A damp breeze filled with mist carried the smell of fresh cut grass around Spring Grove Cemetery off North Maple Street in Florence, enhancing the mood of the day as I stared down at the gravesite of Corporal Kenneth R. Johnson, United States Marine.
A red-tailed hawk circled above me and then perched in a nearby tree as if to ask me if I knew Johnson. I did not. Before this month, I didn’t know he was even buried in this beautiful cemetery and for that I am ashamed. We should all know where the war dead of our nation are buried.
I had just finished a run, hitting some of my favorite trails around nearby Fitzgerald Lake when I decided to catch my breath by walking over to what I now see is a place of sacred honor where, like other cemeteries in the city, you can go and not only find solitude but can also see the names of many of Northampton’s veterans.
Forty-eight years ago, on Feb. 16, 1968, Johnson was killed in Quang Tri Province in South Vietnam. He was 18. He is buried with his mother and father, Donald R. Johnson and Joan I. Johnson.
Thanks to archives, I also know that he enlisted in the Marine Corps on Nov. 29, 1966, in Springfield. He arrived in Vietnam on Nov. 7, 1967, where he was assigned for duty and served with Company B, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division.
That’s his military record. But not having grown up in Northampton, I did not know the Johnson family and so, until this month, I didn’t know much about Johnson, the boy who became a Marine. But thanks to a posting by Sue, his sister, on the national website of the Vietnam Veterans Virtual Memorial Wall, I’m able to get a sense of him and why on this cold, raw May morning, I am at Spring Grove to pause and to honor him.
This is what Sue wrote on the virtual wall on Feb. 4, 2002, 12 days before the 34th anniversary of her brother’s death in Vietnam:
“Ken was the oldest of 6 kids. I was the little sister who liked to tag along on his adventures. He loved to hunt and fish. He was a tall quiet serious kid. He loved animals. By the time he was 16 he had a job at the Smith School farm taking care of the cows and chickens. He was shy around girls, but he liked my best friend Alice.
“He was a good carpenter. He was in his senior year of high school when he decided he wanted to be a Marine. He believed that he was doing the right thing by fighting over there. In one of his letters he said he wasn’t ever going to leave home again. In his last letter he told me he knew the only way he was coming home, was in a pine box. He is buried on a hill overlooking Fitzy’s pond where he used to roam. I miss him so.”
Thanks to Ken’s brother, Jeff, there is also a photo of Ken in his Marine Corps dress blue uniform.
It is said a person hasn’t died as long as he or she is remembered.
Thanks to the organization that built the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, you can now go online and see and read about Vietnam veterans from all over the country and through the Internet can remember veterans from your own hometown. That’s where I learned about Kenneth Johnson and the eight other sons of Northampton who were also killed in Vietnam.
Says the website: “There are more than 58,000 names on The Wall. Every single one of them has a story that you can help keep alive.” In addition to Johnson, Northampton’s Vietnam fallen are: Leonard Deinlein, George F. Lapan, Robert Mariz, Lawrence N. Savino, Philip R. Vanasse, John A. Boronski and James E. Trushaw.
A committee of veterans and community volunteers from across the Pioneer Valley is working to draw attention and build community awareness and support for Vietnam Veterans by bringing the 250-foot replica of The Wall to our region.
The Wall will travel to West Springfield on Aug. 17 and will be on public display from Aug. 18 to Aug. 21. A mobile Education Center where you can look up the pictures and stories of Vietnam veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice will also be present.
There are great men and women who have been laid to rest all across the cemeteries of our land, to include plots of land right here in Northampton. They are places where you can find men like Corporal Johnson who are waiting to be remembered, if not discovered.
As we approach Memorial Day and as our nation continues to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War, I invite others, too, to remember and share stories and information of all those who were born and raised and lived amongst us and whose memories we are now entrusted to honor for eternity.
That red-tailed hawk at Spring Grove Cemetery was telling me something last week. The Picomtuc peoples that inhabited our area believed in the immortality of the human soul and an afterlife. The hawk, they believed, is sacred and is a connection to the spirit world.
Corporal Johnson lives on.
John Paradis, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, lives in Florence and writes a monthly column that appears on the second Friday.