Sergeant First Class Sheldon Hartsfield

The Mid-America Veterans Museum is a nonprofit organization that relies on donations to share and preserve veterans' stories. The podcast features educational discussions with hosts interviewing veterans like First Sergeant Sheldon Hartsfield, who comes from a long line of military men. Sheldon discusses his family's military history, including a Buffalo Soldier ancestor and his father's service with the Tuskegee Airmen. The conversation highlights the impact of military service on Sheldon's identity and upbringing. The Mid-America Veterans Museum is a 501c3 nonprofit business. Your donations serve to further the museum's mission of sharing and preserving the stories of our veterans. To donate, visit mavm.org and click on Donate. The content covered in this podcast is for general informational, historical, and educational purposes only. Discussions about historical events, military service, personal experiences, or sensitive topics are presented for educational and archival purposes. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by the host and or guest do not necessarily reflect the official policy or endorsement of the Mid-America Veterans Museum. Neither the organization, host, director, nor the guest shall at any time be liable for the content covered causing offense, distress, or any other reaction. Welcome to the Operation Insight Podcast from the Mid-America Veterans Museum with your hosts, Jason Galvin and Sergeant Ethan Gross. Well, welcome back, family. We have a very special guest in our studio today at the museum, and I'm very excited to host this person. And, Ethan, go ahead and kick us off. Thank you, Jason. I'm excited as well. We have what I consider a local legend here, First Sergeant Sheldon Hartsfield. Now, I say First Sergeant because that's technically his final title when he retired out of the Army National Guard. Sheldon's service in the Marines, though, started in 1968 and ended in 1977, and then he transferred from the Marines to the Marine Retirement Home. All Marines call that the Marine Retirement Home. That's the first I heard of that, but I kind of like it. Three-car retirement. It is what it is. So he joined the Army National Guard as soon as he ended his term of service in the Marines in 1977 and retired from the Guard in 1988. Currently, Sheldon serves as the National Third Vice Commander of AMVETS. Previously, he held the title of State Commander for the Missouri AMVETS Chapter, and he's also a member of the AMVETS Honor Guard here in Missouri. Sheldon's been the subject of a song through Songs for Heroes. The title of that song is Just What We Do by Collins Horton and Ty Sham. It's a song that I highly recommend to our listeners, and I'm very grateful to those two artists. I'm grateful to John Eason of Songs for Heroes for presenting that song to the public. It's a beautifully written song about Sheldon and his experience. Well, Sergeant, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. So a few things. Chase and I were talking before we started, and I warned him, not that he didn't already know, but I warned him that there's going to be probably too much to cover in our format today, but we're going to do the best that we can because you've lived quite a full life, and you've had a lot of different accolades and experiences that we want to cover. The first thing I want to talk about, because we don't get a lot of New Yorkers here, we're looking to change that. We're always happy to have people from all across the country, but you're one of our first New Yorkers. Born in Jamaica, New York in November of 1949, and for those who don't know, Jamaica is in the Queens borough of New York City. Tell us about your experience growing up in New York. Well, I come from a military family, so discipline was always there. New York City was a different city back then than what it is now. I come from a very tight-knit family. It seemed like any time we did something, it was always with family, so that's kind of how we grew up. When you say it's different from how it is now, I think I understand what you mean, but if you would, because you got to live it, tell us what Jamaica, New York was like back then. It was my earlier days, because I guess from being born until about, I don't know, maybe five, six years old when I lived in there. Jamaica, New York at the time wasn't much different than how it is now. Small little suburban kind of area. We were right up the street from the St. Albans Naval Hospital. My father ran a dry cleaner's on the corner. Walk around the corner and go down to the house. Basically, every day, middle-class family, nothing special. You mentioned something that I want us to get into, and we'll just get into it now. You come from a long line of military men. I'm going to go through the list here that I have. Your great-great-grandfather was a Buffalo soldier. That's correct. Your grandfather fought in World War I. That's correct. Your father was a grounds crew member for the Tuskegee Airmen. That's correct. Your Uncle Jack fought in World War II in Korea. That's correct. And your older brother fought not alongside you, but also fought in Vietnam. Right. They didn't allow us to be there at the same time. Sure. I had to wait. He was in country when I was due to be deployed, and they held up my deployment until he came home. That's kind of that saving Private Ryan rule, right? The Sullivan Act. Sullivan Act. Yeah. Well, if you can, Sheldon, I'd really appreciate our audience to get even just a little bit of a history about the Buffalo soldiers and the Tuskegee Airmen. I'll start with this, just the basics. So the Buffalo soldiers were actually originally formed in the 10th Cavalry Regiment, and that was out of Fort Leavenworth. And you and I were just talking about the memorial there, the beautiful memorial on post. That happened in September of 1866. And funny enough, this is a tie-in to my own Army experience, so I wanted to make sure to mention it. By 1913, the 10th Cavalry was stationed primarily out of Fort Huachuca in Arizona. That's where I attended my AIT, military intelligence. And they were temporarily led for a short time by General Pershing, a Laclede, Missouri native. So I wanted to make sure to mention that. That's correct. That's a St. Louis, Missouri-type connection. But if you would, and then the Tuskegee Airmen are very famous. Lots of fantastic films have been made about their service in World War II, but they were the first African-American military aviators in our armed forces. If you would, Sheldon, from whatever you have to offer us, tell us about the Buffalo soldiers and the Tuskegee Airmen. I'm only 75 years old, so I'm not old enough to remember my great-great-grandfather. I have pictures. And in my younger days, my great-grandmother told me stories. I have a group picture of his unit. And essentially, he left South Carolina and went out west. As a lot of African-American men did back then, you went where the opportunity was not that great. So you went where the money was, and you went where the opportunity was, and that's where he went. I would like to think that he started the— because I tell people that I have an unbroken line of military service, 200 years in my family. So look at him as the starting point. I have stories of him on the prairie and things like that and some of the pictures. It was, as I understand, quite a daunting job to do. And all I have really is stories that I've heard from the elders in my family back when I was young. I do remember a coat that was made from buffalo hide, an early coat that he wore. And I believe in the picture I have, he has it on. Wow, that's awesome. What a cool artifact. That is very cool. So I never got a chance to meet him. So, you know, all I always had was stories. I would have loved to have met him. I can only imagine, you know, those stories of riding through the prairies and those kind of things. What was his name? Lee. Lee. And it was Hartsfield, is that right? No, his last name was Gross, G-R-O-S-S, Lee Gross. G-R-O-S-S, okay, not that different from mine. Another cool connection we have here. Tell us about the Tuskegee Airmen now. Dad. Dad wasn't a pilot. Dad's forte was cars. He liked to, you know, work on cars, engines and those things. So when the three brothers, my father and his brothers, decided to join the military, they all went off into different fields. The story that I got was the CO's car broke down, and instead of duty, which was kind of funny because I wound up in the exact same situation, he was able to fix the CO's car. He realized he was good at working on motors, and next thing he knew he was in Italy repairing planes, engines on planes and things. At that point in time, was it with the Tuskegee specifically? Yes. It was already, okay. Specifically with them, yes. It was in the earlier days, in the beginning, just before they got the red tails and then during the red tails, that red tail that was painted on the tail of the aircraft wasn't always there. It was there before and during. So then he returned to, I think it was Moden Field in Alabama. Yes, in Alabama, yes. I got to visit there. Yes. And have gone to Tuskegee University, walk around the campus, just to see if I could kind of get that feel of, I think you understand this, what I'm about to say, that feeling of history. I get the same thing when I go to West Point. It's that feeling of the history that's there. Knowing the people that walked there before you. Yes. If you can kind of get into that almost kind of dreamy state, you almost feel like you're there with them. You know, being in the military, if you know, you know. I mean, when you go into places like there or West Point for that, the history is so great. It's so embedded, even in the soil. I mean, once you get there, you feel it. You feel it. That's kind of how that is, yeah. Well, I think that's