Vietnam vet Ray helped welcome veterans home
There were only a couple of ways to get out of Vietnam before the 12-month tour of duty was completed: In a flag-covered casket, or wounded seriously enough for evacuation.
Ray Santana made it home alive and spent three months in a military hospital. A Marine Corps grunt, Ray spent 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, firing his M-60 machine gun at everyone trying to kill him and his buddies.
After nine months in the hot zone, Santana was wounded seriously. He got his honorable discharge, but paperwork got lost, so he was not awarded any VA disability benefits until about more than 30 years later.
It took interventions by service organizations and advocates to get Santana his earned VA benefits. He was not bitter. But when he showed up to one of our veteran talk therapy groups, he shared that not receiving the Purple Heart he earned the hard way still hurt.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Santana’s post-traumatic stress disorder returned. By then, he was married to Linda, his second bride. His first wife, Jeannie, was lost to cancer while he worked for Boeing.
Santana was about as California as you could get. His family in Los Angeles was one of the first family vendors of Olvera Street. It would be hard to have a US Marine Corps at full strength without a lot of Latino-heritage Marines.
Santana’s story was that of a quiet man, occasionally knocked down, but always getting up. While coping with PTSD that haunts so many combat veterans, he partnered up to get something big achieved for the Antelope Valley.
With Gary Chapman, another combat-wounded veteran, Santana teamed with a nice Blue Star Mother, Ida Ketchum, to press for a “Vietnam Welcome Home” parade in the Antelope Valley, the parade most of the Vietnam vets never got.
Hundreds of people pitched in, and thousands of people turned out on Lancaster Boulevard around Veterans Day of 2006. Santana was a quiet man, but he and his battle buddy, Gary Chapman, got it rolling.
For many years, Santana did his shooting with a camera anywhere AV community events happened. Often, he photographed the Antelope Valley Vietnam Mobile Memorial, the “AV Wall,” that half-scale tribute memorial that has all 78,000-plus Americans killed in that long war inscribed on it.
Santana’s wife, Linda, came up with an inspirational fundraising tool, “Pennies for Soldiers.” Schoolchildren of the Antelope Valley raised more than $20,000 in small change that became a big contribution to getting the AV Wall built. Ray and Linda were a team.
The pennies rolled in, the AV Wall got built, and Santana was there with his camera. In the years since, welcoming Vietnam War veterans has become a nationwide event, and an Antelope Valley cultural perennial.
Had he lived, Santana could have made excellent photos this Saturday at Poncitlan Square, where a “Vietnam Welcome Home” gathering will be hosted by the Boots On the Ground Alliance for the third year.
Santana suffered many afflictions known to many veterans who were exposed to bombs, bullets, Agent Orange and other killers. On March 6, he suffered a massive stroke, and we lost a good man, and a great Marine.
Services will be 11 a.m. March 22, at the Orchard Church in Murrieta, Calif., where Ray and Linda retired. Full military services with the Patriot Guard Riders are being arranged at Riverside National Cemetery.
Semper Fi, Ray. Fair winds and a following sea.
Dennis Anderson is a licensed clinical social worker at High Desert Medical Group. An Army paratrooper veteran who covered the Iraq War for the Antelope Valley Press, he serves as Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s appointee on the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission.