Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Vietnam vet who lost 3 limbs persevered in Washington
ATLANTA — Max Cleland, who lost three limbs to a hand grenade in Vietnam and later became a groundbreaking Veterans Administration chief and U.S. senator from Georgia until an attack ad questioning his patriotism derailed his reelection, died Tuesday. He was 79.
Cleland died from congestive heart failure, his personal assistant Linda Dean said.
Cleland was a U.S. Army captain in Vietnam when he lost his right arm and two legs while picking up a fallen grenade. He blamed himself for decades, until he learned that another soldier had dropped it. He also spent many months in hospitals ill-equipped to help so many wounded soldiers.
Fellow veterans cheered when President Jimmy Carter appointed Cleland to lead the Veterans Administration, a post he held from 1977 to 1981. The VA and the wider medical community recognized post-traumatic stress disorder — what had been previously been dismissed as shell-shock — as a genuine condition while Cleland was in charge, and he worked to provide veterans and their families with better care.
Cleland’s 2002 Senate loss generated enduring controversy after the campaign of Saxby Chambliss aired a commercial that displayed images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and questioned the Democrat’s commitment to defending the nation. Republican Sen. John McCain, also a Vietnam veteran, was among those who condemned the move by Chambliss. .
President Joe Biden saluted Cleland on Tuesday as someone with “unflinching patriotism, boundless courage and rare character.”
Cleland suffered grievous injuries on April 8, 1968, near Khe Sanh, as he reached for the grenade he thought had fallen from his belt when he jumped from a helicopter.In 1999, former Marine Cpl. David Lloyd, who said he was one of the first to reach Cleland after the explosion, came forward to say he treated another soldier at the scene who was sobbing uncontrollably and saying, “It was my grenade, it was my grenade.”
Cleland won a state Senate seat and then ran a failed 1974 campaign for lieutenant governor before Carter named his fellow Georgian to lead the VA. Carter on Tuesday called Cleland “a true American hero who was no stranger to sacrifice.”
Cleland left Washington after Carter lost reelection, and in 1982 was elected Georgia’s secretary of state, a post he held for a dozen years. Then he won the Senate seat of the retiring Sam Nunn, but only held it for one term. Polls showed he had been leading in his reelection effort before the devastating Chambliss ad.
“Accusing me of being soft on homeland defense and Osama bin Laden is the most vicious exploitation of a national tragedy and attempt at character assassination I have ever witnessed,” Cleland said at the time.
Cleland recovered and served as a director of the Export-Import Bank. Later, President Barack Obama named him secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission.
As senator, Cleland voted to authorize President George W. Bush’s plan to go to war in Iraq, but later said he regretted it, becoming a fierce critic of Bush’s Iraq policy and likening America’s involvement to the war in Vietnam.