Guest column: Vietnam veterans are at risk of dying young
May 30, 2011
Written by
Msgt. Thomas Vance, U.S.A.F. Ret.
Memorial Day these days brings thoughts of my brother Pete. On June 13, 2009, I lost my brother. Ralph Earl (Pete) Vance Jr. died at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Cincinnati. He was 60 years old.
Pete was born in Cincinnati and raised across the river in Newport, Ky. He was his father's son and held a special place in his father's heart. Indeed, later in life, people remarked that he was the spittin' image of Ralph senior.
After school, and with the impending draft, he enlisted in the Army and after Basic Training and Technical School he landed in Pleikue, Vietnam, as a helicopter mechanic. While there he received an injury during a mortar attack on the air base. Although told by his sergeant to report it to the hospital, he never did.
After the army he returned to Northern Kentucky to settle down with his wife Linda. They raised two daughters, Jenny and Julie, on his income as a sheet metal worker.
Like the World War II veterans before him, he served, came home and quietly went on with his life.
Pete was the kind of fellow who kept things to himself. When he contracted cancer he acted as if it was no big deal, did what the doctors told him, but waited a long time before telling anyone. When he finally told me, the cancer was pretty advanced. The doctors had diagnosed him as having two cancers, one a purportedly aggressive form of breast cancer. He was taken from us in less than a year.
Those who loved him have no doubt that exposure to the terrible defoliant Agent Orange, widely used in Vietnam, contributed to his death.
In these days when we are witnessing the passing of the last of the World War II veterans, we are also witnessing the early demise of a generation of fathers and brothers who are dying at an alarming rate.
They are dying of an illness America contracted in the 1960s and is still trying to recover from.
They are dying of Vietnam.
http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110...RONTPAGE|s
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Guest column: Vietnam veterans are at risk of dying young
