Camp Holloway Discussion Forum - Research Archive - 11/11/00 to 01/21/10

Quincy, Mass. - Vietnam Veterans Day

Yesterday, Monday, March 28th, was Vietnam Veterans Day in Quincy, Massachusetts.

The town of Quincy, which lost 48 sons in Vietnam, has a forty-foot high stone clocktower on the waterfront as a memorial to those men.

Until a year ago, there were 47 names on the memorial.

The story begins with an Air Force pilot from Quincy named Alan Brudno being shot down over North Vietnam, and spending more than seven years as POW. He returned home when all the others were released but, tragically, he committed suicide only four months later. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund refused to add Alan Brudno's name to The Wall. Joe Galloway took up his cause, as did John McCain and others, and last year, more than 20 years after his death, Brudno's name was added to The Wall in DC. Quincy's veterans then felt they should add his name to their memorial also. The Quincy Memorial has two columns of names, the first column with 23 names, the second with 24. The spot left open on the first column was the very first, top postition in the column. Nobody knows why that spot was originally left open, but now it seems to everybody that it was left for Alan Brudno, and that is where his name now appears.

Yesterday, Joe Galloway came into town. Quincy is a working-class town south of Boston, mostly Irish-American, and mostly Marine Corps veterans. They invited Larry Gwin and asked him to invite other Army vets, so Shakey and I went, along with 6 or 8 other Vietnam guys we all know from the local area.

They had about 150 people for lunch at a local hotel, then the Quincy police motorcycle squad escorted a flying motorcade to the waterfront, where the Quincy Vietnam Memorial is. There was a very nice ceremony there and Joe spoke for a while to about four or five hundred people; Gold Star mothers, the Brudno family members, other KIA family members, politicians, police, firefighters, school children. Four A-10s from the Air National Guard did a "Missing Man" flyover in honor of Brudno. Then the police motorcade was off again to a local restaurant for dinner for the original invitees. Very, very nice.

I have a few pictures I will try to get posted in the next day or so.

Bob K--

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Quincy, Mass. - Vietnam Veterans Day
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Galloway at USCGA - New London CT
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Photo Album - Shakey in Custody
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Re: Quincy, Mass. - Vietnam Veterans Day
Re: Quincy, Mass. - Vietnam Veterans Day