Saturday, June 14, 2008

Ogden Community Treasure Trentelman Waxes Poetic Yet Again

Get the straight skinny here on a heart-warming story, per Trentelman

Extremely touching article in the Standard-Examiner today. When it comes to the ability to "strum" the strings of the human heart, nobody in the print media anywhere does it better than the Std-Ex's Ogden City Treasure, Charles Trentelman.

We incorporate below the lead paragraphs of today's awesome Trentelman article:

OGDEN — The replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall on display at Newgate Mall may be connecting a dead soldier’s daughter with relatives who didn’t even know she existed.
They’re still working on it and hope this article helps, but the guys at Ogden’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1481, which is sponsoring the wall’s visit, are still getting goose bumps just at the idea that this is happening.
The wall replica, part of the “Old Gloryous” Flag Day observance, is a halfsize, 250-foot-long duplicate of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. It shows the names of every American killed during the Vietnam War, 1959 to 1975.
Dennis Howland, a member of the post, said he and others were assembling the wall Wednesday when a woman approached and asked if she could get help finding a name.
“I said, ‘Sure,’ so we went up and found the name in the books. We went over and I showed her where it was, then stepped away, and she put her hand on the name and started to cry.
“She came over to me a few minutes later and said, ‘That was my father. I never knew him.’ ”
Today's Trentelman piece is truly awesome, we believe.

Read Trentelman's full story to to learn about the happy, albeit bittersweet story ending.

Dang. We'll betcha a burger at "Big Jim's" that Trentelman will soon be appearing on national TeeVee with Oprah.

And don't forget we gave you all a heads-up about the Ogden patriotic event that's still running through Sunday.

We already knew, BTW, that Ogden's Vietnam Vets would be showing up in force to attend this event. We also suspected that veterans of other US wars would show up to express their solidarity -- which they have.

What's important though, even for Ogden citizens who've never "worn the uniform," please.. at at least cruise down to the Newgate Mall to pay your respects.

Vietnam War vets remain today the least appreciated soldiers in any American War. They desperately deserve even this belated tribute.

Time to close the books on that, wethinks.

2 comments:

Monotreme said...

Trentelman is a great writer, and a darn nice guy as well.

I'm proud to say I've spent a good bit of time shooting the breeze with him. Sometimes, I even appear (in my superhero disguise) in his column.

Good work. I hope this family is reunited at last.

RudiZink said...

Got this email from one of our gentle readers:

"Rudi, I am in Chicago on a trip and I am afraid I will miss the Vietnam Wall visit. My brother ******* ******** (same Mom, different Dad) was killed in Vietnam in 1966. I first found his name on the original Wall in Washington D.C. and I am sorry I will miss the visit. If you go over, give a little nod to my ****** if you would.

I could not change my trip plans when I found out the Wall was coming to our area.

Thanks, ******* *********'


Rudi: You can bet your boots I will.

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