Monday, August 16, 2004
Trotwood, Ohio - An Ohio factory worker who was with John Kerry on a dangerous night mission 36 years ago in Vietnam said he has no doubt Kerry was grazed in a firefight and deserves his first Purple Heart for a combat injury.
"We were on about a 14-foot boat with an outboard motor. We started out, taking a guess, around 10 p.m. We were sup posed to sneak up and check sampans," said Pat Runyon, a 58-year-old grandfather from Eaton, a small southwestern Ohio town near the Indiana border.
Runyon, an enlisted man who served on Swift boats in Vietnam, was not a regular member of Kerry's crew.
(snip)
Runyon now works the second shift at a plant that makes auto parts in Eaton. He works in the shipping department.
He is supporting Democratic nominee Kerry for president, but said he is not a Democrat and has never been active in politics. He said he and Kerry met for the first time since that night in 1968 at a rally in Dayton this year.
(snip - describes the event)
Runyon was at a Democratic picnic Sunday in Trotwood, a Dayton suburb, where he told the small gathering of party activists that an anti-Kerry veterans group was smearing the senator with false charges. "It's very poor to try and discredit him after <36> years," Runyon said. "That's very poor."
Runyon said that firefight with Kerry is his brush with fame.
"I saw a nice, quiet guy who knew he was in command and didn't flaunt it. He could make a decision, and he made the right one because we got out of there alive. That's all I can tell you."
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