Uticans' claim of POW status unsubstantiated
Names not on Pentagon list; man, woman say stories true
KRISTA J. KARCH Observer-Dispatch
The Pentagon agency that keeps track of Vietnam prisoners of war said Friday it has no record that two people profiled in an Observer-Dispatch Veterans Day story were POWs.
In the story, Gloria Fuller and Webster Knowlton, both of Utica, each gave their accounts of time spent in prison camps during the Vietnam War more than three decades ago.
After the story's publication, some readers raised questions about the veracity of Knowlton's and Fuller's stories, prompting the O-D to make more inquiries.
On Friday, John Horn, division chief of document management at the U.S. Defense Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Personnel Office, said neither Gloria Fuller nor Webster Knowlton are on the POW list. Only those individuals on this list are officially recognized by the Department of Defense as having been a POW or missing in action.
"Unless it's someone like in the CIA, we have almost 100 percent confidence" in the list's accuracy, he said. The agency's list of POWs and MIAs is available online at www.dtic.mil/dpmo/.
"Nothing is infallible," Horn said, but added that on numerous occasions in the past, people who have claimed to have been POWs but were not on the list were found to have not been POWs. To Horn's knowledge, there were no female American military POWs in Vietnam.
The office of U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-New Hartford, assisted the O-D Friday in seeking information on Fuller's and Knowlton's military records but was unable to turn up details from sources including local veterans' services offices. Obtaining detailed military records could take weeks.
Asked Thursday about the questions raised, Fuller -- who said she was a Marine Corps nurse -- said the proof of her service can be found on Washington D.C.'s Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall. When told the names on the wall are those of the deceased, Fuller said the government believes she died in Vietnam.
An O-D check of the Vietnam memorial's Web site, however, and of other online lists of people named on the wall did not find Fuller's name.
Fuller said all of her military identification was taken by her captors while she was a POW in Vietnam. She said any further records or proof of her service and POW status during the Vietnam War have long since been lost.
"I was a POW," she said. "I was."
Knowlton, who described himself as a Green Beret, also said he was a POW in Vietnam, but said his records were destroyed in a fire at a military records building in St. Louis in 1973.
"Why would I lie about that?" he said. "I was a POW in Hanoi from 1963 to 1965. I was there."
Neither Fuller nor Knowlton could offer any proof of time spent as a POW. Knowlton's live-in caretaker, Veronica Rajchel, also insisted that Knowlton was a POW.
Knowlton and Fuller both receive deliveries from the Community Food Bank made by Anthony Sansone, who was also quoted in the O-D story. Sansone said Friday he had seen evidence from both people that they were veterans.
A Web site, www.pownetwork.org, devotes considerable space to the topic of people who claim to have been POWs but weren't.
"Not one of the hundreds of claimants have ever proven the (Department of Defense) records wrong," retired U.S. Navy Capt. John "Mike" McGrath, a former POW, writes on the site. "Not a single POW was left off the official POW/MIA casualty lists at the end of the Vietnam War. Do you really believe that your claimant will be the first to do so?"
McGrath writes that the 1973 military records fire in St. Louis is often claimed as a reason people are left off the POW list, but adds it was other records that were destroyed.
Steve Maxner, associate director of The Vietnam Center at Texas Tech University, said there have been many instances in which questions are raised about people's stories of Vietnam service. Five years ago, Toronto Blue Jays manager Tim Johnson lost his job after repeatedly telling exaggerated stories of his military service during the Vietnam era.
"It's a very sensitive issue within the U.S. Vietnam veteran community," Maxner said.
If any list has been made as accurate as possible, Maxner said, it's the POW list, which contains neither Fuller's nor Knowlton's name.
"If someone was captured, that's a pretty serious thing," he said. "It's far more likely they'd be on the list than not."
Original Article
Observer-Dispatch
Serving those who served
Sansone offers helping hand, heart to fellow veterans
Thu, Nov 11, 2004
KRISTA J. KARCH Observer-Dispatch
Webster Knowlton was in McDonald's on Mohawk Street in Utica when a Vietnamese woman approached him.
"She said, 'I remember you, you gave me candy in Vietnam,'" said Knowlton, now 74. "She was little then, 5 or 6."
Decades and continents later, that little girl -- now a woman -- remembered the Green Beret who was kind to her.
As Knowlton told the story, Anthony Sansone sat nearby, his gaze drifting away.
"I've heard that story so many times," Sansone said later.
And yet he listens to it again and again. It's especially poignant today -- Veterans Day.
Sansone, who once owned a Genesee Street coffee shop, delivers canned goods, fresh produce and boxes from the Community Food Bank to a host of veterans each week, but it doesn't stop there. He is a taxi driver for medical appointments and a sounding board for grievances about the federal Department of Veterans Affairs. He hears about aches and pains, both of the body and of the heart.
And Sansone listens. He's been there.
"I was in Faxton in 1999 when I heard they were going to amputate my leg," he said. "I just got up and walked out of there."