an amazing family history and amazing family lineage. I'm probably going to stumble over this question, so, you know, bear with me here, Sheldon. Did your family history and family lineage, the Buffalo Soldier, Lee, your father and the Tuskegee Airmen, did that help you with your black identity? How did it affect your black identity? Maybe that's a better way to put that. Growing up, I was raised in a colorblind family. If you looked at the kids that I hung out with as a kid, when you talk about diversity, one guy was French, two guys were Puerto Rican, then another guy was black, Italian. We just, I mean, it was like we were just the kids from the neighborhood. Sure. There was no racial divide. That's how I grew up, too, being a military kid. I didn't even know the difference. We didn't know the difference. I didn't know the difference until someone pointed it out to me. And that's the truth. We didn't know the difference. We were kids we hung out with. We enjoyed hanging out and doing kid stuff, crazy kid stuff. We rode our bikes. The old adage of, you know, you get out of the house in the morning and as long as you're home by the time the street lights came on, that was true. Yeah. I mean, and that's what you did, okay? You might have came home for lunch and then out, you know. We weren't allowed to be inside. You're right. I mean, you laugh, but that's, you know. That is very true. That is very true. What are you doing in the house? Are you sick? Get out. Yeah. Or I'll find something for you to do in the house. That's why we were never there. We didn't want them to find something for us to do. And that was the chore. Yeah. Yeah, I'm out. See you later. And that's also, I think, the beauty of New York. It's such a melting pot of culture. It is. I mean, we all, everybody lives, you know, you never knew who your next door neighbor was or, you know, where they came from. Yeah. I mean, every place. My whole neighborhood. I lived in a predominantly Italian neighborhood. And it depends on where in the block you lived. Okay. Like I said, Puerto Rican. Sure. The blacks lived over here. The Italians lived over here. Yeah. Regular guys lived over here. You know. Yeah. We all walked the same, to school the same way. We all went to the same schools in the same neighborhood. We all graduated from the same high schools. That's how it was. This is a nice tie-in to something that, about your family, your mother specifically, that wasn't normal. Is it correct that your mother was one of the first African-American models in New York City? Yes, she was. Tell us more about her. Beautiful woman. She got that, they had a thing called, in New York, called Miss Subways. And they would take pictures of women. And, as I remember, I guess it was every month they had a different Miss Subways. And as you rode the New York Subways, they'd have her picture up there. A long time, she became Miss Subways. And got a modeling deal out of it. Did some modeling. That's awesome. Was the purpose of that some sort of advertising, specific advertising, or just photographs? You mean the Miss Subways? It was a city thing. It was a city promo thing to get people to ride the subways. And, you know, that was their deal back then. And so they had a Miss Subways. It was always a Miss something. So, you know, they had a Miss Subways. She was the very first black Miss Subways. That's amazing. And got a little modeling contract out of it. And your father came from Tennessee? Yes. Paris, Tennessee. Paris, Tennessee. How did they meet? In New York. They just met at a social function. My mother was a very beautiful woman. My father was a good looking man. And I guess, you know, what happens, happens. First came my brother, then me. So that's kind of how it worked. So let's get into your brother a little bit, because that's going to lead to your service then. Did you have any indication that your brother was going to join before you did? Oh, yeah. What were the telltale signs? We knew. Okay. We knew. I come from a military family. I didn't play cops and robbers. I didn't play cowboys and Indians. We played war. I played with the little green army men. We came from a military family. Okay. Sure. I made Grandma and Great-Grandma mad because I was supposed to be an Episcopal preacher. My brother Lee, named after my great-great-grandfather Leland, he had already went into the Army, so I was the last one that they were trying to save. So they almost had me talked into going to the seminary, and then I remember that moment sitting on the front porch of our house where I said, Nope, and I went down and signed up. Boy, were they mad at me. How old were you when you signed up? 17. Did you have to get signed off on at that point? Yeah, I did, but I didn't go in at 17. I went early entry. Gotcha. Went in right about at turning 18. Gotcha. Not to belabor the point, Sheldon, but can you recall what it was that changed your mind at that moment? What was that factor? Vietnam had a lot to do with it. And coming from a military family, there is, you know, you've got to look at it. Between my father and my uncles, we grew up hearing the stories. We grew up knowing what military service was about. I did a personal battle with going into the seminary as opposed to serving the country first. It didn't fit right. I just felt that I needed to get that done. It was part of the family. It was who we were, and I just felt that I needed to do that. It was time to go into the seminary later. That's what I still wanted to do. I knew I was in cadet groups. I was a sea cadet, those kind of things, so I was prepared for it. I thought I had a quote here, Sheldon, I wanted to read off. Well, what I wanted to ask you, I think I can recall. I think I can recall what it was. I thought I had written it down. Well-informed, needs no training. Tell me about this moment. Classification day. In Marine Corps Basic, and I'm assuming they still do it to this day, they had a day called Classification Day. That is when they haul you to a room, and they try to figure out what you either know or what you don't know. That's where they can decide if you're going to be a regular grunt or you're going to do something different. I was a school photographer in high school, really good with a camera. I knew all the ins and outs. That was before digital cameras, so you had to know film speeds and ASAs and F-stops and all that, plus how to operate in a dark room. I knew this because I majored in photography. It was my art major in high school. Here comes Classification Day, so they're asking, what do you do? I had a limited grasp of Spanish because I took Spanish. I was able to hold a few conversations, but not as well as I wanted to, but still. They said, what do you do? I said, I take pictures. I'm a photographer. They sent me to the photo lab. In the photo lab, the guy comes in and asks me a bunch of questions. He had a wall that was full of pictures. He says, there's something wrong with every one of these pictures. He says, I'm going to leave the room, and I'm going to come back in about ten minutes, and I want you to tell me what's wrong with the pictures. He comes back. I tell him what's wrong with the pictures. Some of it was the photographer's error. Some of it was an error in the dark room. It doesn't make all the difference if you knew. We had this conversation, and he looked at me, and he says, okay, well, there's nothing else I can say. This card that they give you, that they send you back to Classification, it said, well-informed, needs no instruction, recommend OJT. I take it back. It says, ah, we've got a combat photographer here. All right, well, cool. I move on, and we go through. Classification is probably in the second or third week of a 12-week boot camp. I finished the greater majority of the boot camp. I'm going to be a photographer. You have a time toward the end of the boot camp where they sit you around. I think you saw that if you ever saw a full metal jacket. Sure. Everybody around told them what they were going to do. Well, that actually did happen. They sat us around. They called your name, told you what your MOS was. And my MOS was comm. So they sent me to communications electronic school, no camera. There was a gap they needed to fill. How do you think that happened? Have you come to understand why they made that decision? It's the military infinite wisdom. They'll tell you where you go. Exactly. I sent you two pictures. One picture, I was standing in the barracks. That was comm. school. I was about to graduate from comm. school. The second picture was Antos Battalion, and that was just before I went to Vietnam. But I spent the first tour in Vietnam boots on the ground being a radio operator. Okay, well, then that's when things change. Sure. So, you know, I start off communications with a communications MOS. And by the end of my career, I was military police in corrections. So there was a lot of things that happened in between there. I was a bodyguard. Chaser. Chaser. Well, the chaser is a funny thing, and you know that's a Marine Corps thing. If you get a chaser card in a Marine Corps, it haunts you. So they woke me up one night, and they said they had a prisoner that had to go to the brink. I said, do you have a chaser card? No. Well, we'll give you one. You know, taking up the headquarters, you take the guy to the brink, you come back, you think it's over. Now you have a chaser card. Yeah. Now you're qualified. So now they wake you up all the time. Okay. And that's fine. But I didn't realize that when you move to another location, you know, a different duty station, that chaser card went with you. So, you know, you look at your record and go, oh, you got a chaser card. Oh, yeah. After two tours in Vietnam, I wound up working at Correctional Center at the headquarters, 3rd Naval District. And we did a lot of literal cross-country chasing, taking it from here to there. And