‘First time I felt welcomed home’: Indio VFW commander on his Honor Flight to Washington
INDIO, Calif. (KESQ) Leonard Abramowitz had just turned 18 the first time he saw the war. His Navy supply ship was pulling into Da Nang in 1969 when, about 300 feet away, a landing ship was loading 300 black body bags.
“That picture of those body bags is drained in my brain,” he said. “I can still see it today.”
Abramowitz, now commander of Bill Huntington VFW Post 3699 in Indio, left high school in New York City to join the Navy at 17. His draft notice arrived four days later, he said. He served as a gunner’s mate on a supply ship feeding the fleet off Vietnam, then on a 32-foot gunboat on the Mekong Delta. Nearly nine months into that tour, rocket-propelled grenades hit the boat. Three days later, he said, he was in a hospital in Sasebo, Japan, with no idea how he got there. Three of the crew did not survive. He spent the next six months in a hospital in Yokosuka, went through 10 surgeries and lost fingers on his right hand. He was 19.
He came home in 1970, in his jungle uniform, through Kennedy Airport. “I was cursed at, spit at,” he said. “Baby killer. Never got appreciated.” It took 35 years, he said, to get his 100% disability rating.
On Sept. 25, after 10 years on a waiting list, Abramowitz and 34 other veterans flew from Los Angeles to Baltimore with Honor Flight Southland, a hub of the national Honor Flight Network, which flies veterans to the memorials built in their honor at no cost to them. Thirty-one on the flight were Vietnam veterans and four served in Korea, Abramowitz said. Each traveled with a volunteer guardian. The group visited Arlington National Cemetery and the World War II, Korean War and Vietnam Veterans memorials, along with the Vietnam Women’s Memorial and Fort McHenry.
At the Wall, Abramowitz did a rubbing of a name for a fellow member of his post. He said he could not bring himself to look for his own guys. “It was just way too hard,” he said. “My guardian said, let’s go do it. I’m with you. I said, I know you’re with me. I know you’re there. I just can’t do it.”
Two hours before the flight home landed, organizers called mail call, and each veteran got an envelope of letters from Orange County schoolchildren. Abramowitz has read four. His wife, Suzy, has read him a few more. When News Channel 3’s Garrett Hottle read him a sixth grader’s note saying the friends veterans lose “are still right beside you,” he broke down.
“This is the first time I felt respected and welcomed home,” he said. He plans to put on his uniform and visit the schools to thank the students in person.
Veterans Day is Wednesday, Nov. 11. Tune into News Channel 3 tonight for the full story.
