About 170 Vietnam War veterans from the Hudson Valley region were honored for their services during a ceremony at the Newburgh Armory Unity Center on April 1.
It’s the second such event in the region, which will be hosted annually until 2025 to honor as many veterans and surviving family members as possible, according to co-coordinator LisaMarie Hintze.
Hailing from a military family and long active in local veteran events, Hintze said she was happy to see the event grow from honoring eight attendees last year to standing room only this time.
Christian Farrell, Orange County Veterans Services director and the event’s keynote speaker, thanked the veterans for their sacrifices and commended their endurance in the face of hardships.
“You were 20 years old on average when you went to serve your country in jungles thousands and thousands of miles away, you endured hell, and you came home,” he said.
“In your own country, you went through it again.
“Today, we honor and say thank you to a generation of American service members who were never properly thanked [or] never thanked at all.”
County Executive Steve Neuhaus presented pins to every Vietnam War veteran at the ceremony.
“Sadly, many Vietnam veterans were denied a proper welcome when they returned home after bravely serving our country on the battlefield,” Neuhaus said. “Their service and sacrifices will never be forgotten, and we appreciate the many contributions that these men and women have made to Orange County.”
Pine Bush resident Mike Marco said this was the first event honoring Vietnam War veterans he ever had since he came home from the battlefield in the 1960s.
“I’m glad that [we] are finally being recognized,” he told The Epoch Times.
Dutchess County resident John Polasko served in the Vietnam War and came home to find himself being shunned and spit on by people in his own country.
He said he was deeply confused for 30 years before finally straightening it out.
“I took lives, generations of lives—I know that, and I live with that,” he said. “Taking a life is not fun.”
Though bitter, the experience made for deeper insights about life, he said.
“I made peace with myself after a while, realizing that I was meant to be here for a reason; that is, to pass on any knowledge, light, or good that I have,” he added.
Polasko said he hoped for more recognition of Vietnam War veterans down the road.
About 2.7 million American men and women served in Vietnam, with about 58,000 killed in the war and 1,500 or so still missing, according to data from the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
More than 300,000 were wounded during the war; more than 700 were prisoners of war.
In 2012, President Barack Obama signed a proclamation to designate March 29 as the annual observance of Vietnam War Veterans Day.
The date was chosen in part because the last U.S. troops departed Vietnam on the same day in 1972.
Five years later, then-President Donald Trump signed into law the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act, which designated every March 29 as National Vietnam War Veterans Day.
