During his 24 years of service in the U.S. Navy Ken Leff of Rotunda West began his service in 1969 in little ships and ended it in battleships and aircraft carriers in the ’90s. He spent almost 2½ decades sailing the world and protecting the peace for all of us.
Harry Ewald of Venice, Fla. was a 12-Bravo in Vietnam, a grunt with a shovel, a member of the 19th Combat Engineer Battalion. He got there in November 1967.
When Roy Ault of Englewood was just 14-years-old in 1949, he hitch-hiked from Columbus, Ohio to Santa Rosa, Calf. with only $35 in his pocket. He made the trek to meet his maternal grandfather, Chandler P. Goodrich who fought in the Spanish-American War of 1898.
Paul Winemiller, who lives in Village on the Isle in Venice, Florida joined the Army and was shipped to Korea in 1954. After graduating from college at Ohio University he went on active duty for two years with the Panmunjom Armistice Commission.
If Bill Ring’s two years in the Army could be summed up in one word that word would be LUCK. From the time he went in the service in 1949 until he got out in ’52 luck played a big part in his service career.
Suzanna Vass served four years active duty in the Air Force, first as a medic and then 22 years as an Air National Guard with the 171st Air Refueling Wing. Now a Venice resident, she works on the emergency room staff at Venice Hospital and on the side she has a side business called “ER-2-YOU.”
Tyler Crane of Port Charlotte spent nine years in the Army. Some of his service was in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was there until injured by a suicide bomber who drove a truck into their firebase in the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan and blew himself up.
After graduating from the University of New Mexico retired Col. Victor Simpson, who now lives in Punta Gorda Isles subdivision, went into the Marine Corps in 1969. He followed in the footsteps of his father who served in the Corps during World War II and the Korean War that followed. He got in just in…
Scott Lawson was a disc jockey in the U.S. Navy. From ’91 to ’95 he was the voice of the USS New Orleans, a helicopter carrier, based in San Diego used by the Marines.
Keith Connors of Alameda Isles Mobile Home Park, Englewood was still in high school when he quit and joined the Marine Corps. He wanted to fight in Vietnam.
Pfc. Frank Riposta of Deep Creek, a Punta Gorda, Fla. subdivision, was a loader in a 105mm Howitzer artillery unit during the Korean War in ’52 and ’53. When he wasn’t firing his 105 at advancing North Korean soldiers he was working as a chaplain’s assistant talking to American soldiers about to go into the…
Jim Koder of Port Charlotte, Fla. spent more than 20 years in the Navy. Much of the time he served aboard six aircraft carriers—the Ranger, Bennington, John F. Kennedy, Saratoga, Forrestal and the Lexington—as an Aviation Ordinance-man to begin with, then he became an Explosive Ordinance Disposal Expert starting with the Cuban Missile Crisis in…
Jack Wright became a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps shortly after World War II erupted in Europe in 1939. He was assigned to the 19th General Hospital after he was drafted on Sept. 18, 1940.
Ed Robins was in the Navy during the Korean War. He was an airman who never set foot in an airplane and never went to sea. He spent most of his four-year hitch painting murals om the wall of the mess hall at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station.
War Tales 