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PLEASE, contact the White House and the President urging him to specifically sign this legislation and not forget Rocky Versace, a REAL Aerican Hero who deserves the Medal of Honor.

As sneakypete (himself having served couragously and valiantly in that same conflict) said on the earlier thread:

He was not only true to his country,but he was also true to his own beliefs and to himself. Honor,respect,and LEADERSHIP BY EXAMPLE were concepts he well understood,and a burden he gladly shouldered. He knew this would cost him his life,but he understood that the survival of these concepts were more important than even his own personal survival.

Honor demands that we get his heorism recogonized so that the young soldiers following in his footsteps today have a role model to follow who understood the true meaning of the words,"Duty,Honor,Country".

So, please help us finally accomplish something that should have been rendered long ago ... in memory of Rocky, in memory of Colonel James Rowe who was captured with Rocky and who remained true to Rocky up until the time of his death at the hands of communist assasines in the Phillipines in 1989 who said the following of his friend Rocky:

For that guy, duty, honor, country was a way of life. He was the finest example of an officer I have known. To him it was a matter of liberty or death, the big four and nothing more. There was no other way for him. Once, Rocky told our captors that as long as he was true to God and true to himself, what was waiting for him after this life was far better than anything that could happen now. So he told them that they might as well kill him then and there if the price of his life was getting more from him than name, rank, and serial number. I’m satisfied that he would have it no other way. I know that he valued that one moment of honor more than he would have a lifetime of compromises."

... and in memory of Rocky's family, particularly his mother who passed on before this could occur. May they all rejoice together on the other side of Jordan.

Give me Liberty or Give me Death

Dragon's Fury - Breath of Fire - A Story of the coming Third World War.

Finally, the Roque has been nominated for a MOH.
a perspective in the perception of "a people's champion"

Wow. What a courageous and inspirational life he lived.

Here's another activity I have been involved in for the last couple of years ... a more worthy cause you could not find.

I am humbled by those who have been involved with this many, mnay years longer than I and in much more detail ... and very grateful to see Rocky getting this recoognition ... grateful for his memory and what it will mean to it ... and even more grateful that we will have this icon to point our youth to whenever they want to know what true herosim, courage and valor are really all about.

If you have never heard of him or his story, I hope you enjoy it. Watch the on-line move that is linked ... it is as good a place to start as any.

Merry Christmas.

Amen!

A hero's bump for Rocky...a man who gave everything he had.

Don't know if you fellers had seen this or not from earlier today ... but this is good news.

BTTT

Just wrote another letter on this Jeff. I'm so glad that Rocky will finally be honored.

Thanks for the ping, Jeff.

How can this be? An American male being termed a 'hero' when he never hit sixty home runs in a season? Never wrote a best-selling novel? Never recorded a million-selling song? Never starred in a Nielson-hit sitcom?

The past few decades (especially since the moral erosion of the sixties) have seen a (sad) re-definition of the term 'hero.' Many younger generation Americans have been taught to define heroism in terms of celebrity, or (innate or developed) ability. There was a (better) time in this country when heroism was more altruistically defined (very simply) by the amount a effort a person expended, without any kind of remuneration, without coercion, and sometimes in the midst of danger to himself, for others.

How many of our current sports heroes (the kind who sell their autographs to young, adoring children), or entertainment industry celebrities (the kind who spend much of their (plentiful) leisure time telling us about the sacrifices we should all make for the betterment of mankind, while they themselves live in their fortified, affluent 'palaces,' isolated from the American peons whose problems they profess to champion) do anything for anyone but (1) themselves, or (2) the almighty dollar? Answer: Few to none.

Not only isn't our current crop of public-schooled children learning anything at all about real American heroes (past and present....i.e. the likes of Robert E. Lee, or Ronald Reagan, or Rocky Versace); they are also being taught to look up to and emulate people whose (so-called) heroism is fabricated out of whole cloth (by those with an agenda -- to cheapen genuine character, and to elevate self-serving behavior). How better to bring a society to its knees than to teach its youth to worship and emulate self-aggrandizement over courage and altruism?

