Terona Chivers
In 1962, Howard grad Terona Chivers volunteered to join the Army, serving two tours in Vietnam as a parachute rigger.
Upon graduating from Howard High School in 1962, Terona Chivers did something that many who ended up in the jungles of Vietnam did not — he voluntarily joined the Army.
The Chattanooga native eventually served two tours in Vietnam, one of the longest, deadliest wars in American history. Despite an injury in 1968 that would end his war, Chivers said he found camaraderie and his potential through his service.
“The Army can train you to do something you never thought you could do,” he recalled.
He was sure of one thing though, Chivers, 74, said: He wanted to be Airborne.
Chivers was initially stationed at Fort Lee in Virginia and assigned as a clerk to the Army Quartermaster School. As he rose through the ranks, he kept applying for jump school. It took four tries, but eventually he wound up at Fort Benning, Georgia, at the U.S. Army Airborne School.
During his two tours in Vietnam, Chivers was a parachute rigger.
He still recalls some of his first jumps out of helicopters and airplanes, both in Fort Benning, and to earn his wings in Vietnam.
“You’re all lined up at the door [of the aircraft] and when the sergeant says ‘go’ — unless you’re the last man in line — there was no turning back,” Chivers said. The first time he jumped in Vietnam, Chivers said, it was beautiful.
From 1965-66, Chivers served in Vietnam with the Fifth Special Forces Group. During his second tour he served with the 506 Airborne Infantry, 3rd Battalion
from 1967-68.
Despite the constant threat of death, Chivers said he and his fellow soldiers were close. He fondly remembers old friends, some he still sees to this day through his involvement with the local chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart and Disabled American Veterans.
Chivers recalls one man, a soldier he didn’t know, whose memory haunted him for years.
On Jan. 9, 1966, while on a mission to deliver much-needed supplies from a helicopter, Chivers and the crew watched a plane go down. As the plane gushed smoke, a pilot ejected and fell into the treetops.
Chivers and a crewmate parachuted to the ground to find the man, to no avail. When the two reunited with the pilot and chopper, the crew was distraught.
“They were a mess, in tears. One of them said, in dirtier words, ‘We had him, we had him,’” he recalled.
The crew had almost rescued the ejected pilot, but lost hold of him and he dropped into a canal in the jungle.
Chivers wouldn’t know the name of the man for almost a decade, until the traveling Vietnam Wall Memorial visited Cleveland, Tennessee. He and his mother visited the wall, and Chivers was able to meet with a representative of the National League of POW/MIA Families. He learned that two men had been lost from that plane that day.
The humble, gregarious veteran was awarded the Army
Commendation Medal for his heroism on that day in 1966, along with a Purple Heart for the injury that sent him home.
He served 10 years in the military, and he said his service has played a large part in his life. A spare bedroom in his home is decorated with photographs of his fellow soldiers and his time in Vietnam.
“My military room,” Chivers calls it.
Before a broken foot, complicated by his injury decades earlier, slowed him down, Chivers was volunteering to drive veterans to the VA hospital in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, speak with students in local classrooms, and help veterans navigate the paperwork and bureaucracy of receiving their benefits.
His brother-in-law, Jimmy Seymore, said Chivers talks often about his service and is active in his church and community here in Chattanooga.
“He talks about why the military is important,” Seymore said. “He is a pretty nice fellow.”
Contact staff writer Meghan Mangrum at mmangrum@timesfreepress.com or 423-7576592. Follow her on Twitter @memangrum.