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Post honors its mythical namesake
By MATTHEW WAITE, Times Staff Writer PORT RICHEY -- The local myth in the Port Richey Veterans of Foreign Wars post was the guy it was named after, Randolph Ford.
Ed Valenjevick, himself a Vietnam veteran and former Army medic, came into the VFW club one day a little more than a year ago and asked who Randolph Ford was. Those there admitted they didn't know for sure. They got the name when another post merged with the Port Richey post. With little more than a name and the Internet, Valenjevick and a few others went looking. On Monday morning -- Memorial Day -- Ford's wife, Emma, stood before nearly 200 people at the post to tell who Lt. Cmdr. Randolph Wright Ford was: Navy pilot, family man, caring husband, veteran. * * * Randolph "Randy" Ford was born July 19, 1935, to a Navy man, Francis Ford, who was teaching at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. After moving around, the Ford family settled in Jacksonville when Francis Ford retired. Randy Ford went to college for two years before he realized that he, too, wanted into the Navy, and he wanted to fly jets. One of the things that fascinated Emma Ford about her husband was his passion for flying, she said. They talked about it a lot, and she could sense his moods change when he did or didn't fly. "Randy flew because he absolutely loved to fly," she said recently. "The day that he didn't fly, he kind of was like a woman with PMS. If he went a few days without flying, I would tell him, "Go find a plane and go up somewhere.' " His dreams were in the sky. Already an officer in the Navy, Ford aspired to be an astronaut and was on the path to becoming one. "I loved him for being that person," she said. "I was very, very proud of who he was." Between flying, Ford dedicated himself to his family, his marriage, and his God. He took his wife out every week and tucked his three young children into bed at night when he wasn't away. In 1967, Ford's squadron, VA-86 based on the aircraft carrier USS America, was assigned the Navy's newest carrier jet, the A-7 Corsair. Ford was the squad operations officer, assigned to train the squad. One day in the fall of 1967, Randy Ford was standing in the family kitchen and Emma Ford knew something was wrong. He said the squadron was going to Vietnam. "Scares me to death," her husband told her. "But that's where we're going." During a night reconnaissance mission on June 11, 1968, Lt. Steve Bratton saw an explosion in the distance, and Ford came on the radio saying his plane was going down and he was ejecting. Years later, the Navy determined that the plane malfunctioned, causing it to crash. Rescue helicopters were dispatched to a hilltop. Ford was talking with them by radio, saying he had a compound fracture of his right arm from ejecting. North Vietnamese soldiers got to Ford before the helicopters could. The rescue helicopter went in for a try, but got shot up in the process, and one man took a bullet to the leg. That morning, Emma learned her husband was "missing in action." In 1969, Navy Intelligence told Emma Ford that her husband's military ID card and name were listed in a war museum in downtown Hanoi as a captured pilot. That made him a "prisoner of war." A year later, Hanoi denied that it had captured Ford. In 1972, Lt. Mark Gartley was released from a POW camp and flown to a naval hospital in Jacksonville. He had news. During his captivity, Gartley said he was housed with an Air Force major. On the night Ford was captured, that same Air Force major was in a cell next to him. The two would talk when the guards were gone -- Randy Ford talked about his wife and children. Four or five days after his capture, the major heard Ford collapse in his cell. Ford wouldn't respond to cries. Randy Ford had died from his injuries. "I know the Lord was with him," Emma Ford said. "I know he was." Ford's status was changed to "killed in action" on Oct. 13, 1972 -- four years after his death. On Nov. 19, 1985, Ford's remains were returned to the United States after 17 years of denials from North Vietnam that he had ever been captured. He was buried in the national cemetery in St. Augustine. In 1989, four years after Randy Ford was buried, his wife went to his grave -- this time to finally say goodbye. The years of frustration had made it hard to grieve. "And at the same time, I've been grieving all this time," she said. Larry Elmore, a VA-86 squadron mate of Randy Ford, stood before the Ford family and the VFW post Monday morning and paid his fallen friend the highest compliment a pilot can give to another. "He was a good stick," Elmore said, using pilot slang for a good pilot. How Randy Ford's name got on the post is almost as much a mystery around there as was his identity. The lineage isn't clear, but it started out on an American Legion post in Clearwater years ago. That club folded and merged with another, and that process was repeated four or five times before it ended up in a VFW post in Moon Lake. That post merged with the Port Richey post, and through all of the different posts, Randolph Ford's name came with it. On Monday morning, a half dozen of Randy's squadron were there, including two former commanding officers of VA-86. Many had kept in touch, and many had stayed close to the Ford children. "The real legacy of Randy Ford . . . yes, he was a great stick . . . is the family he's got here today. Ford's oldest son, Dan, who was 8 at the time his dad's plane went down, now is an attorney in Orlando. Leslie was 6, and now she's a business owner and commercial artist. Curtis was 3, and he now trains Navy helicopter pilots in Pensacola to go find downed pilots. "VA-86 raised us," Curtis Ford said. He grew up wanting to fly jets because of VA-86, but instead chose to fly helicopters in combat search and rescue missions. The jet pilots in VA-86 gave him a little ribbing for that, but just after he made the choice, a relative gave Ford a letter his father wrote while in Vietnam. In it, Randy Ford wrote about how impressed he was with the chopper pilots. "It was almost like fate," Curtis Ford said. Emma Ford is a proud woman. Proud of her husband, proud of her children and grandchildren, and wishful that her husband could have seen all of them. And she's proud of her husband's service to his country. "I am a veteran's wife. I guess I always will be," Emma Ford told the group assembled Monday. "I am a member of VA-86. I guess I always will be." -- Matthew Waite can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6247 or (800) 333-7505, ext. 6247. His e-mail address is waite@sptimes.com
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From today's Pasco Times Letters Jan Glidewell |
