PapillionBusinesses.com Interviews Tom Brown (President) and Ron Elwell (Executive Director) of the Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation.

Tell me about the helicopter the statue there to the helicopter.

Tom: One of the major staples of the war in Vietnam was the helicopter. We were fortunate enough to meet Ron. We were doing a fundraiser in Papillion at the Fairfield Inn in there and Ron was there. He was there for the fundraiser. And we were sitting there talking, myself and George Abbott who was our secretary treasurer, and Ron came over and just started talking.

Ron has a tremendous amount of experience working with helicopters and was a helicopter pilot.

Tom: Why don’t you inform our lady here a bit about the helicopter because you did so much of the work on rehabbing the helicopter.

Ron: So, the day I met these guys, I had been retired from the Army. I retired after twenty-two years. I moved back to home. I was from Papillion and moved back and my buddy would always introduce me as a 22-year-old veteran.

So, I introduce myself, “Welcome home and thanks for what you did for me.”

Tom looked at me and asked, “What did you do in the Army?”

I said, “I worked on helicopters.”

He said, “Huh? We have a helicopter. Do you think you could help us?”

And I was like, “Yeah, sure. I started off with Hueys and Cobras.”

He’s like, “We got a Huey.”

We ended up exchanging numbers. They got a hold of me. [We] call the guy and went to look at the helicopter. I was overwhelmed.  The helicopter looks nothing like he does right now. It was in shambles. The tail was cut off with a saw.

Why?

Ron: That’s how they transported it.

Tom: They had to get it on a truck and it wasn’t going to fit with that tail on it there, so they cut it.

Ron: Except there were only 4 bolts on there. They could have removed them, so it was no big deal. But that was a big deal. It didn’t have rotaries. It did not have a transmission … It was just pretty much just a shell of a helicopter.

Tom: . . . and don’t steal it because it ain’t got an engine!

Ron: So I was pretty overwhelmed. And it [helicopter] was at Iowa Western. The director of aviation maintenance program was kind of taking the lead on it. He’s like, “I don’t know first thing about helicopters.”

“That’s all right,” I said, “we’ll work through it.”

He actually was using a model kit. He was using the instructions as to how the helicopter was supposed to go together. He was using some of the Iowa Western students to help restore it. So, about a year?

Tom: Yes.

Ron: Right, about a year.

Got it all hemmed up, put it all together and it is what you see today, in midway . . . in between getting it fully restored. We’ve probably, I would say, there’s probably, easily, ten thousand hours in building the helicopter and to get back together between all the manpower we used.

About midway when we were getting done, we get a phone call from George Abbot. He said, “Hey, what’s the full tail number for the aircraft? [Do you] have a tail number to the helicopter?”

I said, “Well, 68-15532.”

He’s like, “I think we found the original crew chief from 1968!”

No way!

Tom: Yes, way!

Ron: I said, “George, your full of it. There’s no way. I don’t believe that.”

He’s like, “I am telling you. I need you to contact this guy and vet him and see if he’s the real deal.”

Well, there’s a lady that runs our education history committee Her name is Dottie Barickman. And I called her and she said, “Oh yeah, this guy has logged journals, over a couple 1000 pages of journals and over a couple of 1000 pages of pictures.”

Tom: He recorded everything while he was there.

No way

Tom: Everything.

Ron: So, he was the original crew chief. Come to find out all the original crew members were still alive. This helicopter only had about 3500 hours on it from his time in Vietnam. Well, Craig, the original crew chief, got this helicopter on his birthday, May 4th of 1968, on his 21st birthday. He got this helicopter because his was blown up. He’s got pictures of receiving his helicopter. He flew it for a year and a half because he, like Tom, extended six months and all the other guys had flown it multiple times. There’s only one of them no longer living. He died from complications from Agent Orange before he could see it.

We finished that. We had all agreed that it’s probably a good idea to do a reveal for them they had not seen the helicopter in more than 50 years.

Nor had they been together in fifty plus years. We did make a big deal of it. They all flew out came in and they saw the helicopter for the first time, completely redone as you see today.

Originally, the plan was to make it a medevac and show it medically lifting somebody. When we figured out the story was, “Hey, this helicopter was not a medevac. It was a command-and-control bird.” I had him send me all the pictures on this aircraft and I painted it just like it was in 1968 including the nose arc with Snoopy. So, everything is just like it was in 1968. I’m still doing a little bit of work, I’ve got to do here next week, but it looks just like it did in 1968 when he got the helicopter.

Congratulations. It’s amazing

Ron: The whole crew will be out here. The whole crew’s coming out here minus the one, he passed away from Agent Orange complications, but his family will be out here for the dedication. They’ve seen it once. They had not seen it, not up on a pole like it is, so it’s a pretty, pretty big deal.

