Welcome Home: Vietnam Vets Went ‘That Extra Mile’
Published 12:00 am Friday, April 8, 2011
By Mike Barnhardt
Enterprise Record
The names rolled off Don Cover’s tongue to a silent room – Elvie Bell Jr., Edgar Lee Bowers, Carl Lee Doby, James Spurgeon Goss.
Many heads were turned down. Some people looked upward. Even others wiped tears.
Cover continued: John Charles Harding Jr., Roger Dale Howard, Harvey Richard McCuiston, Samuel Edwin Waters Jr., Walter Alexander Williams.
Cover had finished talking. He picked up his bugle and played “Taps.”
A few dozen Vietnam veterans were in the audience last Wednesday at Davie Senior Services. The names that Cover had recited where those of their classmates, their friends, their relatives. Unlike them, they never returned. They died in Vietnam, answering the call of their country.
“It’s a history lesson you won’t learn in school,” said Cover, Davie’s veteran service officer. “Remember those names, that they didn’t die in vain and will not be forgotten …