The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Cromwell’s Vietnam veterans honored
Bysiewicz, Saadi presented certificates of appreciation
CROMWELL — It was 50 years in the making, but a group of some 60 Vietnam and Vietnamera veterans got the “Welcome Home” this week that many of them were denied in their youth.
Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and state Commissioner of Veterans Affairs Thomas J. Saadi came to Cromwell High School on Monday to present certificates of appreciation to the “brave Americans who answered the call to duty” in Vietnam.
Bysiewicz is touring the state to present the certificates in person to Connecticut’s Vietnam or Vietnamera veterans.
Approximately 3 million Americans served in Vietnam or in the waters off the coast or in the skies above the Southeast Asian country.
They are Vietnam veterans.
Vietnamera veterans (an estimated 8.5 million in all) served in the military during the war but were not sent to Vietnam.
Some 612 Connecticut residents were killed in Vietnam, including Cromwell resident Lance Cpl. Thomas W. Fritsch.
Fritsch, 21, and 10 of his fellow Marines was killed on May 10, 1968, when his unit was overrun by North
Vietnamese Army regulars in a night attack in Quang Tin province in northern South Vietnam.
Fritsch’s remains were not recovered for decades until a retired North Vietnamese Army officer led an American to the site.
His remains were subsequently identified by the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii and returned home to Cromwell for burial in 2005.
Cromwell was the sixth stop on Bysiewicz’s tour.
She worked with Town Clerk Joan Ahlquist and her staff assistant town clerks Gloria Prendergast and Lori Caracoglia to identify local veterans by sorting through copies of their discharge records.
In all, 247 people were identified, Ahlquist said Tuesday.
Sherry McGuire, the office assistant in the town manager’s office, then sent letters signed by Bysiewicz, Saadi and Mayor Enzo Faienza, to the veterans inviting them to take part in the ceremony.
(The invitation was also posted on the town’s website and its Facebook page.)
In his welcoming remarks, Faienza said while he is a Republican and Bysiewicz a Democrat, “for this event, political parties don’t matter.”
“When we honor our veterans we stand as one,” the mayor said. “You made so many sacrifices. But when you came back home the country wasn’t quite accepting of you.
“It wasn’t right or fair that that you were treated the way you were,” Faienza continued, as he offered a “thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
Saadi’s cousin served in Vietnam.
When he was 8, his uncle gave Saadi a vivid yellow triangular patch with a silhouette of a horse’s head and a black stripe running diagonally across the patch. Saadi treasured the patch. Years later he realized it was the patch of the 1st Air Cavalry (Airmobile) Division. (His uncle served in 1/7th Cavalry – George Armstrong Custer’s old unit.)
It was through his uncle that Saadi learned the reality —andtheterrors—of“a 360degree protracted, unconventional war,” and the nightmares, the extra vigilance and the tension that afflicted his uncle after he returned from Vietnam.
The men who answered the nation’s call to serve in Vietnam “endured stifling heat, monsoon rains, intense urban combat,” Bysiewicz said.
And yet, “You were never properly thanked when you came home.”
Despite that, the veterans of Vietnam went on to start families and be active members of their communities and their state.
And, crucially, “You looked after one another and those who followed,” Bysiewicz said.
By doing so, they helped ensure today’s service members are not forgotten as the Vietnam veterans were, she said.
Sitting among his fellow veterans, John Panicek took in the warm regards of the speakers.
In 1967, Panicek, a Binghamton, N.Y., native, was given “a McNamara grant to study Southeast Asia cultures,” he explained wryly.
What he really received was draft notice from Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara.
Once he was in the Army, Panicek was sent to Fort Benning, Ga., where he was enrolled in an accelerated program intended to meet the Army’s pressing need for noncommissioned officers, or NCOs, the sergeants who are the backbone of the Army.
After he graduated from the 22week program, Panicek was sent to Vietnam, to 1/52nd BN, 198th Inf. Brigade of the Americal Division.
It was 1968, in the wake of the Tet Offensive, and the fighting was intense.
Panicek was thrown into what could have been an overwhelming position as a platoon sergeant in an infantry unit.
And yet, he said, “That experience developed a lot of selfconfidence in me. I found out you can deal with any adversity and get your men through it.”
That all changed when he came home from Vietnam – on July 22, 1969, 50 years to the day of the ceremony.
As he transited home from Fort Lewis, Wash., Panicek said he was met by “profanity and people spitting on me.”
He rebounded from that harsh “welcome” and set about building a 40year career as a hospital administrator.
And then, last year, during Cromwell’s Memorial Day parade, Panicek encountered something he couldn’t begin to imagine.
“For the first time, people said, ‘Thank you’ to me,” he said. “I never had that kind of a response. I had adults and kids come up to me and say ‘Thank you.’”
“I was totally stunned. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy,” he said.
That feeling carried over to Monday.
“I’m so thankful the Lt. Governor came down for this,” he said. “I think there is a recognition that there was a big lapse (when the Vietnam veterans returned home) and they recognize that many people had a very negative reaction to that.”
“This was coming from the heart,” he continued, remaking on state Rep. Christie Carpino’s comments. “She had her emotions showing when she spoke about how everyone in the auditorium was deserving of thanks.
“That really made my day, and it made a lot of people’s day,” Panicek said.