That was a pretty emotional day when we revealed the helicopter for them to just be able to sit in it for the first time in 55 some years. But it’s truly made it worth every ounce of effort for what we put into the helicopter.

The statues are all modeled after some of the Air Force personnel from Offutt. Those are all actual people, airmen from Offutt that came out to do the modeling. The gun that’s mounted in there, that was an addition because the medevac didn’t have guns.

When we figured out command and control, I had the sculptor [make a] mock up and we got measurements for the original guns, so they mocked all that out. It’s all exactly the way it worked, like in 1968.

There are two pilots up front inside there. There are those statuaries there and there’s a sound system. It’s not working yet. It’s installed. We are just waiting on a part and you’ll be able to hit the button and you’ll hear the Huey actually hovering over top of top of you. If you ask any Vietnam veteran, they will tell you the Huey sound is very iconic. And to this day, most Vietnam veterans can tell you when a Huey is 3, 4, 10 miles out and they can hear that sound and just know that it is a Huey to come out and get them.

We incorporated the sound and started making the lights work. Me and the guy from Iowa Western decided, we are like, “Hey, let’s make all the lights work,” so we did! We made them all work and put it all back together. On January 31, it moved here. About two months later we mounted it on the pole.

We made some adjustments on the rotors, so they don’t fly. We’ve adjusted a lot of stuff to make sure that it’s not trying to lift off, just minor things. The helicopter’s attracted a lot of attention.

Tom: Why don’t you tell the lady how it got here?

Ron: Yes

Tom: We’ve got a story behind how we actually got the helicopter.

Ron: So these guys . . . I always like to tell when they came up with this idea … they were drinking a beer . . .

Tom: . . . or two.

Ron: . . . and telling war stories and just had a good idea. Tom knows most Vietnam veterans throughout the entire nation. He’s got a connection to somebody somewhere in any state. I would probably say, probably the world at this point, but Tom had a friend. Was it at the VFW?

Tom: Vietnam Veterans of America out of Vermont

Ron: They had this helicopter sitting in Vermont just basically waiting to be restored and they couldn’t figure out how to raise the funds to restore it. Tom was talking to him one day. He’s like, “Hello [I’m] looking for helicopters.”

“Okay, I got like one. You guys want it, come get it. Just pay for transportation. It’s yours.”

Tom is like, “Done, I got that covered.”

Tom: Sold American.

Ron: Again, sitting around drinking a beer. Hey, we’re gonna move that. It was in Bennington, Vermont. They drove up there, loaded it up and drove it back to Bennington in Nebraska.

And then once he got there, he was like, “Well, what do you do with it? How do we get someplace [to be] restored?” When they talked with Iowa Western in Iowa, the guy at Iowa Western jumped on board like, “Hey, well, we’d like to take on that project with our students and try and help out,” so it got moved from Bennington to Iowa Western. That’s where I got involved with it

So, the whole story of that helicopter . . . it’s just every time we turn around, it gets more and more interesting. There are connections right now that we know about that we haven’t or will put out eventually one day in the near future, but there are connections to that helicopter and some of the folks that are memorialized on the wall.

Wow

Ron: That very same helicopter. The connections between that helicopter out there. It’s just unbelievable. One of the pilots, he’s a Silver Star recipient. His nephew actually lives here. They didn’t know about the helicopter. They actually found it from a magazine, DVAs magazine. They saw it. One of the pilots saw sent it to Craig like, “Hey, isn’t that our helicopter?”

He’s like, “Yep, that’s our helicopter.” And they figured out how to get in contact with us which was with Dottie. And from there it was just history. The strange connections seem to just keep happening.

That’s beautiful.

Ron: It’s very beautiful.

Every Vietnam veteran, I don’t care what branch of service they served there, they all know that Huey. They all [know] that significance.

I tell everybody like that was really the first time we used helicopters to the extent that we did was in Vietnam.

Korea, you had a few just as medevacs and stuff, but Vietnam is where we learned how to do helicopter operations. When I was in the Army, when I first got in a lot of our tactics were based off of Vietnam tactics.

That is where it all started with that helicopter right there.

Tom: The two soldiers, that was all done here. But that’s symbolic of what we do in Vietnam, you’re medevacing a wounded soldier. And in Vietnam, that’s how you get your supplies, your food, your ammo.

That’s how you medevac. There were no trucks and stuff like that. You don’t drive trucks through the jungle. That just don’t happen.

Ron: Yeah

Tom: or land mines. It’s not a real good idea.

Ron: All the sculptures have been done by a local artist. He actually helps veterans. His name is Troy Muller.

He’s done a fantastic job with all the sculptures. Most things are Vermont granite which is ironic, that’s where the helicopter is from too.