that's when my second tour in Vietnam caught up with me. Well, you've covered a lot of ground, and you've actually hit on many different things I want to touch on. Just really quickly, you mentioned Full Metal Jacket. I should mention, as with other guests, Sheldon and I have talked about this, I was able to watch your Veterans History Project video interview. And in it, you said that full – and I want to make sure I understand this correctly – you said that Full Metal Jacket is probably the closest representation of Marine basic training that you've ever seen on film. That's correct. That is absolutely correct. The film instructor. Yeah. Army. Yeah. Perfect. Nailed it. Nailed it. Nailed it. Okay. The bagging of the trash cans. The jelly donut. It happened almost the exact same way. He got caught with the jelly donut. It was drama. We had a guy who lost it mentally in the middle of basic training in my platoon. It didn't go to the same extent that it did in the movie, but it was equally as emotional. Basic training in that movie was as realistic as I remember going through Parasama. It was. It's a great film. It's one of my favorite military films. You also mentioned On Toast. I said it real quickly, but I caught it. The M50 On Toast or The Thing. Tell me about this vehicle. It's an anti-tank weapon. I belong to the 3rd Anti-Tank Battalion. It was actually my very first garrison unit in the Marine Corps, 3rd Anti-Tank Battalion. It is a four-passenger APC. I guess you'd call it for the difference between that. It has six 106 recoilless rifles mounted on it. Like you saw the picture in the joyful. They can fire one at a time or six at a time. You basically traveled with tank battalions. You moved in and out of battalions. You crested hills. You attacked tanks. The only downside of that was you didn't want to take a round because the armament was not that thick. 106 recoilless rifles, I don't know why they call them rifles, but they're breech-loaded and they only load one at a time. Once they're empty, you've got to get out, open the breech, eject the shells, and reload them. There was a drawer under the bottom that had the empty shells. Two guys had to get out. We had a grease gun, which is a Tommy gun, automatic. One of us got out with an automatic weapon. The other one got out, opened the drawer, unloaded, reloaded, and climbed back in and off we went. But they were nice. They were nice. You could blow up stuff. It's aptly named, the thing. It is such a strange-looking, because of those rifles sticking out from the top of it. It's not very large either. No, it's small. It's small. We were in there cramped. I bet. You had your driver, you had a guy next to him, and then the radio man, me, and the gunner sitting in the back. And you had a hatch in the back. Out you went. You also mentioned, and I want to talk about this briefly, because this comes back into your career later on, being a chaser. But specifically, there's a story that I hope you don't mind if we get into. If I'm understanding the timeline correctly, this would be the first time you ever discharged your weapon on another person. Yeah. That's why you were a chaser. It's what sent me to Vietnam. I shot a guy. Tell us about this story. I was at Camp Lejeune and chasing. Well, normally they give you a nightstick. These guys aren't too dangerous. They got drunk. They made a mistake. This guy was a bad, bad boy. They gave me a weapon. They give you a weapon, they give you five rounds. I was 45, so they give you five rounds. The thought process in the Marine Corps was that if you lost your prisoner, you did his time. That'd be no good. I'd never really tested that out to find out, but we were always told that. He decided he wanted to run. I yelled for him to stop, and he didn't stop. So I fired two rounds. One round hit a tree right alongside about eye level, right alongside of him. I was hoping it was going to stop him, and it didn't. I shot him in the leg. That stopped him, I bet. Yep, something grabbed him. He went straight down. He wasn't going to do his time. But we still had to go through office hours, and they had to investigate the shooting in the whole nine yards. I was found innocent. I was fined eight cents for the round, given a pack of cigarettes, and sent to Vietnam. Oh, my goodness. Consolation prize. Eight cents for the round. Weird. Yeah, you didn't turn in the round, so they charged you for it. They did. You didn't turn in your gear. And they gave me a pack of cigarettes. So that was at Camp Lejeune. That was at Camp Lejeune, yeah. So from there, you were flown out to Okinawa as a prepping station. Is that right? Oh, no, you go to California. You go to Camp Hamilton first. That's what they called staging. You're there for 14 days, and you learn how to exist in the jungle. They had mock-ups that showed you the booby traps and that kind of stuff. So you go through that training, and then they put you on a plane. So the first stop to Vietnam is in Okinawa. So you go to Okinawa. They take all your clothes and everything away from you, and they give you a camouflage pickle suit and a bunch of other stuff, and you're there a couple of days, and they stick you on a plane, and next thing you know, you have your name. At this point, are you still assigned to the anti-take unit? Who are you with at this point? I'm just out there. I was just out there. When I left Okinawa and flew to Vietnam, I still didn't have a unit. When I got to Da Nang, I was given a unit, the 1st Italian 4th Marine. Put on a helicopter and just flew up north. Tell us about that experience in your first tour. Scary. We landed. The LZ was hot when we landed. You start taking fire. And you just learn the deal. Vietnam is very, very hot. When it rains, it rains for like two weeks. Monsoon is something terrible. Everything you own is wet, and you're wet to your bones. Then the heat comes, and then you're steaming. Miserable condition. Miserable condition. You're either in the mud or you're in the dirt. Out in the jungles. That's what you do. None of the conditions, the guys who were in the sandbox, I'm sure their conditions weren't favorable either. You crawl in the mud, you crawl in the dirt, you crawl in the sand. It's not natural, but you do what you got to do. Was it a shock to the system, the weather badness, or were you already expecting that? It was really weird because you wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning, and it's damn near 100 degrees. You had these flags. You knew the flags. You had these flags that they put out, and they warned you, be careful what you got to do, what you got to do. It was one thing in Okinawa because you were in a non-combat zone, but in Vietnam, in a combat zone, it didn't matter how hot it was. If you had to go, you went. That first tour was a year long, is that right? Thirteen months. Thirteen months. Wow. This is the part of your story, Sheldon, that I'm just kind of boggled by this. So what I've heard you say before is you sort of had a plan when you entered into the Marines, and that plan was primarily to not be stateside. Yes. And so you enacted this plan after your first tour was supposed to end. Is that the way you finagled your way to stay away from the United States? You're not supposed to be out of the States more than two years. So I've been out 13 months. So I come back, and they bring me back to Okinawa. Well, they had cold weather training in Japan, Mount Fuji. I'm like, wow, Japan, cool. So I volunteered. So we went to Mount Fuji and did the cold weather training, worked with the Japanese self-defense. Had a few days off, got to go to Tokyo, Yokosuka, and a few other places, got to see Japan. Awesome. So we did that. We went out. We left Okinawa on an LST, a flat-bottom boat, for four or five days to get to Japan. Same thing coming back, back in Okinawa. So now I'm getting closer to two years. I haven't quite gotten there yet. Another shot came up, a counter-guerrilla warfare school in the Philippines. You fly into Subic Bay, and you're there for a couple of weeks, and you come back. So I volunteered for that. I thought it would be cool. It was. I didn't join the military to stay safe. I wanted to see the world. I wanted to see what was there. So I volunteered for that. So I went there, escaped the malaria. Most of the guys got malaria. I was able to escape that. But there was an aircraft carrier there at Subic Bay, and some of the guys in the Marine detachment got malaria. They had to go to the hospital bayside. So the Marine unit on the carrier was getting ready to go back to Westpac, and they were short Marines, and my unit was at the top of the hill, and so they came up there looking for people to go back. So they go, well, we need some volunteers to go out. I raised my hand. I went back. Well, that's when my MOS kicked in. They were doing extractions off the carrier when we got back in the cockpit, and they needed a comm guy. Well, here I am. So I was doing extractions off the deck of the carrier and the helicopter. We were down pilots, overrun units, that kind of stuff, support and that kind of thing. Basically, they'd bring in the armed helicopters to keep everybody back, and you went in with the Hueys, Slicks, what we called them. They held 10 to 12 people, and you load up and you fly out. So I was doing that, and they called us out. Big scramble. This Navy officer in a jam. The Navy admiral, he was there for some sort of inspection. The area got attacked. Here we come. So we fly out. We do this. We go into the area. The area is hot, a lot of fire and everything. So we circle. We find them. I jump out of the craft. I go find them, and I had some kind of colorful words for them. Basically, look, I'm short. I don't have time for this nonsense. Do what I tell you, and we'll get out of here alive. He never said a word, did exactly what I told him. He did ask me what my name was. I thought I was