Panel 48W – Line 9.  If you go to the Wall – the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. – that is where you will find “Leon David Willard”. Born in Christiansburg, Virginia, on April 13, 1948, killed in action on August 13, 1968 in Long An Province, South Vietnam. You can find the details at the wall-usa.com. In country 24 days, died from “multiple fragmentation wounds”. PFC – E3, 25th Infantry Division. “Hostile ground casualty”. 

If Leon and I were to meet someday in the afterlife, I doubt he would remember me. He was Christiansburg High Class of 1966, 5 years ahead of me. I remember him primarily because he was a very good baseball player. A great little, slick fielding infielder who threw right but batted lefty.
Back in those days we played baseball on vacant lots all summer long if we were not at Kiwanis Park for organized games and if we were too young for summer jobs. Leon and his best friend, Tink  Alderman, came to our neighborhood game occasionally because they were close friends with my neighbor, Carl King. They all loved baseball like I did – we played from sunup to sundown, ages 7 – 16 or so, no coaches, no umpires. Leon also played in the marching band at CHS and was the classic Christiansburg kid of the time – active in school, respectful, well-liked. A simple kid of that era, working class parents, with ambitions and dreams. And he loved his baseball. 

 I remember my Dad taking me to Wytheville for a district championship game when our neighbor  Carl pitched a great game for CHS but  we lost a close one to Hillsville High. I was probably 11 or 12. I  think Leon was on that team but frankly I am not sure. In my memory he was. 

I remember Leon always wearing a Cincinnati Reds ball cap – the one with the red bill and  white top – the one they wore when the Reds won the pennant in 1961. His best friend Tink always wore an LA Dodgers cap – a rivalry there. You never saw one of them without the other.  I also recall that each summer (or maybe it was only one) they took the train (the Norfolk & Western) from the depot in Cambria to Cincinnati, where Leon’s aunt lived, and they went to the late great Crosley Field to see the Reds play the Dodgers. At least that is my memory again.

I did not know Leon’s family. I don’t remember if he had siblings. I don’t know how they dealt with the news they received on some hot day in August 1968 that Leon had died in a rice paddy  in a country they probably had never heard of five years before. I was about to enter my sophomore year of high school and I wish I remember how I felt. I am sure it was tragic and shocking news to me, as it was to everyone in town at that time.

Christiansburg had about 5,000 residents then, more or less, and everybody knew everybody to some degree. The war and the evening news body counts were just starting to grab our national psyche and squeeze it by the neck.  At my age, I probably blocked it out. Leon was still just a kid to me, an older kid but still a kid, certainly he couldn’t have been killed in a war.  Too terrible to accept as reality. He had lacked money for college, was working to save up, and he was drafted. I am sure I just refused to accept it.

Was Leon’s death in vain? Every death in every war can be questioned. Why? What was the war for? Was anything accomplished? Why Leon?  I have no answers. I know that this war affected my generation in ways that are still being measured and dealt with. I was lucky enough to be just (barely) young enough to have avoided Vietnam. I have family and friends who still suffer from their time there, if they are lucky enough to still be around. Leon was not so lucky. 

I refuse to conclude that it was a waste – simply because I don’t want to think that Leon and the other brave men and women like him fought and died for no reason at all. I want to think that somehow Vietnam was part of the process that led to the fall of the USSR. But I don’t know. I am not sure how much it matters now. I do know that Leon did what his country asked him to do and that he paid the ultimate price. At age 20. Leon never got to raise a family, he never got to help his parents as they aged and passed on, he never got to see the glory years of the Cincinnati Reds and theBig Red Machine.  

In recent years, it seems that people have tried to expand the meaning of Memorial Day beyond its intended purpose. Many want to see it as a chance to recognize loved ones who are no longer with us – family, friends, etc.  Many think that it is a time to thank veterans (that’s what Veterans Day is for) or to recognize those currently in the armed forces (that’s what Armer Forces Day is for).  While this is understandable in some respects, there are other times and other ways to remember loved ones and dear friends who have passed away and to honor veterans and current military members.  

On this special day, however,  we should stop and remember those who gave their lives in the service of their country in the military, those who made the “ultimate sacrifice”. So, when you see  a flag pass by or have a beer at a backyard barbecue this weekend, please remember Leon and all the other brave men and women who served their country well and did not come back. 

I read the “Bedford Boys” a few years ago – a great book about the many young men from the small town of Bedford, Virginia, who died on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. The most poignant of all the story lines to me was how the wives and girlfriends of these soldiers lived the remainder of their lives with the mental images of their twenty-something year old lovers and sweethearts and husbands never growing older. These soldiers who gave their lives were always 20 something in their memories,  as these ladies themselves grew older and passed on. 

It’s like that for me with Leon. My memory of him will always be seeing him in his Cincinnati Red’s cap, knowing just the right way to field a ground ball. RIP Leon. You served your country well.