Veterans Clips
Veteran advocate promotes PTSD site — http://www.stripes.com/news/veterans-advocate-promotes-ptsd-site-1.84266
USS Meredith veteran — http://www.lompocrecord.com/news/local/navy-vet-may-learn-what-sank-his-ship/article_a23850c4-61f3-554c-8bc6-ef86ad30e840.html
World War II B-17 bomber pilot — http://www.lompocrecord.com/news/local/veteran-recalls-allied-aerial-onslaught/article_6c38f664-9eb2-50a0-8217-80f974e2fe2f.html
D-Day Veteran — http://www.lompocrecord.com/news/local/injured-veteran-looks-back-on-invasion/article_8bab5503-7f89-5d63-b5aa-d75937712497.html
Iraq veteran — http://www.lompocrecord.com/news/local/soldier-recalls-iraq-invasion/article_e86b9ecc-361f-5347-a3c5-842961128970.html
Veterans get acclimated to college life
CSM club helps former military learn what services are available to them
Burlingame Daily News
March 16, 2008
Mark Abramson / Daily News Staff Writer
Think of “Band of Brothers” crossed with a freshman orientation group.
A new club at the College of San Mateo aims to make it easier for veterans to adjust to student life and maintain a sense of camaraderie.
The Veterans Club was formed after the school’s admissions assistants for certifying veterans benefits, Mario Mihelcic and Jeremy Mileo, attended a conference at Sierra College near Sacramento and learned that school has a veterans club. Its first monthly meeting was in September, and now the club expects to start electing officers, Mihelcic said.
“I think it helps them connect with each other and build a community of support,” Mihelcic said. “This is the very beginning. We are all aware of the needs of the veterans, especially of those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Mihelcic said one veteran in the club has discussed surviving an explosion, and some others have shared their war experiences. Another veteran discussed how hard it was to go to a Veterans Affairs center to get help because one of his comrades was buried at a cemetery across the street.
But the veterans interviewed for this story said they did not join the club to sit around and swap war stories. They said it has helped them feel more comfortable in an environment in which they are older than their teenage classmates. And they believe it has given them more insight as to what GI Bill and other veterans’ benefits they are eligible for.
“It is pretty cool to talk to other veterans who are there because they might know about some obscure benefits I don’t know about,” said Ken Chin, who saw two tours of duty as an rifleman with Alpha Company, First Battalion, 5th Marines.
“It is good to know there are other people there that are the same, that did the same things I’ve done and have seen some of the same things and have experienced some of the same things,” the 24-year-old San Mateo resident said.
Chin said he has had a few drinks with people from the club. He would like to see the club expanded to do community service at VA hospitals in the area and maybe go to a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post as a group.
Mihelcic said he hopes to get ideas for the club by attending a conference at Cal-State East Bay on Monday.
Ian Saunders, 28, of San Mateo, is another Marine veteran who joined the club. He worked on avionics on attack and transport helicopters in Iraq. He plans to transfer to San Jose State University next year and pursue a degree that will lead to a high school or community college teaching career.
“It is just good to talk to other guys who have been out there,” Saunders said.
Saunders added the most valuable part about the club is learning about all the benefits he is entitled to and sharing his experiences of trying to get his disability help through the VA. He gets disability assistance for a shoulder injury he was having treated before being deployed to Iraq.
For more information about the Veterans Club at CSM, call 650-358-6856.
E-mail Mark Abramson at mabramson@dailynewsgroup.com.
Carolers, Santa visit veterans at hospital
Veterans’ holiday is brightened with songs and gifts
Los Gatos Daily News
December 26, 2006
Mark Abramson/Daily News Staff Writer
An army of volunteers singing Christmas carols spread a little Yuletide cheer by bringing smiles to the faces of veterans at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Palo Alto on Christmas Day.
Many of the estimated 200 volunteers were dressed in red and green, and some wore Santa caps as they followed jolly Old St. Nick from room to room while he delivered presents to 300 veterans who fought in conflicts from World War II to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Volunteers played violins and guitars as others sang. Veterans’ families smiled as the musical group marched through the hospital.
“It’s great; I like giving,” said Walter Dillard, a volunteer and Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy. “It makes me feel good.”
This was Dillard’s third year volunteering on Christmas, and he said there was no place he would rather be on the holiday than cheering up his fellow veterans.
Scott Francis, a recreation therapist at the hospital was one of two Santa Clauses delivering presents. He said he was missing time with his father to honor veterans. He is a veteran, as is his father and his grandfather, who was left for dead after being attacked with mustard gas during World War II. He said his grandfather met his grandmother at a veteran’s hospital where he was treated.
“I’m going to get choked up,” Francis said.
This was the 31st year volunteers have boosted veteran’s spirits at the hospital, and Tom McCarthy, the organizer of the festive occasion and a recreation therapist at the hospital has been involved almost since the beginning.
“It’s the wonderful reaction and the feeling that someone cares (the veterans have),” McCarthy said of the rewards that come from participating in the events. “People are wonderful out there. The holiday season brings out the good in people.”
McCarthy said the credit for making this a merry Christmas for the veterans goes beyond the people who sang and handed out gifts Monday. People also donated the gifts, which ranged from electronics to blankets.
“It’s a very important part of the rehabilitation process,” McCarthy said about giving theveterans a special day for Christmas.
E-mail Mark Abramson at mabramson@dailynewsgroup.com
After 11 years, family of veteran awarded unclaimed medals
Lompoc Record and Lee Central Coast Newspapers
November 13, 2005
Mark Abramson/Staff Writer
After 11 years of gathering dust on Mozart Booker Jr.’s shelves at the Veterans Memorial Building, four Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and some lesser medals have found a rightful home.
The medals were earned by James A. Harty, who served in the military from June 1944 to July 1955, and presented to his grandson, Howard Coolidge of Santa Maria, during a Veterans Day ceremony Friday in Lompoc.
Harty died in 1991, three years before Booker, a county veterans’ services officer, was able to jump through all of the military’s hoops to get the medals.
Harty fought as an infantryman in the Army during World War II and the Korean War. He was a prisoner of war in Europe during World War II.
“I was amazed a guy could go through two wars and be a POW and still be alive,” Booker said after the ceremony.
Booker learned about Harty’s unclaimed medals when the soft-spoken veteran came to his office in 1990 to find out about benefits for his family if he died. Booker talked Harty into ordering the medals.
After years of searching for Harty and then finding out he had died, Booker’s mystery was solved when Coolidge, a police sergeant with the Santa Maria Police Department, contacted him. Coolidge said he found out about the medals after reading an article in The Lompoc Record.
“This was really an honor,” Coolidge said after the ceremony. “This is going to be something my family will cherish. He loved this country. I think he would have been proud that he got these medals.”
Coolidge plans to give the medals to his mother, Harty’s daughter, Dorothy Coolidge, who lives in Long Beach.
He described his grandfather as a humble person, who did not talk a lot about his military service, despite keeping detailed records of his experiences.
Harty’s honors also included medals for the victory in World War II; being part of the occupation of Japan; service in the European African-Middle Eastern campaign in World War II: a Korean Service medal; a United Nations Service Medal; and a couple of others.
“It feels great because I know I accomplished something,” Booker said about getting the medals to Coolidge. “It was a stroke of luck.”
Mark Abramson can be reached at 737-1037, or mabramson@ lompocrecord.com.
Air Force veteran recalls tension, fear during Cuba crisis
‘At the time we thought we were going to war,’ says San Leandro man
Tri-Valley Herald
October 20, 2002
Mark Abramson, STAFF WRITER
SAN LEANDRO — Forty years ago this month, Air Force veteran Ron Galvan sweated out the tensest moments of the Cold War at a major Bay Area military base that may have had nuclear weapons.
