Vietnam vets to be honored
Project to honor 21 KIA soldiers is finally complete
PAWTUCKET – Their names are all together now, in one place, carved in stone, just as Terry Nau and their families had envisioned almost a year ago.
Pawtucket’s 21 fallen heroes of the Vietnam War now have their place of remembrance at Slater Park where some may have visited in their youth to enjoy time with their families or play sports.
On Sunday, their family members and the supporters like Nau who made the new memorial a reality will gather on the hill overlooking Armistice Boulevard and dedicate the polished and engraved stone honoring loved ones who have never been forgotten.
As he looked over the installed memorial on Friday in advance of the weekend’s observances, Nau, a retired Times sports editor and Vietnam veteran, said he believes it to be a fitting tribute to those who gave so much to the country, now more than 50 years ago for some of them.
“I come by here and I see people sitting here on the benches and I feel that they have some connections to the soldiers on this stone,” Nau said.
He was proven right on Friday when a Vietnam veteran like Nau, Tom “Doc” Rubel, a former U.S. Marine, walked up to see the new memorial up close.
As the two veterans talked of a war that remains as fresh as yesterday to them, Rubel, a resident of Seekonk for the past 40 years, spoke of his own Company Commander who was killed on a mission while the two had just about a week left to their tour of duty in the war.
Originally from Tennessee, Rubel said his home of Clarksville, located near a military base, had also lost soldiers to Vietnam, a tally of 23. His hometown’s losses gave him something to think of in addition to his own service in the war and Rubel said he found the local remembrance to be a fine one. “I love it and it’s about time,” Rubel said.
Nau said Rubel’s memories were the same for most veterans of the war. “You never forget the guys you lost from your own unit, and then you come into a town and they have 21 names of people lost in the war,” he said.
Before he ever started thinking about a Pawtucket Vietnam Memorial, Nau put his own experiences in Vietnam into the first of his three books about the war, “Reluctant Soldier...Proud Veteran.” He then took on the task of remembering the 15 students attending his high school in Pennsylvania who were also lost to Vietnam in his second book “We Walked Right Into It: Pennsbury High & the Vietnam War.”
After 30 years of covering sports and meeting fellow veterans in the Blackstone Valley, Nau had another book in him about the war, “They Heard the Bugle’s Call: Pawtucket & The Vietnam War” that he completed last year just as the 50th anniversary of the loss of Pawtucket’s first Vietnam casualty, Marine Lance Corporal Antonio “Tony” Maciminio Jr., 20, on May 21, 1966, rolled around. The rest of Pawtucket’s 21 are: • Marine Pfc. Ronald Pierce, 21, on Sept. 6, also in 1966
• Army Spec4 Normand Plante, 20 on April 28, Marine 1st Lt. Charles Yaghoobian, 23, on Oct. 14, and Army Spec4 Raymond Michalopoulos, 21, on Nov. 21, in 1967
• Army Pfc. Robert Renaud, 19, on Jan. 5, and Army Spec4 William Moore III, 20, on Jan. 28 in 1968
• Army Spec4 James Cavanaugh, 19, on Feb. 18, Army Captain Robert O’Brien, 25, on March 21, Army Col. Walter Pritchard, 34, on April 12, and Marine Lance Corporal James William Dean, 18, on April 14, 2nd Lt. John William Hulme, III, 22, and Army 1st Lt. Thomas Patrick Gill III, 23, on Dec. 7, in 1969
• Army Corporal Robert Taylor, 20, on Feb. 27, Army Pfc. Edward John Vaillancourt, 18 on Feb. 28, Army Spec4 Albert William Haslam, 26 on March 15, Army Brig. Gen. Carroll Edward Adams Jr., 46, on May 12, Army Spec4 Valentino LaScola Jr. 20, on May 22, Army Spec4 John Francis Maloney, 20, on June 10, Army Lt. Richard Stephen Dyer, 26, on June 30, in 1970, Army 1st Lt. Michael Moran Dalton, 24, on June 9, 1971.
The idea of a memorial began to percolate when Nau started thinking about doing a book signing with some of the family members he interviewed for “They Heard The Bugle’s Call” and it expanded to a full-blown memorial service to be held at the Slater Park Pavilion.
More than 200 people showed up for the event and it was at that point Nau and family members like, Mary Dalton — Lt. Michael Dalton’s younger sister — realized they had enough support to raise funds for a worthy memorial.
Madeleine Mondor, the widow of PawSox owner Ben Mondor, stepped up first with a donation of $5,000 and the monument drive
took off from there, Nau said.
In addition to support from relatives of the 21 and those who served with them, the drive also gained support from Pawtucket as a community.
“Donations kept coming in from people who grew up in Pawtucket and knew these soldiers,” Nau said. City officials like Mayor Donald Grebien, Public Safety Director Anthony Pires and members of the City Council also helped out with the memorial project. The city provided the site for the monument in Slater Park that Nau said is the perfect spot for the planned tribute with its shade trees, grass lawn, and view of Armistice Boulevard and the nearby Marconi Gardens.
“The city gave us this location and we will be forever beholden to them,” Nau said. “The bottom line here is that is all for the 21 people whose lives were cut short by the Vietnam War,” Nau said.
The project received $40,000 in donations over its six-month-long fundraising drive and that was more than enough to purchase the African black granite memorial stone from Sciolto and Son Monument Company in Cranston, inscribed with the names of the 21 Heroes on its front, and a quote from Debbie Dalton-Polhemus, Lt. Dalton’s widow, on the opposite side. The memorial also features stone benches for visitors to sit on and Nau is planning to finish up the project with some landscaping of the area after the summer.
The dedication ceremony will include a visit by Major General John Broadmeadow, a Pawtucket native working for the Marines in Washington, and Brigadier Gen. Retired John Enright, a resident of Pawtucket, who will be giving the keynote address.