Some Gave All: Remembering The Passaic Natives Lost During Vietnam War

WAYNE, NJ — Several native sons of Wayne are among the Vietnam War veterans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, and will be honored as Passaic County unveils a new memorial in the township this weekend.

County spokesperson Lou Imhoff told Patch that officials are expecting 400 to 500 people at the unveiling Saturday morning, but added there may be more attendees.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Wayne is modeled after the memorial in Washington, D.C. and will also have a digital code that visitors can scan to read each entry, as it is listed on the Vietnam Veterans Wall in our nation's capital.

The ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. on May 18 at the Passaic County Public Safety Academy (300 Oldham Road, Wayne, NJ 07470).

People wishing to come to the unveiling and dedication ceremony are asked to arrive early, and to carpool if possible. Public parking will be available at the PCTVS campus (45 Reinhardt Road). Shuttle service will begin transporting to the ceremony site at 8 a.m. and handicapped buses will be available, the county said.

A full list of the Passaic County names that will be read on Saturday is below.

Officials said the 368-foot Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall will be the second-largest in the nation behind the memorial in Washington, D.C. It will honor the more than 58,000 U.S. military personnel who lost their lives during the Vietnam War, including 84 natives of Passaic County.

The concrete wall is built at an angle, with the height at 2.5 feet on the ends and 9 feet in the middle.

One Wayne veteran never found, another's remains disputed by family

Patch wanted to make special note of two Wayne Township natives — U.S. Air Force Sergeant Peter Richard Cressman and U.S. Marine Corps Major Richard Raymond Kane, who were both originally listed as missing in action.

Both men are listed on the national Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, and also memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Kane's body has never been recovered, after the plane he and Major Richard William Hawthorne of Troy, N.Y. were on went missing on Sept. 12, 1967. He was 24 at the time.

The plane was an RF-4B Phantom II with call sign "Cottonpicker 52," which military officials said had departed for a nighttime photographic reconnaissance mission over South Vietnam.

Another aircraft from the same squadron reported seeing "a flash and a streak of flame" west of the mouth of the Hoi An River that night. Radio calls to the aircraft were not answered, and Cottonpicker 52 never returned. Search and rescue efforts located a burned area west of the air base, but the aircraft was never located — nor were Kane and Hawthorne.

Very little information is available about Kane's mission, even more than 50 years later.

Cressman's plane was also lost on a reconnaissance mission, and his family and friends have disputed claims that some of his remains were recovered 20 years later.

He was one of eight men reported shot down on Feb. 5, 1973, over Saravane Province in Laos — several weeks after the Paris Peace Accords began the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region. Cressman was 21 at the time, and the Air Force EC-47 plane was designated "Baron 52."

According to the online Prisoner of War Network, Cressman and Sgt. Joseph A. Matejov of East Meadow, N.Y. were members of Detachment 3, 6994th Security Squadron. That day, they were flying out of the 361st Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron from another airbase in Thailand.

The men of the 6994th were cryptology and language experts "highly trained and operated in the greatest of secrecy," the report said. "They were not allowed to mingle with others from their respective bases, nor were the pilots of the aircraft carrying them on their missions always told what their objective was."

In February of 1993, a joint investigative team from the U.S. and Laos recovered fragmented remains from the crash site, and the Department of Defense later determined that all eight men had died in the crash.

Cressman's family and several others disputed these claims, as has been reported by The Oregonian and the Fulton Daily Citizen of Georgia. They believe some of the men might have survived the crash and then been taken captive, rather than being killed when the plane went down.

One of Cressman's childhood friends, Steve Adams, told the Daily Citizen that the family only got "a tooth to identify Pete" from the government. The family never accepted the $1o,000 life insurance policy for Cressman, Adams said.

He and the fellow lost soldiers were given a group burial at Arlington National Cemetery, according to the website HonorStates.org, which has information on Gold Star veterans.

For more information on these men and their stories, here are a several links.

Peter Richard Cressman

• Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall posting (will be linked on the new wall in Wayne)
• Prisoners of War Network profile
• HonorStates.org profile

Richard Raymond Kane

• Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall posting (will be linked on the new wall in Wayne)
• Prisoners of War Network profile
• HonorStates.org profile

There are existing Vietnam War parks and memorials in a number of other local towns.

Below is the full list of names that will be read at the dedication, provided to Patch by the County of Passaic.

Clifton

John Charles Bilenski

Richard Francis Corcoran

Richard Edward Cyran

Thomas J. Dando

Edward Deitnam

Louis C. Grove

Bohdan Kowal

Robert Henry Kruger Jr.

Leszek A. Kulaczkowski

Frank David Moorman

Keith Perrelli

Alfred Pino

Stephen Robert Stefaniak

James J. Strangeway Jr.

Guyler Neil Tulp

Howard Elmer Van Vliet

William John Zalewski

Haledon

Peter Mongilardi Jr.

Hawthorne

William George Dutches

Raymond Allan Renz

Richard J. Roughgarden

Denis Lavern Simone

North Haledon

Thomas Alan Ackerman

Passaic

Patrick M.R. Bierlein

Stewart Samuel Burr

Franco Diani

Francisco Herman Gonzalez

Albert C. Lawson

Jose Luis Lopez

Peter John McCallum Jr.

George McClelland

Carmine Novembre

Edward Joseph Paul

Paul Philip Zylko

Paterson

Nicholas Frank Cerrato

Louis J. Cofrancesco Jr.

Jimmy Dolan

Dennis J. Fett

Vincent James Gabriel Jr.

Joseph Grassia Jr.

Lloyd Vincent Greene

Boris Walter Gurdcilani

William Hobson Hubbard

Donald Iandoli

Jesse James Jr.

Arthur Jordan

Alan Katz

Edward Kubisky

John Henry LaDuke

Alvin Hugh Langford

Peter Francis Mead

Samuel Mena

Herbert Hubert Moore

Robert Wilson Ortiz

Joseph Henry Picarelli

William Jackie Pryor

William Carl Reddick

Eulalio Arturo Roman

Rafael Santiago-Cruz

George V. Szczepanczyk

Melvin E. Taylor

Dennis Wayne Thompson

Nelson Omar Van Houten

Fred Thomas Williams

John Thomas Wolfe

Wladmir William Zubar

Pompton Lakes

George Gerald Carlough

Donald Miller

George Edward Snodgrass

Wanaque

Frank Paul Addice

James Paul Perrone Jr.

William Clesson Sellers

Wayne

Peter Richard Cressman

Richard Raymond Kane

Michael Winston Kilroy

Robert Francis McManus

Frank Eric Sacharanski

Daniel Francis Thompson

Ralph Wesley Valt

West Milford

Lawrence H. Kocher

George A. Vanderhoff

West Paterson

Anthony J. Borrego

H.J. Van Winkle Jr.

Anthony A. Virbickas

For more information on the ceremony, see the flyer below: