Rosemead Honors 6 Killed in Vietnam

About 60 people gathered in the courtyard of Rosemead City Hall on Saturday to honor six who died in the Vietnam War. The ceremony may have seemed a distant echo to an era that shook the country, but relatives of the dead soldiers say the memories are still fresh.

“This is a good gesture. . . . It means my son’s memory will live on. But the entire occasion has brought back to me what a trying time my family and this nation went through,” said Della Craig, 66, whose 20-year-old son Michael was killed in Cambodia 21 years ago.

The city decided to erect the monument in 1986, more than 11 years after U.S. troops left Vietnam. Rosemead Mayor Dennis McDonald said the City Council had decided to undertake the $35,000 project at the urging of Jay T. Imperial, a former mayor and now the city’s mayor pro tem.

Honoring the Sacrifice

“This is long overdue,” said Imperial, a veteran of the Korean War, explaining why the city of 47,700 had decided to erect its own monument. “We don’t have a record of honoring our heroes, but we have to do anything we can for people who have made the ultimate sacrifice.”

For several months, the city looked up addresses on military rolls, made announcements at council meetings and advertised in local newspapers for families of Rosemead soldiers killed in Vietnam to come forward to have their names placed on the monument. The families of Michael A. Shands, Michael D. Craig, John E. Lewis and Tommy R. Thomas responded, but the city has not been successful in contacting the relatives of Dale L. Blume and Ramiro M. Mora, the two other soldiers whose names are etched on the Indian black granite monument.

Above the murmur of the courtyard’s fountain, the ceremony’s keynote speaker B. T. Collins, deputy state treasurer and one of California’s most renowned Vietnam veterans, lamented the “shoddy treatment” given to Vietnam veterans after they returned from the war.

Several people, including families of the four soldiers, reached for handkerchiefs as Collins told stories of his service and his return to his former battleground two years ago. “Nobody minds dying, but nobody wants to die alone,” said Collins, who lost an arm and a leg in the war. “If they die alone, they know they will be forgotten.”

After the ceremony, Roy Thomas, 73, Tommy’s father, said he would never forget his son’s bravery when he decided to go to Vietnam. The younger Thomas was a student at East Los Angeles College when he was drafted.

“He didn’t hesitate. He knew it was the right thing to do, and I think he would have done it all over again,” said Thomas, who received a Purple Heart for his service in World War II.

Della Craig broke down at times as she spoke of the loss of her son. She talked about Michael’s fascination with helicopters that led him to enroll in a mechanic’s program at Los Angeles Trade and Technical School. Michael, a member of Rosemead High Class of 1966, was killed when his helicopter came under heavy fire during a mission in Cambodia.

Craig also told about how Michael would write home saying “he didn’t think he could kill anybody,” and about how he had sent home a Polaroid camera demanding that they mail pictures, especially of his niece, Lisa, then 11 months old.

Lisa’s mother, Cheryl Grana, 44, said that among her brother’s belongings was a picture, encrusted with old adhesive tape, of the infant. “We knew he had stuck it up on a wall so many miles away,” Grana said.

On Saturday, Lisa, now 22, said she sometimes thinks about how her life would have been if Michael were alive. “I look at all these pictures and they told me how much he cared about me. . . . Sometimes I feel part of me is missing.”