Greetings friends and members! Welcome to my last thoughts to be written in The Graybeards as
our leader.
Because of the publishing schedules of the magazine I am writing well before the results of the latest
raucous spiteful election are known. If 6,000 to 10,000 of you have voted, then the future is bright. If
fewer than that have voted, the Association has a less bright horizon.
Not knowing those results makes it all the more important for me to express my appreciation for many
who have assisted in leadership.
This farewell task occurs while articles are required for the Memorial Day Website and for the International
Federation of the KWVA, as well as farewell letters to more than 80 KWVA staffers, and numerous VA, Korean,
US Forces Korea members and others with whom we have served these past four years. But I want to write something
special for the honorable members of our Association (that is about 96% of you—I hope all of you voted!).
So here goes.
BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
I begin with a question: what is the initiating event—the cause— that we may attribute as the reason
for there even being an organization called the KWVA? This not a trick question. But, answering it requires
a clear pragmatic look at history. The answer is: the war which started in Korea, June 25, 1950, has been
marking time since July 27, 1953, involving the combined tours of duty of over four million US servicemen
and women over the years.
We have just concluded Memorial Day 2008 as I write. Hundreds of thousands gathered around granite, marble,
and assembled bodies in places too numerous to mention. In Washington DC this organization, under the leadership
of Director Tom McHugh, formally participated in all the Memorial Day events, including an Honor Guard and
wreath at our Korean War Veterans Memorial on the Mall, for the first time.
But, there is another, greater Memorial to our service then—and since.
The Republic of Korea today is itself a memorial to American and Korean sacrifices which is written not
in stone but on living hearts in our flesh and blood, and as such is the Supreme Korean War Veterans Memorial.
For this reason, if no other, we must take every measure, devise and carry out every plan, and work until
we can work no longer to build up, then build up again, and then again, our Mutual Alliance.
Should our Alliance fail, grow gray, then feeble, then on life support, and finally disappear, then I
suggest to you that something of our mutual National bodies will have died. Something which has energized
us to accomplish the best there is through the past few years will have been excised. And, just as surely
as our physical bodies will perish when the heart is ripped from them, the very essence of mutual accomplishment
shall leave us, orphans as it were, to try to make our individual ways--rather than the Allied way--in a
hostile world.
Korea is great not because the USA is great; the USA is better, or great, because Korea is great. That
is the kind of relationships we have between ourselves and the ROK, my fellow veterans of Korea. We must
preserve, defend, and ever build higher our relationship.
If we are to successfully do so, the KWVA must have a fresh vision and an invigoration of spirits in
the task. But, more than this, we must have a future.
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I have been your President and the Chairman of the Executive Council/Board for
1,430 days. I can guarantee that you received my best (not perfect) leadership for every one of those 1,430
days. As you review what I have written and stated in that time you will see that my priority—after fulfilling
the six campaign promises (accomplished all but one*) was the survival of the KWVA. That has monopolized
my leadership time for much of the past three years—and is not yet assured.
Many of you—the great majority—agreed with me and assisted in this challenging task. Beyond that, I want
to officially recognize some specific individuals who caught the vision and worked hard to accomplish the
task of auguring that the KWVA would not disappear as I leave the leadership to those who follow.
“OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE”
A man who inspired and assisted me in more ways than any other, a man whom I deeply admired, left us
far too early: Marty O’Brien, from Maine. More recently I had the chance of finding another Marty (in the
rough), George Lawhon. Marty was my first Member of the Year selection. Others who earned that distinction,
and my great appreciation, have been Jake Feaster, Jim Doppelhammer, Charley Price, and Jeff Brodeur.
I was able to serve with many honorable Directors during the past four years. Some gave outstanding service
to the Association: Joe Pirrello, Jim Ferris, Bill Mac Swain, Warren Wiedhahn, Lee Dauster, Bob Banker,
Jeff Brodeur, Marvin Dunn, Chris Yanacos, Tom Edwards and Tom McHugh.
The Association and I have been especially well-served by Treasurer Richard Hare, and Secretary Frank
Cohee. Perhaps forgotten by many of you, but certainly not by me, are Clyde Durham, who had to resign for
health reasons a few months after being appointed Treasurer, and three-year Assistant Treasurer Bill Doyle,
my long time friend who passed away on February 24 this year.
Don Duquette, my first appointed Secretary served a year. But, he has continued serving the Association
in the background even after leaving office. We were served by the great wisdom and great integrity of Judge
Sim Goodall, the first JA (others were only acting), who set up the Ethics and Grievance Committee, as well
as Steve Szekely, the E&G Chairman, and committeemen Marty O’Brien, Tine Martin, John Sonley, Doyle Dykes,
and Richard Brown. And Frank Bertulis has worked almost three years to make our advertising a paying activity.