going to get written up because of the way I talked to him. Off we went. So we get them back. The ship comes back to Subic Bay, and they're waiting for me. Been out too long, so get me back. So I had orders for New River, which is a helicopter squadron in North Carolina. So I'm like, okay, helicopters, I'm cool. We're going to do it. Well, before I left Okinawa, I got a modification of orders. Marine barracks, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York. Now, I'm from the Bronx. Okay. Sweet deal. Sweet deal. I can get on a subway and go home. Didn't think about it. All right. So I go home, spend a few days at home, reports for duty at the Navy Yard, and I started working in the brig. You're a corrections officer. You work a week in the brig, and then a week you're chasing, and you do all that. That went on for a couple of months. They wake me up. I said, get dressed, pack your stuff, you're going to Quantico for school. They didn't tell me about school. It was personal security school. So it was a little bit more hand-to-hand combat, you know, handling stuff. Defensive driving courses, special marksmanship, that kind of stuff. I just figured because I was working at a correctional center, I got to do this. No big deal. Come back to the Marine barracks, get another week's worth of duty. Come and wake me up. Get up, put your dress uniform on. You're going downtown with us. Still didn't tell me. Get dressed, modified dress blues, get in the van, and take me down to the federal building. You go upstairs and report to the 3rd Naval District Headquarters. That's where you're working at. Okay. Not a lot of explaining in the brig. They didn't tell you what to do, point and click. Point and click, you know what I mean? All right, so I go up, and there's this sailor sitting at the desk. He goes, oh, so you're the new bodyguard. What? At least he told you. At least he told me. You've got to tell us what a bodyguard does. He goes, oh, by the way, use your duty belt, use your sidearm, you're now armed. What do I got to do? Admiral will tell you when he gets here. Okay, fine. So to paint a picture, it was a very long hallway. There's an elevator. When elevators open up, it's a very long straight hallway. His office was straight at the end of the hallway. And the doors open up, and he's in dress blues and his aides within him. So you see all the gold braid and all that. And as he's walking closer, the Marine comes in. So you start locking on. He's an admiral, three stars. Who was your rank at this time? Sergeant. Just made sergeant. I was a corporal the whole time I was in. I made corporal in Vietnam, so I just made sergeant. He got closer and he was looking for me. He walks right up to me and goes, hey, Sheldon, good to see you again. I had to look again. It was the admiral there that we extracted. Yeah, how about that? Nice. He wanted you. He remembered your name and told him. That's exactly what happened. That's exactly what happened. I stayed with him for quite a while, and that was great. That was great, huh? They moved me out of the barracks. I stayed in a carriage house apartment over the garage behind his quarters. It was me and a sailor. I was up there wherever he went, I went. It was awesome, dude, two and a half years of that. Great food? Oh, whatever he ate, I ate. That's another story. Let me, again, you're doing a great job here, Sheldon, of laying out the timeline for Jason and I to pick through. I'm really curious about that guerrilla warfare training. So I'll just ask the question that I'm curious about. Was that structured in a way to help Marines, soldiers, service members in Vietnam? Yes. It's counter-guerrilla warfare at school. They used the Philippines because of the jungles. Vietnam, it was a jungle warfare. Combat in the jungles is a lot different. You're dealing with snipers. You're dealing with primitive but effective booby traps, things like that. The jungles of the Philippines was a great place to recreate that environment and set those things up to prepare you for that. That's why they call it counter-guerrilla, counter-guerrilla warfare. So if I understand you correctly, it sounds like you would say it was successful in that preparation piece. It was a very effective school, yes, very effective. I didn't even know they had it. I knew the Army did. The Army had something, Tiger Land, I think they called it, or something like that. I didn't even know the Marine Corps had that. It's the first I've heard of it. Was it like a six-week school, or how long was it? No, we were there maybe close to six weeks, maybe close to that. I want to say around a month, at least a month, but, yeah, it might have been six weeks. Were they rotating people in and out of that place to get the numbers of people through it, or was it selective? I didn't tell you. I didn't even know it existed. They just told you to go. Well, he volunteered. Oh, you volunteered. That's right. You didn't want to come back stateside. I didn't want to come back stateside. They had a couple of slots. They called it Counter-Guerrilla Warfare School. Sounded interesting. Sounded cool. I mean, I'm a young guy, all right? You know, what was I, 19 going on 20, something like that? By the time I was 18 when I went to Vietnam. Yeah, I'm going on, late 19, going on 20. I'm living the life. An adventure. That's exactly what it is. I mean, you know, been there, done that. You know how that is. You know where you are. So it was an adventure. I shot for it. I'm breaking my timeline here, but I just remembered I'm very curious about this dichotomy, and it just kind of struck me as we were sitting here talking, Sheldon. You went from cold weather training to basically jungle school. Yeah. Why were they having a cold weather training take place? That's interesting. I'm glad you mentioned that. Because the Korean War had already obviously occurred. And we weren't anywhere cold, right? Exactly. That's what I'm getting at. I was in San Diego at comm school. That picture was 69, 70, something like that. They wanted us to go to 29 Palms for desert warfare school. Wow. And we couldn't figure out why we wanted desert warfare school when we were fighting in the jungles. And look at us now. Right. That makes sense. I mean, we couldn't figure it out. You might want to go to desert warfare. I don't want to go to desert warfare school because we're fighting in the jungle. What good will that do? It made no sense. Yeah. It made no sense. That's what they were, especially out of comm school. Comm school, they were trying to get you to either go to jump school or some other weird school. So I didn't want to jump out there. I wonder if there was any forethought on that cold weather school with Russia. With Russia. That's what I was thinking. We were right at the base of Mount Fuji. I understand that that area, they built some buildings and things like that, but we lived in tents. We lived in big GP tents, GP larges, stoves. Oh, yeah. Old school. Back to the basics. Back to the basics. Yeah. Okay. How are you with the snowshoes? The Mickey Mouse boots. Oh, the big white. The big white. Well, they call them Mickey Mouse boots. They look like combat boots, but they were bigger and they were kind of- I remember those. That's what they, you know. And you shaved and washed out of your steel pot like you do what you do. Yeah. I remember those big boots. My dad had some of those. Yeah. That's what we call the Mickey Mouse boots. The other thing, I don't want us to fly over this extraction duty that you had for your second tour. I think I can speak for both Chase and I when I say that I'm really curious exactly the mechanics of how do you extract somebody from North Vietnam? What goes into that? You get in a slick, which is a Huey, unarmed. I mean, it has some minor armament. You usually go up with some sort of armed escort. Sometimes it's Cobras. Sometimes it's fighter jets. It depends on the situation. They know where they're going. I sat in the door gunner's spot, so, you know, they have a mounted M60 there. You sit there and you shoot as needed from the door. You find him. You circle. You land. You jump out. You snatch him by the collar. Get your butt in there and let's go. That's basically how it works. If it's extraction, it depends. If it's like a squad or something, you don't have to. Once you hit the ground, they're running, so you're good. Pilots, sometimes you have to get out and help them. They might be hurt from a crash or whatever. So each one is difficult. If you went out to get four or five guys, usually all I had to do was just wave and, you know, here they come. The Admiral, he was undercover and down, so I had to go out and get him. So we've had pilots that were injured and you have to run out and you have to help them in and bring them in. So is it just the movies or was there, like, the smoke that's involved where you had the different colored smokes and all that, and they definitely didn't do it the way you did? They definitely didn't do it the way you did. You don't have time for smoke. Okay. So that was all movies. You'll get smoke if you're landing. No smoke in a hot LZ. Okay. Okay. If you're in a secure area and the pilot needs to know the wind direction, yeah, you'll drop smoke so you can see the direction of the wind. But when you're in a hot LZ, you want in and out. This is all movie stuff. I'm not dropping no smoke. First of all, it's a target. Okay. Sure. And you're in this big slick anyway, so, you know. And the pilots don't touch down. Very rarely do they really touch down on the ground. Most of the times when I've jumped out of here, the skids were not on the ground. Sometimes, depending on what it is, it will take off in a circle and come back. Sure. Depending on how close you are. They don't want to remain. You don't want to mess up your ride. If you have to take off and fly in a circle to avoid any kind of fire or anything