Everything is locally sourced. Either US sourced or locally sourced. We’re using all the monuments, the engraving and stuff are all done by companies in West Point, Nebraska. And then our memorial honor wall was all the same. The granite, that was the thing that cost the most and took the longest.

Tom: We got a million pounds of granite here.

Wow.

Tom: That relates back about $2 million. Yeah. Yes. It’s a lot of fundraising.

Ron:  Each one of those weighs 20,000 pounds apiece.

The twenty-five-foot wall that came out in one section. The quarry flooded when Vermont got flooded. The quarry was completely flooded so they couldn’t get the granite out. So that that held us up a little bit trying to get the granite delivered.

I want to say that 24 foot granite wall, I want to say that being is right at almost 100,000 pounds.

Thank you both very much.

Come and see the Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial for yourself at the ceremony on 6 June!

Get tickets and learn more here:
https://nvvmf.org/

Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial
11691 South 108th Street
Papillion NE, 68046

PapillionBusinesses.com Interviews Tom Brown (President) and Ron Elwell (Executive Director) of the Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation.

The interview continues with Tom Brown.

There are so many different parts of the Memorial. Can you go through them?

We’ve got 11 obelisks, one for each year of the war. On one side of the obelisk, if you look at that, you have 1965 there. [Points to obelisk]

One side has what was going on in Vietnam at that time. The other side has what was going on in the United States at the same period of time.

I came back home in ’68, July of ’68, and the issue was you were to take off your uniform because there was so much protesting going on. I didn’t do that, but I am originally from New York. When I went back to JFK Airport in New York, you know, there is all the protesters there and everything else. It was not a very hospitable welcome.

I stayed home for about 30 days. I got stationed here in Omaha, and it was a whole different attitude here. The support here for the veterans was really positive which was nice to see.

Where did you serve?

I served basically from Da Nang, which is the upper [part of] what they call I Corps area, up to the DMZ and the DMZ, demilitarized zone. That’s the divider between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. And I was up there my last three or four months before coming home.

Did you get to come home before the war ended?

Oh yeah, I came home in the middle of the war. I arrived in Vietnam in May of 1966, and came home in July of 1968.

In the Marine Corps you do a 13-month tour. As I was doing that, I felt very strongly on a positive side about the war, so I did a six-month extension. Went home. Stayed there for 30 days, came back. And then I did another six-month extension after that.

Wow.

But the second extension I couldn’t complete. I only did about half of that because my dad had a heart attack, and I got medevac’d back to the United States.

Then I got stationed back here in Omaha and with the Marine Corps on 30th and Laurel Street, way up there in North Omaha and I did Toys for Tots. You know, going to all the McDonald’s and Western Electric back in those days. People would donate toys, and then we would work with the different agencies in delivering the toys. But the Reserves in Omaha, what they did is clean the toys and fix them so they were usable, like bicycles and stuff like that.

When I was there, I’m active duty for the last 10 [months, from] September of ‘68 and got discharged in August of ‘69.

So, this has been your home for a long time.

I lived in Nebraska. I got married to a Nebraska gal back in 1970. We are still married and that’s 54 years ago.

That’s beautiful.

It’s 53, to be 54 this November, but so that was good. And that worked out.

Were you originally from Nebraska born and raised?

No. Born Bronx. Oh, and I grew up basically in Queens and then the family moved out to Long Island. I was in an orphanage in the Bronx. And then I got adopted out when I was about 4, and then they moved out to Long Island. And I lived there until I was about [my] mid-20s.

And then I went to the Marine Corps in Times Square is where I joined the Marine Corps. Well, from Long Island, that’s about a half hour train ride. Times Square is the center there of the theatrical district and all the shows and Broadway shows and stuff like that and then you got the other four boroughs, Brooklyn and Queens and, stuff like that.

So, it was the Marine Corps that brought you to Omaha.

Yeah.

It’s the Navy that brought us to Omaha too. It’s kind of funny because there’s not much water here.

I got here and they really didn’t know what to do with me. And so, they said, “Well, we’ve got a big program coming up and [it’s] called Toys for Tots.” And they needed somebody to actively be involved in it. And I said, “Yeah, glad to do it.” It was a fun thing. You know, you went to a lot of different meetings and you received toys that different organizations and groups donated and then go back to the thing and we would have barrels, just cardboard barrel type things, out at all the McDonald’s and people would just donate toys to them. And then we drive around to the different McDonald’s in Omaha, Lincoln, Fremont and all that and just pick up the joys take them back to the Reserve Center, and then rebuild them, paint them, fix them, correct them or whatever. That was kind of the way I spent my winter.

What else can I tell you?

Generally, I have so many questions, but I just floored how beautiful this is and how overdue something like this is that I’m kind of speechless right now.

Ron:  Yeah.

Tom: Yeah.

