Positivity: An honor long due a young Vietnam hero
Howard Wilkinson’s underlying story of Duke Heller and Eddie Van Oliver Jr. (”More than a number — Duke Heller made sure vet’s sacrifice wasn’t lost to history”) is here. It will open in a new window, so you won’t lose your place. Go there.
This is the full text of a Saturday Cincinnati Enquirer editorial:
It may have taken us 39 years to learn Eddie Van Oliver Jr.’s story, but now that we’ve heard it we will never forget it.
As reporter Howard Wilkinson recounted in a story that captures the classic tragedies and loyalties created by war, Eddie was just 19 when he was killed serving as point man for his Marine platoon in Vietnam.
All that died that day in 1969 in the jungle, we will never be able to say. His life seemed as if it were just getting started.
But however long or short it is, the life of a fallen warrior is a full arc. It is a life of service so complete, of sacrifice so unselfish that, while other lives are measured in years and months, these lives are measured in brave acts and intentions, and never found wanting.
Duke Heller knew such a life should not be forgotten.
Duke was a young Marine himself, a Cleves native who had never heard of Eddie’s West End neighborhood, so limited were both young men’s experiences.
The day Eddie died, Duke and his fellow Marines undertook a mission most of us could not have completed. They wrapped Eddie’s body in a poncho and carried him for nearly a week so he could leave behind that jungle and come home.
A few years later during a visit to Spring Grove Cemetery, Duke learned that return was to a numbered grave, with no acknowledgement of the sacrifice Eddie had made.
Duke never forgot Eddie but he knew that without some memorial, very few people would ever know his story. Duke worked to secure a government grave marker but got only frustration. But after he told Eddie’s story to Jeff Foran, an Air Force veteran and VFW post commander who knew his way around the bureaucracy, the oversight was set to rights.
The marker was put in place earlier this week. A memorial ceremony is planned for 2 p.m. Sunday at the cemetery.
The pain underlying this story is palpable. The loss of a 19-year-old man, the “what-ifs” of a grieving family, the young Marine’s fears that materialized and the hopes that never will.
But woven with that pain is evidence of the best in human nature.
It is the bond that, in some of the worst moments of their lives, human beings sometimes wordlessly unite with each other.
Eddie and Duke knew each other only briefly, but long enough to understand that they were both Marines and Americans and, in those shared associations, had some obligation to each other.
It took 39 years, but Duke kept up his end.
Two young Cincinnatians went off to war 40 years ago. They both came home heroes.
If you didn’t click the link above, go here for Howard Wilkinson’s story.