Galvan, 62, of San Leandro was based at Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato in mid-October 1962, when a U.S. spy plane photographed Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba.
The discovery triggered a standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The fear of nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union gripped the world for two weeks, until the crisis was resolved.
“At the time we thought we were going to war,” said Galvan, who was a 22-year-old sergeant then. “(The armed forces) were activating a lot of reservists. There were nerves (on base).”
People even closer to the crisis than Galvan, including former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, met in Cuba earlier this month to discuss and reminisce about it.
“It was the closest the United States ever came to going to war with the Soviet Union,” said Richard Speed, a history professor at Cal State Hayward.
The United States came very close to invading Cuba, and the Soviets might have responded by using short-range nuclear weapons on U.S. troops, Speed said.
The nuclear missiles in Cuba included SS-4s with a range of 1,100 miles and SS-5s with a range of about double that, Speed said. The Soviets could have attacked almost every American city, except perhaps Seattle, with the missiles, he said.
The United States considered air strikes on the missile sites, which President Kennedy initially supported. Instead, the United States used a naval blockade to keep more missiles out of Cuba.
The standoff concluded when the Soviets publicly agreed to remove the nuclear missiles from Cuba, and Kennedy secretly promised Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that the United States would remove its outdated missiles in Turkey in early 1963.In the dark
While leaders struggled to avert war, airmen like Galvan were kept in the dark.
Galvan said he realized how serious things were when he was given an assault rifle and ordered to guard the armed Air Force F-101 Voodoo fighter planes at the base in Novato.
He said he didn’t know what kind of weapons the jets carried. According to aircraft and weapons manufacturers Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, the planes were designed to carry Air-2 Genie nuclear air-to-air rockets to destroy enemy bombers, or a 3,700-pound nuclear bomb.
Although it’s unknown whether nuclear weapons were actually stationed at Hamilton Air Force Base at that time, there had been nuclear weapons there before, said John Trumbull, the head of the Hamilton Military History Museum. The World War II nuclear bomb “Fat Boy” was stored at Hamilton before it was dropped on Japan, Trumbull said.
Media knew more
The airmen and women at Hamilton didn’t know much about what was going on, Galvan said.
All the Air Force told them was that the Soviets put nuclear missiles in Cuba, he said. People on base got more information from the media than from the Air Force, he added.
What made the situation even tenser was that the U.S. Navy used sonar to harass Soviet submarines, and a nuclear-armed Soviet sub prowled the seas near the U.S. mainland, Speed said. However, no Soviet subs capable of firing nuclear missiles came close enough to the United States to attack, Speed added.
The tensions put the people at Hamilton on alert for about a month after the crisis started, Galvan said.
Galvan said he was one of the people stationed at the base given a parka and ordered to be ready to be sent to Alaska. Other people at the base were told they may be sent to Florida, which is 90 miles from Cuba.
“I thought we were going to go into Cuba,” he said about the United States’ response.
Mark Abramson may be reached at (510) 293-2469, or send e-mail to mabramson@angnewspapers.com
San Leandro man experiences two U.S. attacks
The Daily Review
September 19, 2001
Mark Abramson STAFF WRITER
SAN LEANDRO — TONY SANZO knows all too well what it’s like to see America get attacked and bear witness to a day of infamy.
The 80-year-old San Leandro resident was stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese struck on Dec. 7, 1941, catapulting the United States into World War II.
And last Tuesday he was flying home from Hartford, Conn., when two airliners did a kamikaze-style attack on the World Trade Center. The American Airlines flight he was on was forced to land in Little Rock, Ark.
Sanzo said his memories of the two events will be different.
“Pearl Harbor was more traumatic because I actually saw everything there with my own eyes,” he said.
As a 21-year-old seaman, Sanzo witnessed the destruction while stationed on the USS Pennsylvania, the fleet’s flagship. He escaped almost certain death by being transferred from the USS Arizona a few weeks before. That ship now rests at the bottom of Pearl Harbor as a memorial, and a tomb to more than 1,000 men.
“The first thing I thought of (during the attack on Pearl Harbor) was the guys on the Arizona. My first reaction was, ‘Geez, they are dying.'”
Pearl Harbor survivors say America needs to stay alert. But, just like that sunny Sunday 60 years ago, few could envision what happened last Tuesday.
“We are getting kind of complacent about our freedom,” Sanzo said. “I think it’s a wake-up call.”
This time around, however, he and his wife, Estella Sanzo, 75, didn’t know what was going on. Rumors were flying as his flight began its landing approach. The plane circled for about half an hour.
People on the plane used their cell phones to find out more about what was happening after the pilot told the passengers they were landing because of “a little problem in New York,” Sanzo said.
Meanwhile, the Sanzos’ children were terrified.
“It was frightening,” Donna Sanzo said. “I wasn’t sure which flight they were on.”
She didn’t even know which East Coast airport they had departed from. Her sister, Debbi Sanzo-Davis, a ticket agent for American Airlines, searched frantically to find out what flight they were on. A co-worker told her that her parents had landed safely in Arkansas.
“You feel like they are sitting ducks up there,” Donna Sanzo said.
The older Sanzos were stuck in Little Rock until Friday.
“I felt bad (about the terrorist attacks). It brought back visions of Pearl Harbor,” Sanzo said.
Mark Abramson covers the city of San Leandro. To reach him, call (510) 293-2469 or send e-mail to: mabramson@angnewspapers.com/>mabramson@angnewspapers.com
Photos tell story of attack on aircraft carrier
Belmont veteran’s work featured in book about Japanese dive bombing of USS Franklin in 1945
Contra Costa Times
March 9, 2008
Author: Mark Abramson
MEDIANEWS STAFF
Belmont resident and former Navy photographer Al Bullock’s pictures have been featured in countless books, but he says the latest work his photos appear in is different because it puts the reader in the thick of the action.
Bullock’s photos of the aircraft carrier USS Franklin after a March 1945 attack by a Japanese dive bomber are now featured in the book “The Inferno.”
The book’s author, Joseph Springer, interviewed more than 100 people who survived the attack that left nearly 800 dead and another 2,400 wounded.
The book was released last fall, and Springer said he anticipates a second print run by summer. A recent edition of the magazine “Military History Quarterly” discusses the work and the ship’s history.
It would have been hard to capture what the scene was like as smoke poured from the listing ship 50 miles off the coast of Japan without Bullock’s photos, Springer said Friday in a phone interview from his home in Pleasant Hill, Ill.
“He was the right guy at the right time with the right camera,” Springer said.
“Al’s photographs added a dramatic perspective to the action that coincided with my interviews of the men who were there.”
Springer, 45, said he has been interested in writing “The Inferno” ever since he was 8, when his father showed him a book with one of Bullock’s photographs of the attack. Bullock called him after he heard the book was in the works.
“Al told me he looked at events through the analytical eye of a photographer, and he told me he immediately realized
it was a historic event,” Springer said.
According to the Navy, the Franklin was hit by two 500-pound bombs, which set off a firestorm of exploding aircraft fuel. The Essex-class carrier, with the unlucky designation CV-13, was also being used to test the experimental Tiny Tim 500-pound rocket before it was attacked. The ship survived.
Springer and Bullock, stationed aboard the nearby cruiser USS Santa Fe, disagree with the Navy’s account and believe only one bomb hit the ship. The Japanese “Judy” dive bomber that attacked was only capable of carrying one bomb, Springer said.
Bullock said he was able to shoot such amazing photos because he had the ability to go almost anywhere as a photographer. Despite all the bombs and bullets flying past him and the Franklin’s fires, he was able to stay focused on taking photos. He said that skill served him well as a photojournalist for ABC Channel 7 for 32 years before he retired in 1992.
