Five decades after surviving a year as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, the St. Joe’s graduate and former head of the Office of Veterans Services is being recognized for a lifetime of giving back.
On this date in 1973, the Viet Cong released First Lieutenant Richard Bates of the U.S. Air Force. While flying a mission nearly 6 months before, he was shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner. Bates was from Plaza, ND, and was 24 when he was captured.
He remembers being shot down like it was yesterday. On July 18, 1965, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander William M. Tschudy and his co-pilot Commander Jeremiah Denton were on a mission over Vietnam’s Song Ma river, with instructions to bomb North Vietnamese ships that were unloading supplies. At first, they thought
My friend Captain Jerry Coffee spent seven years and nine days in Hanoi as a prisoner of war in the Communist prisons of North Vietnam. While flying reconnaissance missions over North Vietnam, piloting his jet fighter, Captain Coffee was shot down by enemy fire. After parachuting to safety, he was captured by
Co-pilot William Arcuri’s last B-52 mission and his prisoner-of-war experience The electronic warfare officer yells into the microphone, “SAM uplink — 5 o’clock, SAM 6 o’clock, SAM 7 o’clock.” Four Soviet made SAM-2 surface-to-air missiles, each armed with a 288-pound fragmentation warhead, are racing up at more than 2,600 miles
Col. (Ret.) Albert Edwin Carlson Ed Ca Carlson, 58, of Gig Harbor, went to be with the Lord on Saturday, August 7, 1999 at home after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. Ed was born in Oakland, CA to Arthur E. and Lois L. Carlson. He L grew up on
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