We held National Conventions at Knoxville, TN, Bossier City, LA, San Antonio, TX, and Reno, NV. We never
failed to attain a quorum as required by our governing documents (a 100% reversal from the preceding four
years), and every Convention was in order—again, unlike previous Conventions. We were served by a great
corps of Sergeants- at- Arms, which accounted for much of those successes: John Sonley, Tine Martin, Chris
Yanacos, Sonny Edwards, Tom McHugh, John Cooper, and Leonard Speizer.
Speaking of our Conventions, we have been addressed by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the Commandant
of Marines, The Commander-in-Chief, Korea, The Commander of Eighth Army, and the Korean Ambassador. Quite
an improvement from the “keg and tailgate reunions” which had been our practice—small wonder quorums
of serious veterans declined to attend.
Both the Association and I were well served by many of the other appointees who made up the bulk of the
“Administration”—Dechert’s men, as the hate-slate sneeringly termed them. These appointees honored me by
agreeing to serve you, our membership and they deserve better than such trash talk. Our membership owes
those devoted volunteers more than they know, and certainly more than we can ever repay.
Someone thoughtfully asked me, “Whose men should they be if you appoint them? Osama bin Laden’s?!!” The
fact is that if an individual was a member in good standing and interested in performing (instead of just
talking the talk) he had a good chance of being appointed—even when we seriously disagreed. In that vein,
one requirement was added for appointment in my second term: the appointee had to subscribe to the KWVA
Voluntary Code of Conduct.
If an appointee or an elected individual will not subscribe to acting decently towards other veterans,
telling the truth, and conducting themselves with honor, then they have no business in leading the great
members of our organization—or any other veterans organization.
Great staff members have been: Chief of Staff Charley Price; Assistant Secretary Jake Feaster; Liaison
Officers William Burns, Gene Yu; Aide Richard Pak; National Veterans Service Officers Price, and Art Hills;
National VAVS Director JD Randolph (over a million hours!); and, those who served faithfully on our many
Committees. In addition to the others already named, they include Art Griffith, Glen Thompson, Ed Buckman,
Jim Doppelhammer, Bill Hutton, John Penman, Annelie Weber, Art Sharp, Jack Cloman, Leonard Speizer, Robert
Schofield, Mike Glazzy, George Lawhon, Frank Williams, Larry Kinard, Jim Yaney, Tom Clawson, Martin Goge,
Bob Miles, Ralph Nasatka, Don Edwards, Russ Cunningham, and Roy Burkhart.
Especially pleasing was the friendship and reliability of Billy J. Scott, now the organizer and Commander
of our newest Chapter, 313 in Winchester, VA. He was always showing up to help in DC. Billy, Joe Genduso
(Massachusetts), and I spent some cold hours at the Memorial barring the demonstrators. In addition, the
members of two outstanding Chapters, 33 and 142, never failed to turn out when we needed them in the Capitol
City for ceremonies.
And we were served for over half my term by one of the most outstanding men of the cloth to ever wear
a uniform, Colonel (Father) Len Stegman. Len is an emeritus chaplain now, but continues to serve and assists
Chaplain Leo Ruffing.
Within the KWVA the longest standing tradition, personally begun by Bill Norris LC00001, is The Gathering,
which has been ongoing for 22years now. Chapter 33, and especially Jack Cloman (LC00006) and his wife Connie,
members of Chapter 33, caught the vision and have kept it going for 22 years. We all owe them. (See
the great article in Graybeards issue for May-June 2006, pp32-37).
We have been fortunate to have one of our members, a greatly decorated airborne leader, serving as the
Executive Director of our Memorial on the Mall for many years. Bill Weber and his wife Annelie have done
more for the KWVA and the accomplishment of our Mission than most of us will ever be able to fully realize.
From 8,000 miles away the Combined Forces Command, through its outstanding Commander, General BB Bell,
LR37968, was always found supporting Korean War veterans. All during 2007 our members on Return Visits were
personally and extensively briefed by the Eighth Army Commander, LTG David Valcourt, who also addressed
our Reno Convention.
Dr. (MG, Ret) Park Seh-jik, Chairman of the Korean Veterans Association, Ministry of Patriots and Veterans
Affairs, ROK, and his entire staff left not a single measure undone to support our KWVA members and to expand
opportunities to participate in the Revisit Program.
