Hitler, appears in a mugshot on file with the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects in Paris, France, on November 5, 1945. Goering surrendered to U.S. soldiers in Bavaria , on May 9, 1945, and was eventually taken to Nuremburg to face trial for War Crimes. He was sentenced to death by hanging, but committed suicide by cyanide ingestion the night before he was due to be hanged. (AP Photo)

Many of Germany 's captured new and experimental aircraft were displayed in an exhibition as part of London 's Thanksgiving week on September 14, 1945. Among the aircraft are a number of jet and rocket propelled planes. Here, a side view of the Heinkel He-162 "Volksjaeger", propelled by a turbo-jet unit mounted above the fuselage, in Hyde park, in London . (AP Photo)

More to follow next month...

To access a huge list of veteran related websites that offer assistance, visit http://buffalobobcasale.com