“Being young, it was sort of exciting,” said Bullock, 85. “Every time I was in battle, I figured I was going swimming.”
Bullock said the Franklin scene was intense; he could remember seeing people jumping off the crippled carrier and recalled the fire spreading to his cruiser as it pulled aside the damaged carrier to help.
“There is so much going on that you just shoot everything you can,” Bullock said.
Bullock described Springer’s book as one of the best he’s read about the Franklin because of the eyewitness accounts. “Joe tells the story so well,” Bullock said. “This is a different type of story.”
Reach Mark Abramson at mabramson@dailynewsgroup.com.
Sheriff’s air squadron team member a seasoned veteran
Oakland Tribune
December 23, 2007
Mark Abramson, MEDIANEWS STAFF
Army Sgt. Deborah LaMere has seen bullets breeze past her face while in Iraq, and she’s endured the military’s infamous packaged “meals, ready-to-eat,” but she said all of that pales in comparison to the maelstrom of gunfire she experienced in December 2005.
The firestorm erupted as LaMere, 33, who lived on the Peninsula for seven years and still considers it home, was flying about 500 feet above the ground near Baquba, Iraq, in her CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter. The helicopter was named Purple Heart, after the medal awarded to wounded servicemen and women, because it had 300 patched-up holes from bullets and shrapnel.
“Everywhere you looked, there were (bullet tracer rounds) flying,” she said. “You couldn’t pick a place to fire back. We didn’t fire back. It was like Armageddon.”
The helicopter took evasive action by dropping to 50 feet above the ground, she said. The pilot had to dodge power lines at that altitude.
Fortunately for LaMere and the others on her chopper, what she thought was Armageddon was really a raucous celebration sparked by a major victory by the Iraqi national soccer team. The people on the helicopter did not know that the shooting was Iraqis firing weapons in jubilation, and they did not fire back because they feared that would give their position away, LaMere said.
“I would have hated to see it if they lost,” LaMere joked. “That was an unforgettable experience.”
LaMere grew up in Orange County and moved to the Bay Area in 1997. Over the following seven years, she lived in several cities in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. She is an enlisted helicopter crew member with the 101st Airborne Division’s Bravo Company, 6th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., and has done everything from maintaining the helicopter to serving as a gunner.
As a member of the 101st, LaMere also experienced constant bombardment by enemy mortars at her base near Tikrit, and she saw the sky filled with helicopters during Operation Swarmer in March 2006 near Baquba.
“We were flying every night. I typically didn’t eat more than once a day, and then I was living on snacks,” LaMere said. “If I got lucky, I had two meals a day.”
The missions ranged from carrying troops for assaults to moving heavy loads and transporting al-Qaida prisoners to places like the Abu Ghraib prison.
LaMere, who served in Iraq from September 2005 to August 2006, will likely see more action when she heads to Afghanistan in January for a 15-month tour. She will be based in the northeastern part of the country, near rugged mountain terrain.
“I think these guys in Afghanistan are more hard-core, and they seem to use RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) more than the Iraqis did,” LaMere said.
But she said that after working for years in the Silicon Valley computer industry, she would not trade the rigors of military life for anything.
Her desire to serve was sparked by 9/11. But before she joined the Army in March 2004, LaMere flew patrol missions with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Air Squadron, of which she continues to be a member. And her father, the late Thomas LaMere, served as a Marine in Korea and Vietnam in CH-46s, which are similar to a CH-47 but smaller.
“We did a lot of homeland security missions,” LaMere said of her service with the sheriff’s air squadron. “We also do search and rescue and a lot of narcotics task force missions.”
LaMere continues to fly missions for the squadron whenever she gets back to San Mateo County.
“She was very active in the squadron and she flew a lot of missions for us, and then she decided to help out in the armed forces,” squadron commander Fred Koehler said. “Since she has joined, she says the Army is her life, and she loves it.”