Tom: Well, we have five service flags. The Marine Corps and the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Coast Guard. And in the middle here, we have where the American flag is going this way.

This is the American flag. And it is 6o ft in the air. You have on the far side and over here are the dates, all of the dates 1959 to 1975. Then over here, this far one says,  “Some gave all.”

At night this is all lit up.

(To be continued)

Come and see the Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial for yourself at the ceremony on 6 June!

Get tickets and learn more here:
https://nvvmf.org/

Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial
11691 South 108th Street
Papillion NE, 68046

PapillionBusinesses.com is here at the Nebraska Vietnam Veteran Memorial, a state memorial, with Tom Brown (President) and Ron Elwell (Executive Director) of the Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation.

Please tell me about the project and anything you’d like to add. I’ll have some questions in between, but I find it’s usually better if you just go for it because you’ve got the heart to tell it.

(Part One is with Tom Brown)

This project started back in October of 2017.

A group of Vietnam veterans got together and wanted to do some sort of remembrance for the Vietnam veteran and there are other memorials in the state, but they are from multiple conflicts, where this one is just dedicated to the Vietnam War, to the Vietnam veterans.

We started in 2018 to get information on fundraising and things like that. We met with the architect, who is Don Prochaska and Associates, and they came up with the original drawings and the thought process for the whole memorial. Then they made a presentation to the Vietnam veterans, and everybody thought that was great and approved of it at that time.

And then in 2018 we actually formed a nonprofit corporation of 501 (c) (3), and that was approved in the summer 2019. And then we started raising funds for the memorial. And then in 2020, we came up with the pandemic and that pretty well put a stop to all fundraising, unfortunately, because you aren’t allowed to have meetings and were not having any veteran meetings. Most of the companies that you’re soliciting funds from are holding their money for their employees because they’ve got to figure out what they’re going to do and who they’re paying, [who] is not working, but they want to keep them, so you know, things like, yeah . . .

It was a very uncertain time for everything . . .

For everything. And so, we still solicited funds and stuff like that, but 2021 is when that overall scare got over with. Fundraising started to pick up. We, at that time, had hired a professional fundraiser. He gave us some guidance on raising money and all the intricacies of raising money.

It’s a lot different than just going out and asking somebody for some money at a cake sale or something where you’re asking people for $50,000 or $100,000 or $150,000. We incorporated some help from different people.

One of the groups that we worked with was Bellevue University. Lisa Jorgensen joined the group with us. We had a tremendous amount of support from Bellevue University and we needed to get a web page worked with us, taking care of us with project professionals who do web pages. That was tremendous support.

For help locating this site was the Mayor David Black, the mayor of Papillion. He was very, very helpful and instrumental in giving us a choice of different locations. And we had numerous meetings with him at his office and he offered to us if you have an engineering problem, talk to my engineers or go to my PR people. Just a lot of good support from him and from [the] University. Without those two, I’m not really sure how well we would have done. You know, you need that type of support.

Fundraising really got going in 2022. Very fortunate. At that time, we had set up an honorary committee,

Thank you.

And it was not so much getting funds from them, it was more the people that they knew and had contacts with. We had people like Chuck Hagel, the former Secretary [of Defense], Bob Kerry, Congressional Medal [of Honor] recipient, Hal Daub, former mayor, things like that. We had, I think, 14 or 15 members. Get the list.

That really helped to get fundraising going. We made all kinds of personal appearances to Rotaries, to other veteran organizations.

There was some like the American Legion did a challenge and they challenged all the other American Legions in the state of Nebraska to donate money. That was very, very successful. And the VFW did the same thing. So, it got to be one of these things that everybody kind of started to hear about what was going on.

How much did it cost?

Approximately, seven and a half million dollars. Originally, its budget was three point six. And then after the pandemic, everything went up in cost and it went to a little bit over 5 million and by the time it was all said and done at the end of seven years, it was about seven and a half million.

How did you end up? You talked a little bit about it.

One on one. Meeting the people. We had all kinds of meetings and groups that we had some of our members were doing presentations to different groups. Other VFWs, other Vietnam veteran groups, all kinds.

We went down to Lincoln [and] did a presentation to the Lincoln Rotary. And we went to the Rotary in Bellevue.

It’s a lot of presentations, one on one. A lot of calling on people and having people that know people and making connections for us, so that we can make a presentation to their group. A lot of the companies had organizations inside of their company, you know, and we would make presentations to them and that group would make a donation and a lot of times that company would donate also. So, we had a lot of good support from so many different companies,

We’re going to have a banner up here on all the companies that have made contributions.

(To be continued)

Come and see the Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial for yourself at the ceremony on 6 June!

Get tickets and learn more here:
https://nvvmf.org/

Nebraska Vietnam Veterans Memorial
11691 South 108th Street
Papillion NE, 68046