Ezra Taft Benson once stated that 'Our civilization will die when we no longer care -- when the spiritual forces that make us wish to be right and noble die in the hearts of men.'

The last time that any of his fellow prisoners heard from him, Captain Versace was singing God Bless America at the top of his voice from his isolation box. Unable to break his indomitable will, his faith in God, and his trust in the United States of America and his fellow prisoners, Captain Versace was executed by the Viet Cong on 26 September 1965.

Rocky told our captors that as long as he was true to God and true to himself, what was waiting for him after this life was far better than anything that could happen now. So he told them that they might as well kill him then and there if the price of his life was getting more from him than name, rank, and serial number. I’m satisfied that he would have it no other way. I know that he valued that one moment of honor more than he would have a lifetime of compromises.

How many people do each of us know who would do what is described in the first paragraph above, or who would engender the epitaph represented by the second? Better yet, how many of the faux celebrity heroes of today would have been fit to have shined Rocky Versace's shoes?

This world has known very few Rocky Versaces. And, even if their preciousness is not recognized by their contemporaries, there is Someone who will provide them with acknowledgement and affirmation that would make any human citation pale in significance. Rocky has already received his reward. Any man-made recognition he will receive here and now will not benefit him, but it will benefit the rest of us he left behind....in that it will (hopefully) refocus our vision on honor, duty, valor, integrity and faith. Therein lies the value in bestowing this particular Medal of Honor.

God (doesn't have to be told to) bless Rocky Versace.

snaekypete posted the following on another thread:

Captain Humbert R. "Rockyâ€ Versace has been awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. On Dec. 20, 2000 then Army Secretary Louis Caldera approved the Medal. On Jan. 12, 2001 former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Henry Shelton signed off on the authorization, sending it to Congress. The final Medal legislation, SR1438, was amended to the Defense Reauthorization Bill. President Bush will award the Medal of Honor to Versace's family this year!

Since the bill has officially passed congress now, the only question left to answer is ... When will the award ceremony be held?

I am hoping that it is soon. Sometime this spring.

God bless and rest Rocky, God bless and rest his mother ... and God bless and rest Colonel Nick Row who was true and faithful to Rocky, his duty and his country until the very end.

I saw this in today's local paper. Thought you'd be interested.

http://www.pilotonline.com/mil itary/ml0706pow.html

Local captain to get Medal of Honor

By MATTHEW DOLAN, The Virginian-Pilot

© July 6, 2002

Humbert R. Versace, an honors graduate of Norfolk's Catholic High School and prisoner of war who loudly demanded humane treatment for his fellow soldiers for almost two years before the Viet Cong executed him, will receive the nation's highest award for military valor, the White House confirmed Friday.

Versace, a 27-year-old Army captain known as Rocky, will be awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously in an East Room ceremony on Monday, more than 30 years after he was first denied the combat award. A fellow POW, an Alexandria-based group of friends, classmates from West Point, the Army's Special Forces Command and a devoted researcher struggled for years to secure the rare honor for Versace.

Unlike the Air Force, Navy and Marines, the Army never before has awarded a Medal of Honor to a POW from Vietnam for heroism during captivity.

``Most win it for a battle over a five-hour span or over a day,'' said John Gurr, one of his classmates from West Point and a member of the grass- roots Friends of Rocky Versace. ``Rocky won the medal of honor for every day of his 23 months in captivity.''

Living with his grandmother and aunt, Versace spent his senior year at Catholic High while the rest of his family was stationed in Germany. ``He wanted to get into West Point,'' Stephen V. Versace, one of his younger brothers, said in an interview Friday. ``Norfolk Catholic was a bit more challenging than the schools in Germany.''

In 1955, