Vietnam veterans and Gainesville High School alumni honored their fallen comrades and classmates Tuesday at Forest Meadows Cemetery.
The cemetery keeps 11 Alachua County residents who died in Vietnam. In other cemeteries lie 37 more soldiers from the county who died in that war—their graves spotlighted by American flags for Veterans Day.
The GHS alumni first gathered to remember Marcus Jones. He died in 1967, and George Dekle said he was the first casualty that many of them knew.
Overall, Vernon Carter Jr. was the first Vietnam casualty from Gainesville. He earned the Purple Heart and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
A group of five met the first year to remember Jones. Dub Murphree said he looked over and spotted Frederick Vickery III.
“The first time we came out looking at Marcus, all the sudden I looked, two doors over was our classmate, Vickery,” Murphree said. “We didn’t know he was here.”
Murphree and Vickery were both class of 1964 graduates. The group then started coming to visit both classmates. The GHS alumni also learned about Carter and other veterans from other classes and schools.
Jim Arnold said it took 20 years after the classmates died before people began discussing it, part of the long reckoning for veterans of a war many wanted to forget.
Arnold also graduated from GHS in 1964 and went straight into the Army. He served in Vietnam and returned to attend UF.
“We got started doing this many years ago because it was a really uncomfortable situation being in Gainesville, not affiliated with any kind of military or anything, and you just had to deal with it,” Arnold said.
He said he attended classes where no one else had semi shined shoes or cut hair as America entered the late 1960s hippie era.
And he didn’t tell anybody he’d just returned from Vietnam.
Murphree took a reverse journey. He attended UF and got married before joining the Air Force after graduation. He never saw combat but was stationed in Japan.
When the 1980s rolled around, he watched “Platoon” starring Charlie Sheen. In the movie, Sheen lands in Vietnam in September 1967. Murphree said that’s the same month he landed in Japan, and he watched the movie spellbound, thinking of all his friends who lived through what the movie showed.
“When that movie was over, I sat in the dark for an hour just in shock,” Murphree said.
He said there hadn’t been much depiction of the Vietnam War up to that point, but after the movie, Murphree said the conversation opened up.
Forest Hope leads the local chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America. He reminded everyone of the motto: Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.
“That’s what we felt like whenever we came back,” Hope said. “I remember getting kicked out of the VFW trying to join because I didn’t fight in no real war.”
Around the same time as “Platoon” hit theaters, the first gathering at Forest Meadows happened.
On Tuesday, the men circled and informally told stories and gave updates on current veteran events and projects.
Dekle recalled how his sister wouldn’t talk to him after returning from the war. She was a graduate student at Syracuse University, and the Kent State shootings had just occurred. He said he couldn’t fathom his sister’s position at the time. The siblings were only two years apart.
Dekle said the two reconciled years ago, and he received an early morning phone call from her for Veterans Day.
Andy Adkins, class of 1972, served in the Navy after the war. He explained how he’s writing a book that outlines the lives of each of the 48 Alachua County residents who died in Vietnam.
He said he’s talked to family members and friends to get details of their lives and what clubs, sports and jobs they had.
The veterans chime in with tidbits for Adkins to use before turning to more stories and introducing attendees. The group ended with prayer and an annual group photo.
“Lord, this is simply bootcamp that were walking through in preparation for our eternity,” Steve Summerlin prayed.
Alachua County residents who died in Vietnam
- Vernon Thomas Carter
- Noah Morris Kraft
- Jerome Cordell Winters
- Lorenzo Columbus Maulden
- Freddie Lee Kleckley
- Joshua Welch Jr.
- Manuel Eduardo Mesa
- Lindy Edward Henry
- James Milton Jefferson
- Auburn Dale McComb
- Wesley Ira Goswick
- Larry Will Bloodsworth
- Robert Eugene Thompson
- Charles Edward Roland
- James Mikel Runnels
- Marcus Claude Jones
- Henry Dennis Babers
- David Eric Wieland
- Donald Lee Hettich
- Robert Ivan Rice
- Robert Lee Shorter
- Frederick Jordan Hampton
- Tommy Lee Hankison
- Thomas Wayne Peterson
- Johnny Lee Proctor
- Randolph Wright Ford
- Charles Andy Gordon
- Carl Post Hetrick
- Norman Kenneth Bristow
- Frederick M Vickery
- Ross Thomas Hulslander
- James Rickard Golding
- Eugene Scott Hancock
- Willie Lee Brown Jr.
- Terry Durand Graham
- James Boston Jr.
- Martin Robert Beck
- Michael Ward Kirkpatrick
- Charles Richard Geiger
- Neal Arthur Smith
- Henry Bertram Wright
- Leslie Eugene Rembert
- Charles Robert Townsend
- Johnell Witherspoon
- Ronald Michael Rigdon
- Benjamin Gaines Lang
- John Winslow Lawrence
- Samuel Harrell