Ambassador Lee Tae-sik traveled the length and breadth of our country, in all weather, often day and
night, to personally meet US veterans of the Korean War and to give them a personal gift from his countrymen.
No embassy staff has ever been as active as has been that of Ambassador Lee these past two-and-a-half years.
Our KWVA mission was unstintingly supported by three great VA Secretaries—Secretary Anthony Principi
, Secretary Jim Nicholson, and Secretary James Peake (all of them supported by Under Secretary and frequent
Acting Secretary Gordon Mansfield, a decorated Vietnam veteran and former chief of the Paralyzed Veterans
of America).
Our Association enjoyed steadily improved relations with the Veterans Administration and the Veterans
Day National Committee—all outstanding servants of veterans. But one pair in the VA Central Office has done
more for the KWVA and all the other Veterans Service Organizations than can be adequately described: VSO
Liaison Kevin Secor and Ms. Virginia Copeland in his office. They have been irreplaceable for government-to-VSO
relations.
I have been honored and gratified to attend the Conventions/Annual Meetings of several Departments and
Chapters. The Departments were Florida, Delaware, California, New York, Texas, South Carolina, Oregon, Virginia,
and Missouri. I have met with some great Chapters at significant times in their affairs: Maryland 33, Shenandoah
Valley 313, Korean War Veterans 142, Baton Rouge 230, Crossroads 205, Kansas 181, CPL Clair Goodblood (MOH)
32 (in the Governor’s Office), KVA 299, Cape and Island Chapter 141, KWV of Mass Chapter 300, SGT Harold
F. Adkison Chapter 255, and Sam Johnson Chapter 270. I thank the commanders, staffs, and members who provided
warm hospitality and helpful advice when I visited.
I was very fortunate to find and employ good professionals for our organization: Attorney Jimmy Faircloth
and Mark Vilar and their firm; CPA Boyle Henderson and his firm; Annelie Weber in our DC Office; and Jim
Doppelhammer, a man of unlimited talents and abilities. And, above all an incomparable magazine editor-publisher
team, Art Sharp and Jerry Wadley.
The KWVA was materially assisted during my term by Jack Leonard, National Service Director of the Military
Order of the Purple Heart, who invited our National Service Officer Art Hills to each professional training
session—and paid all his expenses of travel and training. We were also greatly aided by the services of
the National Legislative Director of the MOPH, Hershel Gober, former Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs,
when he could act without conflict for both organizations.
Significant support of our Association by the thousands of members of the Korean Veterans Association
residing in the USA grew through the past four years. The same is true of many Korean-American Associations
and Groups.
There has been a small cadre of, for lack of a better term, encouragers, those with the vision for the
future of the KWVA, and with a desire to be helpful. Some readily come to mind (and I apologize for undoubtedly
missing a few): Judith Knight, Walt Laban, Al Silvano, Louie Spinelli, and Cy Kammeier (the five of them
Purple Heart-related, all KWVA members, two of them Past National Commanders of the Purple Heart), Bill
McCraney, Wendell Austin, Marty O’Brien, Bill Doyle, Martin Goge, Steve dePyssler, and always CENLA Chapter
180, whose members bore every burden always faithfully. Thanks, my faithful friends, men and women.
Special support, advice, and encouragement were always on-call day or night from Colonel James Stone,
MOH, and Tibor Ruben, MOH. Also a great encourager was Miles Brown, and a newcomer from the younger Korean-Americans,
Hannah Kim. And, 24/7, 365/1430, were my dear wife, an honorary member of Chapter 180 and Department President
of the MOPH Ladies Auxiliary, and son Louis, a member of MOPH Associates, and creator of the VIP golf program
(Veterans in Play).
THIS DAY WE MUST PART
Fellow members, I feel a great deal like General Douglas MacArthur felt when he uttered the famous words,
“just fade away.” I wish you well. You have received the best that I had to give for 1,430 days out of the
lives of myself and my family. I could not do more, nor could I do any less.
I wish you well, and if I have spoken too personally in this goodbye, so be it. I am told that a favorite
verse around the desolate campfires of the “Indian-fighting Army” on the occasions of reassignments or deaths
was one from the Irish poet Julia Crawford, who wrote in the song “Kathleen Mavourneen”:
“Have you forgotten this day we must part? It may be for years
And it may be forever. Oh! Why are thou silent, thou, voice of my heart?”
(There were a lot of Irishmen in the frontier army following the Civil War).
As the poet suggests, I have spoken at all times from my heart.
Thank you, goodbye, and good luck.
Louis T Dechert
National President and Chairman, July 2004-June 2008
THIS WE’LL DEFEND!