Re: Veteran Has New Mission in Vietnam

Date: March 09, 2004

"Veteran has new mission in Southeast Asia
BY DAVID PENN, Staff writer

From September 1968 to June 1969, Ron Worstell served as a radio telephone operator with the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division in Vietnam.

Saturday, Worstell returned to Southeast Asia for the first time in more than 30 years with a delegation from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. A volunteer who helps visitors find the names of friends and loved ones on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., Worstell has donated his time to the organization since 2000, and knows the strong emotions stirred by memory.

"There's a lot of trepidation" about returning, Worstell said in an interview last week. He was scheduled to depart from Los Angeles for Hong Kong Saturday, and from there travel to Hanoi.

"At first, I was going with a lot of people I didn't know, and I was wondering how I was going to do this without having someone I could talk to," said Worstell, of Chartiers Township.

As it turned out, Worstell's employer, Fujitsu, agreed to pay for sending him and several other veterans with whom he's acquainted. Knowing Worstell's commitment to the Memorial Fund, the company in the past has donated handheld computers to aid volunteers at the Wall.

Worstell said Memorial Fund representatives make two or three trips to Vietnam each year. The organization sponsors a library and school program there, and three years ago launched Project RENEW, an effort aimed at reducing the number of deaths and injuries from unexploded ordnance in Quang Tri province in central Vietnam.

In an area where many people earn the equivalent of $300 a year, Worstell said, scrap iron from old land mines and shells often is sold for supplementary income. The Memorial Fund has worked to educate children about the dangers of touching old weapons, and Worstell says the province has seen a 90 percent reduction in casualties from such ordnance in two years.

The Wall volunteers visiting this time around will meet with people from Project RENEW, as well as representatives from the U.S. Army's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which is responsible for researching and recovering the remains of missing soldiers.

The group's first stop is Hanoi, and from there they will work their way south through Hue, Danang and Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. They will remain in Vietnam until March 18.

Worstell said he expects the stay in Hanoi will be filled with very formal meetings with local dignitaries. "We're going to have to do the right thing, say the right thing," he said.

As they travel farther south, however, the people reportedly become more friendly with American visitors. In fact, it was recommended that Worstell's group wear American flag pins while in the southern part of the country, which was divided along north-south lines during the war.

After arriving in Ho Chi Minh City, Worstell and two other veterans who served in the area plan to split off from the group and visit Tay Ninh City to the northwest, near the Cambodian border. He said that trip had been in his thoughts as the day of his departure approached.

"Everyone is going to have their moments, good and bad, but we're going to be there for each other," he said.

©2004 Observer Publishing Co. of Washington, Pa."