like that, they'll do that and then they swing back in. But you just got to make sure that you're ready when he comes back in. Would you guys use the cover of night when you could? Was that preferred? I didn't do too many night extractions. Really? Okay. A couple. Extractions are when you're needed, you just go. Yes, sir. It doesn't matter what time. If it's at night, it's at night. Yeah. Usually, if it's at night, with a pilot, they try to get him to kind of lay low. Yeah. And they'll come in right at first light. Yeah. And get you out of there. I didn't personally do all the extractions. There was a team. But the ones that I did just depend on the circumstances. Did you all ever use the sky crane? I was just curious. Not for extraction. Okay. That's a huge no. Totally different operation. No. No. We don't know. We're just asking because we... No. The big birds were the 46s and the 53s. Gotcha. Yeah. Those held a lot of people. Okay. And if you were taking a whole unit in, then yeah, you'd come in with the 46s. But not for onesies and twosies. For onesies and twosies, you needed speed. Is that why they didn't have weapons on them? On what? You said you weren't armed? The flicks, you very rarely had. Is that for speed and light being light? Yeah. And light. Yeah. And rocket pods. Some of them had rocket pods. Okay. But you also had the Cobras guiding you anyway. The Cobras were the bad boys. Yeah. Okay. I hate to admit. My brother was with a Cobra unit in the Army. So yeah, they were pretty nasty. They were unleashing hell on people? Yeah, they were. Those and the C-130s. You know, you're talking about... Yeah, the C-130s. Spooky, impossible. They'd take a C-130 and they'd line the whole side with 50 cows and you'd see them coming. And it just drops the wings. Amazing. And it knocks you out. We've had a Cobra pilot on, Dr. Herb Silva. Give him a shot. He's a fantastic individual. Another thing I wanted to mention in the timeline that you gave us. It's a short story, I think. But the phrase that you used, I want to make sure I get it right. Where were you when... Fill in the blank. So, Sheldon, where were you when the Attica prison riot occurred? We were on a prisoner chasing assignment. And we were in New York. And the way they did that was they would charter what we call puddle jumpers. This was that day. I remember because it had a weird name. It was a 19-seat otter. That was the name of the plane. It was an otter. That's what it was called. And we puddle jumped to little small municipal airports and we'd pick up one or two prisoners. We fly in right there by Attica. And the normal process was usually the state police had the prisoner. They would bring you the prisoner at the terminal. You'd shake him down, paperwork, and then on the plane and off you go. Well, we fly in right in the middle of Attica. So, the state police come and they go, you guys can't leave. Well, why can't we leave? Well, we've got a prison break. It ain't got nothing to do with us. We've got shotguns. We've got handguns. We've got leg irons. I mean, we came to transport prisoners. So, we're pretty much a team of five of us. We were pretty much armed to the teeth. So, he goes, well, you guys can't leave. We might need you. I don't work for you guys. Nope. Okay. It doesn't work like that. We called your CO. Well, you better get him on the phone with me. And sure as hell they did. I got my CO. You guys got to wait there until they get it on the hand. If they need to, you got to do what you got to do. Wow. So, they didn't call us. We stayed there. On standby. On standby. But, yeah, it got close. How about that? It was, yeah. Didn't have any idea what was going on around us. We just. There were no cell phones back then. There was no cell phones, you know. No media right there. No, it wasn't like that. You know, we were in this little, small, regional, little, tiny airport, you know, and we heard what was going on. Everybody was running around like crazy everywhere. You didn't know what was going on. It wasn't until we got back and saw it on the late night news what happened. Wow. Yeah. We were right in the middle of that. Yep. And that was. I know you know this. It was September of 71 when the Attica prison riot occurred, which that was. I'm sure you know this, Sheldon. That was a turning point in terms of inmate welfare and how inmates are supposed to be treated in the United States. So it was a big event. Big event. I want to get a little bit into the weeds. Well, actually, more than a little bit. I want to get into the weeds about you being essentially personal security for the Admiral. I'd love to hear some stories and anecdotes about that experience. Wow. Well, he was William Pugh, Annapolis graduate, submarine commander. He was one of the submarine commanders who was in that flotilla that went into Tokyo, torpedoed Tokyo Harbor during World War II. Wow. I don't know if you remember this. They made a movie about it. He was one of those guys. Coming out, taking depth charges, busted an eardrum. So it kind of ended at the end of World War II, ended his submarine career for one year. I met him by accident. Sure. Save the boy. Very interesting, very learned man. Like I said, an Annapolis graduate. Let's see. I was told I couldn't eat at the mess he was eating at, and I had to go down the street to where the NCOs had to meet this young Navy ensign. And that was the last time he ever said something stupid like that because my Admiral just said, he's with me, he eats where I eat, he eats what I eat. You put a table over there and you make sure he's fed well. I heard it was aye-aye, sir, and I ate well. Some steaks that night, they were pretty good. That happened a couple of times. It happened on subtender. There was no issue with that. He just said, feed my orderly, and they took me down to the mess hall and I couldn't eat all the food. I did throw a guy overboard at the Governor's Island Ferry one night, but he was drunk and he touched the Admiral. It was warranted. Warrant is where nobody gets within three feet of you. Yeah. Okay. Wow. He kind of broke the rules because we were sitting in the car, and he gets out and he wanted to take a walk on deck, and his wife was in the car, and I was like, okay, who do I watch? And she thought I was getting a little nervous, and she says, go on, go keep an eye on him, and I'll see who I was. And it was good because there was this guy, he actually had a little bit too much to drink, and Admiral was all prettied up in his dress whites and all that, and he walked up and put his hand on his shoulder board. Oh, man. By the time I got to him, I just flipped him overboard. Yeah. He was mad. Mad and wet. And Admiral went, did you really have to do that? Yeah. He never said much about it after that. But, you know, once again, as a Marine, I always look and I tell people to ask me about that. In the Marine Corps, duty is either really good or it's really bad. There's no middle ground. I was fortunate to have really good duty, and if it meant throwing this guy overboard so I could keep that duty, well, then he was going down. How long did it take to stop and take him off? That was hilarious. Yeah, the man overboard thing went and he had to drop a thing. But we were on the Coast Guard ferry on our way to Governor's Island, and fortunately we were close and they did get a rescue boat in to get him, but, you know, it was a speed thing. Yeah. I didn't care. You're doing your job. I'm doing my job. Now, was this drunk guy, was he a civilian or was he a military member? I think he was military. Did he get any type of reprimand? I haven't got a clue. My job was to get the Admiral out of there and that was it. And then I pulled my weapon on a Sky Marshal. We went to Washington, D.C. to the Pentagon. So I'm standing outside of this room with a bunch of guys that do the same thing I do. All these generals and admirals come out and mine's got a box wrapped in brown paper twine. I said, well, Admiral, I'll carry this for you. Nope. I can't let this out of my hands until we get back to New York. Which means we had to get on a commercial flight, fly to New York in a car, back to headquarters before he could open this box. Well, in the plane at the airport in D.C., the Sky Marshal wanted the box and wanted to see what was in the box and tried to take it away from him. So I pushed him up against the wall and drew him out of this room. Was that in the terminal? It was in the terminal. Wow. How did people react around there? He peed his pants. Well, his eyes got big and people give you a wide berth, but you have federal marshal status. Sure. I had paperwork with me, plus he was being a little overzealous. Sure. Okay. But trust me, I would have taken him out. It didn't matter to me. Because we didn't know what was in that box and we needed to protect it. That was exactly the situation. Well, he was having a fit, the captain of the plane came out, and, you know, I won. We got on the plane and it was no big deal. This is some cool stuff. This is a nice tie-in to furthering your education. So you did start at City College. You did ROTC while at City College. But it was at that time, when you were a college student, you decided to do the early entry in the Marines, and, you know, we've gone through that. Yeah, one year at college. One year at City College. Going back now to, is this around 72, 73 when you were the security detail for the Admiral? Yes. So tell me if I understand this correctly, there would be times that you'd be sitting in the hallways of the Pentagon, for example, studying in order to finish your degree. Yes. Tell us about that experience. Well, you have, it was very easy to extend your schooling. If you didn't have a high school, you know, diploma, you could get one. I had a high school diploma, I had a little bit of college, I wanted more college. So they test you to see how far you are, and then they issue X amount of credits based upon your knowledge, and then you take what we call MCI courses, which were courses through the University of Maryland, and you could take courses to finish your degree. I spent a lot of time waiting, sitting around waiting. You'd take the boss someplace, and he'd be in a meeting with all these mucky mucks, and you'd sit around two hours. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? So I studied. I studied. What degree did you end up with? Communications. I was a broadcast engineer. Okay. Very nice. Broadcast engineering because I still, I never knew when I was going to go back to garrison, and I still had that communications MOS that I could get a bigger bonus if I went back using that MOS than I could the other one. Sure. Admiral Zumwalt was the chief of naval operations. I don't know if people know that name, but very famous admiral. He shook up the Navy and the naval service. I wound up at a big meeting, and I had one of the staff members, and I brought him back, and we were waiting for the CNO to come back, so they made me wait for him. So I had to go up and get him and bring him back to the special plane that they were flying in, and I had my course. I didn't expect to have to pick him up, so it was like I drove up to get him, and it was like, okay, open up the trunk of the car. We've got stuff in there, and people are jumping in the car. I didn't know what was going on. There was this Marine Corps major who jumped in the seat next to me, and I had all my books, and he picks it up, and he goes, MCI courses, huh? I go, yeah, well, I study, and Admiral Zumwalt looks over the seat and, give me those. He takes them from the major's hands and goes, you're studying this? He goes, yeah. This is what you do? Yep. Okay. That's why I made staff sergeant. Wow. Was that a promotion on the spot? Not on the spot. Okay. Shortly thereafter. It was shortly thereafter. Yeah. How about that? I worked for the Navy, and then the Marine Corps barracks was down the street, and then the commandant of the Marine Corps barracks wanted to see me, and he comes in, and he goes, what did you do? He says, you got a promotion. No promotion board. Put the stripes on. Yeah. That's where we figured that's where it happened. Nice. So funny enough, Sheldon, the part you just mentioned about your major and the degree you ended up with leads to, well, I think anyway, it leads to your decision to move to St. Louis. Yes, it did. So tell us about that. I always wanted to be a disc jockey. I just, you know, I had the boys. I played with it, you know. So I got an internship at the local radio station. I was already back home, and I could do a couple hours at night and hone my skills and get better. Well, my brother was still in the Army, and he was stationed here in St. Louis, the Mart Building. So he said, why don't you leave New York and come out to St. Louis and see what's going on? He knew some people in St. Louis. See if I can get you an interview. So he got me an interview at 55 AM KSD at the time. So I came out. Got the job, worked for a little while, and then a big conglomerate came in and brought them out, Group W. And their whole programming changed. So I went back to doing some local second boards, just kind of fooling around, just scratching it. Now at this point, you had discharged from the Marines. Is that correct? That's correct. Had you already signed on to the National Guard? Yes. Okay. Tell us about that. I signed on here. Gotcha. I was going to do it in New York. I had a unit I was going to get involved with, and then knowing at the time I had changed to move here, I had a friend who was in the Guard Unit, 1136 MPs, at JD. And he said, why don't you just come by and check it out? So I did. Well, one of the guys that was there was another Marine who I was in Vietnam with. I hadn't seen him in quite a few years. So he talked me into joining the unit. You talked about the retirement home thing already. Yeah. Nice place to go out. There were a few of us Marines, and there was some Army prior service there. I wasn't done. I didn't want to hang up the uniform yet. Sure. But, you know, working for the Admiral, it's dress blues. It's all the time, always on call. There was no room for error. Yeah, but you're always on. It's a lot of work. You're always on. Reminding your piece and keep it constant. Yeah, all the time. You had to be really, really careful where you were, where you weren't. You know, you just couldn't. I didn't mind so much, but every once in a while you wanted to let your hair down. Sure. And then when you wanted to do that, you just couldn't. And the Army National Guard, if I understand correctly, offered you rank parity as well. Because that's what the Army does. I originally went to the Air Force. And they said, well, you're an NCO. We can't take you in. You have to drop a stripe. I'm like, no, man, I've worked too hard for these stripes. I'm not giving up a stripe. Well, the recruiting office wasn't all that big. It was on the corner of the Grand Concourse and 149th Street in the Bronx. And there was an Air Force guy there. And there was a Marine sitting over there. And there was an Army sitting over there. I can't remember whether there was a Navy. I didn't want any more. I was getting out of the Marine Corps. I didn't want to go into the Navy because I was still around too many Marines. And so I said, all right, I'll try the Air Force. It was either going to be the Air Force or the Coast Guard. So the Coast Guard said you had to drop rank and sit in the Air Force. And there was the Army recruiter sitting there. He goes, you keep your stripes. I'll take you. Cool. Yeah, and that's what I did. And so, funny enough, there's so many different points in your career of service, Sheldon, that I feel keep feeding into each other in a way. Because, like you mentioned, you said it there, it's an MP unit at Jefferson Barracks. 1136 MP, yeah. And you had had kind of this quasi-training through your time as a chaser and through your time at the Brooklyn Naval Yards. Did you already kind of understand what it took to be an MP at that point? Oh, yeah, it was a secondary MOS. I mean, we did that. When we didn't work corrections, we did MP duty. Yeah. That's what you did. Give us some insight as to what was going on in your personal life at this point. I was just a wild and crazy guy. I had a buddy who was stationed there with me, Earl. He was from Baltimore. And on some weekends, he came out and stayed with me at my house with my parents. And then other weekends, we jumped on the bus when we had long weekends and went to Baltimore. It was only a few hours, you know. Was it two and a half? Something like that. Yeah. Something like that. Jumped, went down to Port Authority. Sometimes we didn't even get out of uniform, get off duty, straight to the bus stop. Did you get a better seat having a uniform on? I don't think it mattered. You know. But it's funny. I hadn't seen Earl in almost 40 years. And I was in Arlington with too many unknown. And we met up. And his parents had passed away, but he's still living in that same house in Baltimore. So we rekindled an old friendship, which was really great. That's great to hear. So when was it that you started a family? That's kind of what I was getting to earlier. Um, well. Are you still in? I was out. Okay. I was out. My, um, my oldest, Ray had just turned 40. He just turned my, no, that's my youngest. My oldest, Eric, is 43. 43, 44. Then Erin is 14 months younger. And Freya is, she just turned 40 right after Labor Day. Right around Labor Day. So the National Guard, you were with them from 77, which was the end of your time in the Marines, until 1988. Um, there's so much, there's even more to cover, I feel like, even after your service ended. When was it that you got involved with AMVETS? 2000. I was with the. Oh, wow, long stint after. I was, well, I, um, my first veterans organization was the VBA. Vietnam Veterans of America. Right. I was there first, and then, um, we were working with the local AMVETS here, and that's why I wanted to join. Um, I had, after getting off of active duty, it's funny, once you hang up the uniform and then you have to adapt and adjust in the civilian world, it's different. It's, you're able to deal, but the thought process in the civilian world, especially when you've done several years in the military, you have a certain way of thinking and a certain way of doing things, and accomplishing certain tasks, which is, most people find a little different. So the adjustment thing was, I was having some issues. While we're on that topic, there's a story I hope you don't mind sharing with us. It's about adjustment. That's why I bring it up now. I'd really like to hear this impactful, I feel impactful, emotional story about what I've heard you say was the only act of kindness once you returned from Vietnam in New York. I, um, okay. I came home early, earlier than what I was supposed to. So no one really knew I was coming home. My mother did not know. I didn't think it mattered. I knew where I lived. I knew the phone number. I just didn't come home. No surprise. Sure. So you fly in. I get a bus from, oh, the flight was horrendous. At any rate, I wind up in New York. I think I landed in Kennedy. I don't remember. But at any rate, I took a shuttle bus to Grand Central Station. And the thought process with that was to either I could get on the subway and I could take the subway home, or maybe a cab. We'll see what happens. So I take the shuttle bus, and it lets you off right at 42nd Street in Grand Central Station. Directly across the street from the entrance, from where the bus lets you off, is the entrance. So all I had to do was cross the traffic light and walk in the building. So I got a sea bag. I got another little bag. I got three bags. Anyway, so, you know, you figured out how to carry everything. You're in uniform at this point. In uniform. It's rush hour in the city, early morning rush hour. I look across the street, and, you know, you can hear when the subways pull out and people rush out. And then I look and I see there's massive people coming through the door. And it scared the crap out of me. There's no way I could do that. Let me wait and see what happens. And I decide that I'm going to cross the street to get on the same side of the street as the entrance. So I'm kind of up against one corner, and there's a building on the corner. And I get ready to step out to go to the curb to walk across the street. And I look to my left, and here's a mass of people coming, walking down the street. And I know they weren't toward me, but I had not been around that many people in several years. I wasn't used to it. It scared me, and I backed up against the wall again. I made several attempts to do that, and that happened multiple times. Well, I had an episode. I got the shakes. Everything just went haywire, and I was having an episode right there. I hadn't been in the country in like three years. I don't mean to interject. This is something that just three years prior would have been nothing for you. This is normal New York traffic. It would have been nothing. Well, here I am, and I'm just freaking out. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember a police car going by. Today, I remember seeing it, but at the time, I was going through some changes. This happened, and I couldn't make it to the corner. Well, the police car pulls up on the corner, and one of the officers gets out. He goes, are you okay? All I want to do is get home. All I want to do is get home. There's too many people here. I was just all flushed. He goes, don't worry about it. He went to the police car. He sits into the other officer. The guy gets out. They grab all my stuff. They throw it in the car. It gets on the radio. I got permission. They take me home. Well, both of those guys had been to Vietnam before me. It was them that went around the corner. They recognized I was having issues. Wow. I want to tie that in with something else. I'm going to pick your brain here, Sheldon, just a fair warning, because in the video I got to watch, there's a lot of interesting things that you said that made me really sit back and question and think. If I have my dates correct, as of Veterans Day of 2022, this is based off an article off of military.com that I have this information. As of Veterans Day 2022, you hadn't yet visited the Vietnam Wall in D.C.? That's about right. Have you visited it since? Yes. What was that experience like for you? I can't do it without crying. Even the one down in Paraguay, I can't do it. I can't do it. Before then, if I understand correctly, you would go to see the traveling wall, the wall that heals? We hosted it at the community college, St. Charles Community College, late 90s or something like that. I had an emotional moment then, but still, and I've been to the one in Paraguay. We've done the traveling wall. It's not easy. No. It doesn't matter whether it's the real one or the traveling one. I mean, you've got that panel on the wall over there where, you know, it's not easy. I was not able to do the wall, the big one. I could do the replica, but I just couldn't do the main one. What finally brought you to the main one in D.C.? I was there. I was with people who were supporting me and said, come on, you can do this. Let's do it together. And I think that's what happened. I did it with some others. We did it together. Yeah. It's still hard. I'm sure. I have friends on the wall, so it's hard. We've asked another Vietnam veteran this question, and I want to ask you as well. I think I'm pretty sure you're going to have an interesting perspective on it. What does welcome home mean to you? Well, I guess just thanks for being there. Our generation was raised differently, okay? At school, recruiters came in their dress uniforms and talked about joining the military. Joining the military was a thing of honor. It was what you did. You went to school, did a couple of years in the military, and you came out and became a viable asset to the community. It's just how we were raised, kind of what you did. Somehow, in the course of that, during Vietnam, it became very unpopular. The whole story about we never got our parade, I don't know if I could margin it now if I wanted to, but it just never was about a parade. It just wasn't the way you grew up thinking it would be. Like I said, I come from a military family. Respect for the uniform, respect for service was something that was always there. Tell us a story about Uncle Jack taking the Memorial Day parade. Uncle Jack. Give me a second. Take your time. Uncle Jack was a World War II veteran and a very quiet individual. When he came home from work, they had a little courtyard. They sat out, and he had one of those tables with the umbrellas, and he'd sit there, have a beer or two, and never bother with anybody. He was Uncle Jack. But we heard the stories. We always heard the stories from him, my father. All my uncles, we always heard the stories. As I got older and realized that I was going to go into the military, his stories became more serious. He probably, amongst all the men in my family, probably was the greatest influence. A lot of things, the advice that he gave me, I utilized while I was on active duty. To this day, he was, and I grew up around some amazing people. He's saying a lot. Yeah. He was that guy. Sometimes you can't always talk to your parents. My father was an understanding man, but he was a hard man. Raised kids, a little harder. Uncle Jack, you didn't play with Uncle Jack, but you could talk to him. Him and then my mother, Uncle Elmo. We were the black sheep of the family because he was Navy and I was Marines, and all the rest of the family was Army. These were the guys that I could talk to. Uncle Jack was probably the main guy that I could talk to, especially after I came home. I understood why he would sit there by himself a lot of times and thinking and looking up, because I found myself sitting with him and talking about things that I didn't talk with anybody else about. As we sit here and talk with you, Sheldon, and Jason, I'm curious if you feel the same way. There's a certain stateliness about you, and I hope you don't take offense to this. If I was just to meet you and not know your back story, I would have assumed you were a retired officer with the way you present yourself. I get that a lot. You were around that three-star. It rubbed off on me. I was around a lot of officers. It makes sense because, as I mentioned at the beginning, I want to reiterate it. By the time that you retired from the Army National Guard, you had achieved the rank of First Sergeant, which is a prestigious rank within the NCO Corps. I don't have a question. I just wanted to tell you that, Sheldon. I don't know if it came from your Uncle Jack, your father, that long line of men in your family, but you have just this sort of calmness and maturity where you hold yourself. So I just really appreciate that about your person. Thank you. A statement you made in the VHP interview that I want to get your perspective on. War is a necessary evil that shouldn't be necessary. Yeah. Explain that. It falls in the same line as, you know, those who do not learn from history are forced to repeat it. Nobody hates war more than those who have to fight it. But those that have to fight it understand why we're fighting it. And oftentimes the people that we are empowered to defend don't understand why we're defending it. Taking a life, whether in war or anything, is a bad thing. It doesn't make anybody feel good. I've seen my share of ugly. Vietnam was a brutal war. It was bloody. It had parts of it that shouldn't have been, but it was necessary. We were told we were there to thwart the spread of communism in the world. But even if you look at it, and I've always been a history buff, and you hear that even in today's politics you hear the term peace through strength. That's kind of how it works. If we did not have the strong military that we have and have had in our history, what were we sitting here talking about right now? It's a threat deterrent. I love my peace and quiet. I have seven grandchildren. I love them dearly. I want them to be safe. Sure. If that means I have to make some personal sacrifices for my family's safety, then so be it. Sure. The American dream comes at a cost. It does come. Freedom is not free. We could throw all these terms and all this stuff around, and there's a lot of truth to it. But it's a big difference, and as you know, somebody who served, between those that did and those that didn't. We have a different mindset. I understand that those that were not able, I don't hold anything. But then you have, especially in my generation, you had those that said, I don't know, I'm not going. I'm leaving the country and doing all that. I wasn't that guy. I had to stay and fight the fight. That's what it is. I think our nation's better for it. Before we close, Sheldon, I'd love to hear about your involvement as the third vice commander of AMVETS. I'd love to hear about your involvement as a member of the Honor Guard for AMVETS here in Missouri and your involvement with the museum. Okay. Where do you want to start? Well, also, let's deal with Fallon. Yes, the Veterans Commission as well. If you would, start with the museum. This place here. I introduced Ralph Borrelli to the mayor. I told the mayor that we needed a building for the museum, and the mayor said, I got a building, and here we are. There's the story. I know a guy and I have a building. I mean, that was the story. I mean, I didn't have anything to do with setting up any of that. That was a whole different group of people. But they came to me and said we needed a building. I said, okay, I'll get you a building. So I had Ralph meet