AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council Commemorates 50th Anniversary of Vietnam War

by Gordon Pavy, Jul 13, 2009

Members of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund have commemorated the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. casualities of the Vietnam War at the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.

In 1959, two U.S. military advisers, Army Major Dale Buis and Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand, were killed by the Viet Cong. The attackers entered the Army’s residential compound in Bien Hoa and machine-gunned Ovnand and Buis while they and other Americans watched a movie on a home projector.

Jan Scruggs, president and founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, a nonprofit authorized by Congress in 1980 to build the memorial, led the July 8 ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary.

Said Scruggs:

Today we are here to reflect and honor the individuals who paid the supreme sacrifice for our country.

Scruggs acknowledged the support the Memorial Fund has received from unions over the years and labor’s financial support of the fund’s efforts to finance a Vietnam Veterans Memorial visitor’s center, which will be built with union labor.

It was my privilege to represent the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council at the July 8 ceremony. Together with retired AFL-CIO staffer Greg Woodhead, we placed the wreath honoring Ovnand and Buis at the apex of the Vietnam Wall, where their names are etched first among the more than 58,000 names of those who gave their lives during the Vietnam War.

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