He landed at the V.A. hospital in Syracuse, where a doctor he calls "my angel" worked to save his leg from the ravages of diabetes. He lost two toes, but counts himself blessed.
"I can't complain about my leg when I see some of these guys," he said.
Knowlton, the Green Beret, doesn't talk too much about things that happened in Vietnam, but the chance encounter with that woman in McDonald's -- that one small miracle -- is one he likes to share.
There is another story, but it takes some prodding to get to.
"Tell about who was in the camp with you," Sansone said, encouraging Knowlton to open up.
Knowlton sat quietly in his Jay Street apartment, breathing with difficulty. Then his eyes lit up.
"I was a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton," Knowlton said. "It was the same place John McCain was. He was one cell down."
Sansone nodded, as proud of the story as Knowlton is. After hearing it countless times, the story is almost as much Sansone's, an Air Force veteran of the Korean War era, as it is Knowlton's.
Sansone has been listening since 1992, when a doctor suggested he fill his time with volunteer work to ward off depression. Sansone helped a crew who set up tables at a V.A. clinic in Rome, where they informed veterans of what they're entitled to.
"It was then that we realized that so many can't even get out to get groceries," Sansone said.
So he paired up with the food bank and began making deliveries.
Starting as early as 6:30 a.m., he takes his Dodge Caravan on a route encompassing several local supermarkets and bakeries, loading it up with baked goods, produce, boxes and cans.
"It's my therapy," he said. "Two or three hours a day, and I'm all done. And you meet everybody in the city."
That's two or three hours a day, every day. And that doesn't count long trips to the outskirts of the Mohawk Valley for veterans who take deliveries a few times a month; more if a special item is requested.
Many veterans aren't able to leave their homes for their own needs, said Sidney Siller, New York State adjutant for Disabled American Veterans.
"It's very common, and it's getting increasingly so because of the aging veteran population," Siller said.
According to U.S. Census reports, there are 1.2 million veterans in New York state, with 5.6 percent of all veterans living in poverty. Nearly half of all World War II veterans and about a quarter of all Vietnam War veterans are disabled. Those are the veterans who may not collect what is rightfully theirs for their service to the government, Siller said.
"There are monetary awards for service-connected injuries, and a lot of them just disregard the hassle of making the claims in a bureaucracy like the (Department of Veterans Affairs)," he said.
So they rely on people like Sansone, who refuses to take even mileage reimbursement from Community Food Bank officials.
"It's not worth it," he shrugs.
When he shows up with deliveries, it's not the food the veterans reach for first. They reach for Sansone.
"Mr. Tony!" shouted Gloria Fuller, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, when Sansone made a delivery to her West Utica apartment.
Boxes of produce and canned goods were swiftly delivered to her apartment, while Fuller, caretaker of four grandchildren, rushed toward Sansone, breathless with greetings.
Fuller moves her mouth around a wayward tongue, forming words carefully in a manner practiced since she was rescued from a POW camp in Vietnam, where enemy interrogators sliced the muscle beneath her tongue. On one fluttering hand is a dark smudge -- a faded prisoner number -- tattooed just below the knuckles.
"God bless you, Mr. Tony!" Fuller said, reaching for his hands.
Sansone pulled a gift out of his minivan -- a framed print of the American flag with "God Bless America" emblazoned across it.
She gasped, immediately misty-eyed.
Fuller ran away from home at 16 to join the Marine Corps as a nurse.
"I had to lie a little bit about my age," she said.
The Army took her to Vietnam, where she and another nurse once spent 72 hours on their feet before they rested beneath a tree.
"I said, 'Shouldn't one of us stay awake?'" Fuller remembered. "But my friend said, 'We're just closing our eyes for a minute.'"
They fell asleep and awoke to bayonets at their throats.
Fuller despairs at the memory. She reaches out her hands, as though trying to grasp the words she needs, then falls quiet, hugging the framed flag to her chest.
"Bless you, Mr. Tony," she said. "I'm going to see to it that you retire with a full pension."
Fuller used to take a cab to the Community Food Bank on Bleecker Street, before Sansone put her on his list of deliveries.
And there are others. There is the Clinton man who was a POW in Germany during World War II -- a British doctor saved his life in there, Sansone said. And there is a homeless couple in East Utica that Sansone saves any leftover food for.
Each day, Sansone makes his rounds, then goes home.
"It's not much," he said, "but some of these people don't have anyone else."
For more information on disabled veteran claims, call Sidney Siller at the Disabled American Veteran's state headquarters at (212) 766-4030.
Contact Krista J. Karch at kkarch@utica.gannett.com
HEATHER AINSWORTH / Observer-Dispatch
Webster Knowlton, 74, left, talks during a visit from Tony Sansone, right, who delivers food from the Food Bank each week to Knowlton on Jay Street in Utica. Sansone spends hours every day bringing food to veterans in the Mohawk Valley.
HEATHER AINSWORTH / Observer-Dispatch
Gloria Fuller reacts to a framed print of an American flag given to her by Tony Sansone, left. Fuller spent eight months as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and receives food delivered from the Food Bank by Sansone each week.
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