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In reply to the discussion: How many of us DU'ers belong to a gold star family..... [View all]pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)A nurse, coming back to check on me as my gurney was lined up outside the full operating rooms, discovered I'd stopped breathing and an emergency tracheostomy was done on the spot to save my life.
Thanks to that nurse, there was no hole made in my family that day. But I knew more than 60 guys who were killed in Vietnam, leaving a lot of holes in a lot of families.
I've also met and cried with a lot of Gold Star families.
It was especially striking to me to learn something I didn't know about a good friend who was KIA in Vietnam. It wasn't until 2 decades after he was killed, when I located and spoke with his family, that I learned he'd been named after his uncle, his father's brother, who was KIA at Anzio in WWII. So Joe's dad was Gold Star twice over, having lost his brother in WWII and his son in Vietnam. That just blew me away...
Joe Hearne Rufty, Salisbury, NC
July 21, 1917 - June 2, 1944
KIA Anzio Beach, Italy
February 23, 1945 - January 29, 1970
KIA Thua Thien Province, I Corps, South Vietnam