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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Getting recognition at last


Robert
Carl Gidlund Correspondent

Chief Commissary Steward John J. Parker never returned to his home at 1701 Sherman Ave. from his last voyage. He’s “still on patrol,” as the Navy refers to its submariners who were lost at sea.

Parker is one of 78 crewmen who died when the famed USS Tang was sunk in the Formosa Straits on Oct. 24, 1944, at the conclusion of what the Pacific Fleet Submarine Force commander called the most successful patrol ever by a U.S. sub.

During a 30-day period, the Tang sank 13 enemy vessels, bringing her score for the war to 31.

Garnet Parker Ellenberg of Coeur d’Alene was just 6 when her 29-year-old dad died. She recalls seeing him only once, but her attachment to him is so strong, she says, that she wept at the May 3 ceremony when John J. Parker’s name was added to Kootenai County’s Purple Heart Honor Roll in the Ronald D. Rankin Veterans Memorial Plaza.

Kerri Thoreson , the late county Commissioner Rankin’s daughter, confesses to being a “daddy’s girl, just like Garnet. And that’s why,” she explains, “I was especially taken with her story.”

Ellenberg, a retired Kootenai Medical Center nurse, explains that her mother received her dad’s Purple Heart shortly after the sinking, but until now he was never publicly honored in the county he called home.

Thoreson’s father created the honor roll in 2003 in the Veterans Memorial Plaza he instigated in 1998. A Marine who served in World War II and the Korean War, Rankin was a veterans’ advocate who had started updating the Purple Heart Honor Roll before he died in October 2004.

The medal, created by George Washington, is the first American award that was made available to the common soldier. It’s given only to those wounded in action or to next-of-kin of those killed as a result of enemy action.

Thoreson inherited her father’s papers and also his passion to honor Kootenai County residents who have served our nation. Last fall, she sent a news release to The Spokesman-Review and the Coeur d’Alene Press, asking for those who were wounded, but not heretofore recognized in the county, to step forward.

Parker’s was one of a dozen World War II vets whose names were added to the Purple Heart Honor Roll during the recent ceremony, and he was the only one killed in action. The names of 19 Vietnam vets and two who were wounded in Iraq were also added to the county’s list which had comprised 127 previous awardees from both world wars, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.

Robert Dale Stamper is one of the new honorees. He was 19 in 1968, a specialist 4 and a member of the 9th Infantry Division’s 15th Engineer Battalion when he was ordered to help clear an area near Saigon of land mines.

One exploded, peppering his upper body with shrapnel and rendering him permanently blind.

Now medically retired from the Army at the grade he held that day, Stamper – who prefers to be called Dale – is an associate pastor at the Family Worship Center in Hayden.

He feels a special kinship with Rankin, explaining that the late commissioner actually presented Stamper his Purple Heart five years ago.

“In the Army’s hurry to medivac me,” Stamper explains, “I was given only the paperwork related to the award, not the medal itself. That was eventually sent here, and I was honored that Rankin was the one who presented it.”

He calls the recent ceremony “touching, tasteful and well done.”

Glen Golob, a truck driver who lives in Post Falls, was drafted in August 1965, and eventually assigned as a mechanic to a 1st Infantry Division motor pool in Phuoc Vinh, Vietnam.

One month before his scheduled discharge two years later, Viet Cong troops attacked his unit in the middle of the night.

“I was hit in the back by shrapnel from a rocket as I leapt from my bunk,” he relates. “Eight of us of about 20 in our hut were wounded.”

Golob says his wounds were painful but not serious and, after being hospitalized for five days, he was returned to duty.

He returned home and was discharged on Aug. 11, 1967, two days short of two years’ service.

Golob is grateful for the recognition that the Purple Heart ceremony provided him and the others honored by the county: “So many people are against the military. But everyone who served should be recognized,” he says.

Hayden Postmaster Randy Hoppe is 39 years and half a world away from a clash with Viet Cong soldiers that left him wounded in the legs and buttocks.

Hoppe had volunteered for the draft. On June 10, 1967, he was leading his squad of the 3rd battalion, 39th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division on a patrol some 35 miles south of Saigon when he and his men were hit with rocket-propelled grenades, then were overrun.

“I was evacuated to a mobile army surgical unit, then to a hospital in Saigon,” he says, “where I was hospitalized for about two months.”

Hoppe, who belongs to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Purple Heart Association, says his emotional healing began when Ronald Reagan became president.

“We weren’t the favorite sons when we returned from Vietnam,” he says. “It took people like Reagan and Ron Rankin to change peoples’ attitudes.

“I really appreciate that Rankin put the monument together. And we Vietnam vets are finally, within the last five to six years, getting the recognition that I believe we deserve.”