Clair: On Wednesday I delivered the signed Paratrooper's Odyssey and your letter to my former colleague at the Department at Defense, Brian McCormack, for helping us get the Vice President for the event.  I had delivered outside the Old Executive Office Building and have his associate "smuggle" it in as you cannot take courier items into the White House.   Brian thank everyone for the book and looked forward to reading it.

 

For your information an outstanding result occurred from my meeting Patrick O'Donnell, our keynote speaker at the 517th Reunion.  I was so impressed with his military history that we met the next Monday after the 517th farewell dinner. We had a long and interesting discussion whereby I offered to help him meet some "interesting" individuals that might help him as references in a book he writing about the OSS and Special Forces. In  our conversations we discussed the lack of a historical account of the Hispanics serving the military since the revolutionary times to the present. He said that over 30% of the Marines he was with in Fallujah were Hispanics and were included in his book, We Were One. 

 

Yesterday, what transpired is that Patrick has been retained to write a book about the Hispanics in the military starting with the first book from WW II.  I introduced him to a friend who was in the Special Forces in Viet Nam and who served under Gene Frice as a young lieutenant in Viet Nam.  Major General Albert Zapanta  (Airborne/Special Forces/Ranger), former DoD Chairman of the Military Reserves and National Guard Policy Board and to others in Washington, DC. Bottom line was we  gave him the go ahead to write the first book starting with WW II.   

 

Patrick laid out his outline about how to get this untold story in a possible series of military history anthologies. Focusing in part on some of  40 Medal of Honor Recipients who are Hispanic from all of the wars.  Very little has been written about some of those and other heroes, like an enlisted man who was able to talk 1,000 Japanese at Saipan to surrender to him because he had learned to speak Japanese when he grew up in California. A movie was made about his story except he was depicted by Tab Hunter, a blond. He was not recommended for the Medal of Honor because he disobeyed his officer in what he was supposed to do on his patrol in seeking the enemy. He saved the lives of his troops and the Japanese in getting them to surrender without engaging in fire fights.

 

Patrick said to me as I was driving him back to his car yesterday that the chance meeting between he and I was like serendipity. He is really excited about this book that  we will underwrite for him with sponsorships.  We plan to make a  public announcement in September.

 

So some more  good "stuff" has come from the 517th PCRT reunion.