Another member of the squadron, Carl Mauck, met LaMere at the San Carlos Airport, where she used to keep her private plane, and persuaded her to join the sheriff’s squadron. Mauck and LaMere have since become close friends.
“With her background, it makes her invaluable to the squad. The military makes her that much sharper,” Mauck, 71, a retired airline pilot, said. “There is a lot of camaraderie. Everyone in the squad loves and respects her.”
Veterans battle to get landmark renovated
Lompoc Record and Lee Central Coast Newspapers
March 14, 2006
Author: Mark Abramson/Staff Writer
Weddings and banquets, fund-raisers and government events and other good times have filled Lompoc’s Veterans Memorial Building since 1936, but the ravages of time have taken a toll on the historic county-owned building.
Although the venerable building still sparkles on the outside as sitting under a canopy of trees along South H Street, its beauty is only skin deep, veterans say. Many of thoseveterans have become familiar with the building by hanging out at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1717 bar and club in the basement and the American Legion Post 125 Post’s room on the top floor. Other veterans organizations have offices and meetings in the building as well.
“The county has more or less abandoned maintenance,” said Kathy McCullough, who represents Vandenberg American Legion Post 125 on the Lompoc Veterans Council. “We get lip service and nothing is done. This is a really needed community center.”
Wood planks in the main hall wobble and are worn away. Water damage is visible in the hall and other parts of the building. Termites have infested several areas of the facility and the restroom adjacent to the American Legion Auxiliary’s room reeks and is in shambles. According to Gil Sattler, the building’s volunteer manager, the kitchen stove may work fine and should be considered an asset, but came from a World War II destroyer.
Sattler alleges that the county has diverted millions of dollars earmarked for the building’s maintenance to other projects.
The county has made some efforts to improve the building by installing new tile in the kitchen, sending someone Friday to look at a leaky roof in the trophy room before repairs can be done and by taking some other small steps, he said.
Many veterans say they have tried for years to get the county to fix it up and that state laws require that the owner maintain the building. Veterans have volunteered their time to do what they can. They insist that they will continue to soldier on in the cause, but say they’re not optimistic.
Their efforts have included showing 4th District supervisors, past and present, the deteriorating condition and getting the media spotlight shined on the situation several years ago.
“It seems to fall on deaf ears,” said Joe McCormick, a Vietnam Veteran and VFW Post 570 commander, about the lobbying for help. “We are not giving up, we are going to keep going.”
Supervisor Joni Gray said she has seen the building, but the county lacks the money needed for renovations.
“The county is barely keeping its head above water on that building,” Gray said. “It is definitely the most beautiful veterans building in our county. We’ve asked for federal funds (to help maintain the building).”
Gray said she offered the city of Lompoc to take over operations of the building if the county provided enough money to repair and restore it. She pointed to how Santa Maria operates its veterans building as proof that the idea could work.
“Our poor building, it’s got so many problems. It kind of got lost. It’s like an orphaned child,” she said.
Lompoc City Administrator Gary Keefe acknowledged that the city could be interested in the building, if it was in better shape and the revenues it generated paid for its own maintenance.
“The county has offered to provide a certain amount of money to improve the condition of the building, but I don’t believe that is enough money to adequately restore the building to meet our standards,” Keefe said.
The amount of money offered to the city was not available.
The building could be an asset to the city because it is larger than the Lompoc Valley Community Center and the community center that is planned inside the existing hospital building when a new medical facility in town is built, Keefe said. A spruced-up veterans building has the potential to attract small conventions to Lompoc, he added.
“I look at that building and I think that something needs to be done to save and improve that building, but I haven’t come up with any ideas that I think are workable,” Keefe said.
Mark Abramson can be reached at 737-1057, or mabramson@lompocrecord.com.
Mark Abramson -- Journalist and Writer 
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