me at City Hall, and we were having a function there, and I introduced him to the mayor, explained what the dream was for this place, and he says, I've got a building. Do you want it? I said, yes. There's nothing else to the story. Thank you for that, Sheldon. What do you remember about Ralph, just very quickly? I had known Ralph for years. We had worked together to rename Veterans Memorial Parkway. We ran all up and down St. Charles County. Ralph was an amazing guy. You talk about my story. Come on. Those, come on. Those are the heroes. I'm just some slug who was in the right place at the right time. His story was amazing. He was an amazing person, and I enjoyed him. I enjoyed my time with him. I liked learning from these guys, and I liked hearing his stories. He was special. So you led into your involvement with O'Fallon's Veterans Commission. I started the commission. I had no idea. Wow. Well, the memorial, that was my work. Gotcha. The mayor at the time, Paul Renard, came up to me. I was doing a fundraising. He goes, we need a veterans memorial. Put a team together and make it happen. Okay, fine. So I got a bunch of veterans from the community, and we sat down, and we argued, and we disagreed, and we fought, and we cursed each other out. And just for your listeners, veterans do that all the time, but don't you try it. Okay. We can do it and get away with it. But the end result was that memorial, which I am extremely, extremely proud of. You should be. It's really breathtaking. We're getting ready to add the Space Force to that. We had anticipated a new branch of military. That is actually the third rendition of that memorial. Those five monoliths were supposed to be a book, the history of the United States. And I mentioned us arguing. We couldn't agree on what was going to be engraved on the pages that everybody would see. Gotcha. So the monoliths. An easier way. An easier way. Yeah, yeah. So we got that done. We got the plans approved. We got it all locked in. At that time, they were called the Board of Aldermen. We got them all on the same page. We only had one dissenting vote. We got it built for about $270,000. The flame, the eternal flame there, was built by a Navy veteran, a sculptor here locally. The workers donated over time. We had materials donated. There was a lot of the community that went into that. That memorial has a lot of the blood, sweat, and tears of this community. That's amazing. A lot of value there, too. Yeah, it's there. We did receive a lot of national recognition. It's supposed to be going on the National Register of Memorials. How about that? The city of Lodi, California, used our monolith as an idea for theirs. I'm really proud of that one. That's amazing. That one's cool. I feel like it's sort of relevant for our listeners to know that the first ever Vietnam War memorial was in Winsdill, Missouri. Yeah, we have number 10 here in O'Fallon. It was at Sibley Park, and I moved it to Danes Park to preserve it, so we have number 10 in the country. That's incredible. Tell us about your role with AMVETS in general, and specifically your role as third vice commander. I'm new at that. I got elected national third vice commander in August. Prior to that, I was the national fourth district commander, which I commanded nine states, basically nine Midwestern states. I was with the national district for three years, working my way up through there. The next obvious progression was to be a line officer and third back from being national commander. I stuck my hat in the ring and ran for election and got elected. Congratulations. Very nice. That job, the official job for the national third vice is national legislative officer. Every week, I have to send a newsletter out. It goes out to Congress, and we stay in contact with everybody on the beltway as long as they're working and try to pass the legislation that helps them. That's really cool. That's what I do now. Very good. Then tell us about the impact being on the Honor Guard has had on you. Military funeral honors began late 99, early 2000. We came on in 2000. Our team does, we've done as much as 350 funerals in a year. Our average, we do about 200 a year on average. We're a certified team. We're the number one team in Missouri. Congratulations. That's great. We're a past national Honor Guard. Ten years ago, we won the national Honor Guard championship. We have a nice little history amongst ourselves. We have special certifications that we're allowed to do generals and things like that. We get a lot of the high-profile funerals, generals, senators, if you were somebody, when it absolutely positively has to be done right. What an honor. We get called on. Wow. Just as a plug, the director of military funeral honors, Colonel Smith, will be the guest speaker at the walk on Veterans Day here in O'Fallon. I'm really pleased about that. He's an amazing man. Military funeral honors is the last promise kept. We were promised a lot of things when we joined the military. One of the things we were told is that when we die, they're going to fire the salute, and they're going to play taps. My team, and we have several teams here in St. Charles County, that we do this. We do this. We ensure that the last promise is kept. We are probably one of the busiest areas in the country. They tell us that when we go to order, and we stop. The last question I have for my part here, Sheldon, what goes through your mind when taps is being performed at those military funerals? I'm in the zone. There's not a lot. When I do military funerals, and we're all the same way, your focus is the mission. We operate off a set of cues because we work with the military when we do this. So the protocols, we operate off of cues. There's no real commands and things, so we know what we're supposed to do at a certain time. So the thought process is to do it the best way possible. No popcorn, which means that when we fire the salute, it's supposed to sound like one rifle, not three. The folding of the flag has to be just right. The presentations that are done with the folding of the flag, and the State of Missouri has a coin that they give, and then the rounds that we fire, we bag up and give those to the family. So all this is done in accordance. It takes about five or six minutes from the start to the time it's all done. But it's all coordinated. It's all done a certain way. And to be quite honest with you, I don't focus on any one particular. Everything happens in a certain order, and you don't think about it until you walk away. That's where it gets you. And I tell this story. The hardest part of doing military funeral honors is when you're trying to walk away to make a discreet exit, and that widow is chasing you down with tears in her eyes and that flag, clutching that flag, thanking you for being there. And she got more things on her mind to worry about us, but this has happened too many times where that widow literally chases you down. So a lot of emotions. I know I said it before. I think it warrants being repeated. Just what we do through Songs for Heroes, John Eason's group, Collins Hortman and Ty Shannon wrote and performed that song. It's a beautiful piece, and it's a beautiful testament to your service, Sheldon. It is mine, all of ours. Yes, you're right. It's a team. And I don't think there's any doubt. There's no doubt in my mind that whether it's your great-great-grandfather Lee, Uncle Jack, your grandfather, your father, whoever it is, they'd be proud of the part you had to play in your family's legacy in our nation's military. It's preserving my family legacy. That's what's important. I'm the last one. My son damaged his leg and he's not able to serve, so I'm the last one. I'm broken-hearted. So I have to do what I have to do. It's an honor to meet you and an honor to have you here today. Thank you. Appreciate it. Well, with my final words, I think, Sheldon, I think the theme that I've come away with in this entire interaction and everything that I've read about you and heard about you before this interview is this is from my lens how I view you. You continue to show up and change the lives of others. And that was pretty evident to me in a post that I saw from Collins Horton on the Songs for Heroes page where you happened to visit him while he was performing. Oh, yeah, a couple months ago. A couple months ago in Nashville. And one of the things I read that Collins said is that there was a lot that was said from him, but one of the things that really struck me the most was that you, Sheldon, don't realize or didn't realize that that is exactly what he needed at that time and you were a gift from God at that time. I found that out after. He was going through a rough time. We came into Nashville. My niece was visiting. Her husband was going to a conference there in California. So we drove down to be with them. I called Collins and said, Hey, I'm in town. You playing? I'd like to see you. I hadn't seen him since we did the song. And we went and had some good times together. And then I found out afterward that he was having a bad time and my presence made a difference. So that felt real good, though. That really did. I could see the smile on your face when you were near him in the picture that was posted with it. And again, as we sign off tonight, Sheldon, you do continue to show up and change the lives of others. Thank you. And with that being said, we're going to go ahead and sign off of the Operation Inside podcast from the Mid-America Veterans Museum. Operation Insight is brought to you by the Mid-America Veterans Museum, where we believe every veteran has a story. If you agree and you enjoy today's podcast, please take a moment to like, subscribe, and leave a review on whichever platform you listen. Don't forget, sharing this episode with friends and family is a great way to support the museum and our mission of sharing veterans' stories. Thank you for listening.