By Anita Creamer, The Sacramento Bee
When he was a boy back in Oregon – before his mother remarried and brought him to West Sacramento – Gregory Keith Hodson put together model airplanes, and his father suspended them on fishing line over his bed. At night, Greg watched the planes floating gracefully above him, and he dreamed of flying.
Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
At age 21, as a Navy pilot, he died when the S-2F tracking plane he was helping land on the deck of the USS Kearsarge plunged off the edge of the carrier into the South China Sea, just outside Vietnamese waters. It was Oct. 2, 1964, two months after events in the Gulf of Tonkin set in motion what was to become more than a decade of American combat in Vietnam. Hodson’s family always has considered him a casualty of the Vietnam War. But the Department of Defense doesn’t agree, because he didn’t die in the war zone.
Lt. j.g. Gregory Hodson is not included among the 58,286 Americans whose names are inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., nor among the 5,622 deceased California service members honored on the black granite panels of the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Sacramento’s Capitol Park.
“To me, it’s an insult that they wouldn’t put Greg on the list,” said Bill Spurgin, a Sacramento real estate agent who graduated from West Sacramento’s James Marshall High School with Hodson.
That could change under a law enacted a year ago requiring the California Department of Veterans Affairs to add names to the California memorial each year through 2020. Potentially included on the new list will be service members left off inadvertently, as well as those like Hodson whose deaths were ruled ineligible on narrow technical grounds. More controversially, veterans who died decades after the war from documented Agent Orange-related illnesses or suicides tied to post-traumatic stress disorder also will be considered for inclusion.
“We’re just starting on the process,” said Assemblyman Jim Frazier, D-Oakley, who authored the legislation with the support of California veterans groups. “We’re trying to accommodate not only those who died in the line of duty but those who died later because of their duty. We want to acknowledge that sacrifice.”
A CalVets committee that is compiling and reviewing those names is scheduled to meet Tuesday.
Frazier’s uncle, Rick Neal, died at age 53 in 1997 of cancer that resulted from his exposure to Agent Orange as a soldier in Vietnam. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs lists 14 illnesses – including several cancers, Type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s disease – that have been linked with Agent Orange, which was widely used as a chemical defoliant in Vietnam.
But Zack Earp, who helped raise funds to build the California memorial when he was state president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, doesn’t like the idea of noncombat deaths being included. At 19, he was severely wounded in Vietnam when he stepped on a small mine. At 63, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s as a result of Agent Orange exposure. Now, at 66, he also has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and coronary artery disease, both presumed to be related to his Vietnam service.
“I would not want my sons to have my name added to the wall for Agent Orange diseases,” said Earp, who lives in Riverside. “Personally, for me, I question that.
“The memorial is very sacred ground. The original intent was to honor those killed in action. In some ways, this lessens the integrity of the memorial.”
Frazier said he recognizes the difference: He thinks the names of those killed in the line of duty could be engraved in the California memorial wall itself, in the Addendum section of the panels, while the names of those who died years later of service-related illnesses could be listed on a new plaque or kiosk as part of the memorial.
“It’s a work in progress,” he said. “We’re thinking of how to honor veterans.”
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