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Community Corner

We Remember Their Service This Memorial Day

There is more to Memorial Day than picnics and vacations; just ask a veteran.

Many Americans honor the fallen on Memorial Day by visiting a cemetery, watching a parade or tuning into the National Memorial Day Concert on PBS. There also are those who look at the holiday as a three-day weekend filled with family activities.

We wanted to talk to some veterans—about Memorial Day, their service to our country—so we visited Elmhurst American Legion T.H.B. Post 187. 

David Riva of Elmhurst, 64, is a Vietnam veteran who served as a specialist 4th Class in the U.S. Army. He trained with the 9th Infantry Division in Kansas and was stationed in Vietnam from February 1967 to February 1968.

He compared the Vietnam War to the current war in the Middle East.

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“They were both wars that were outside the realm of a declared war," Riva said. "They’re more like police actions rather than World War II or World War I were.

"This war (in Afghanistan and Iraq) is supported by the American public where the Vietnam War wasn’t supported by the American public. That was primarily because of the news broadcasts which took the war from Vietnam and put it on American TVs immediately. Newsmen were embedded with the soldiers in Vietnam, where you don’t see that type of coverage from the news media today in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Bob Daniels of Elmhurst, 63, was a technical instructor at the Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul during the Vietnam War.

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“I think the soldiers who are coming back overseas from Afghanistan and Iraq get a little more respect. The ones that came back from the Vietnam era got spit on and they weren’t treated very well at all. They were treated like second-class citizens.

"I trained a lot of people and some of them end up being pretty good friends. Other people that I know who came back, including some that are members here at the Post, were not treated well at all.”

Raymond Coyne of Oak Brook, 87, served in the Navy as a 3rd Class quartermaster during World War II.

“It’s a day of remembrance in honoring your fallen buddies," he said of the Memorial Day holiday. "I lost a couple of friends who were grammar school guys."

Do our veterans think people are forgetting those who has given their lives for us?

"There is some forgetfulness," Coyne said. "A lot of these guys (Americans) were born after we got out of service. They don’t think about World War II. For example, my grand kids are only 21 years old, and they don’t know about World War II and what we suffered because of it.

"They don’t realize what we did.”

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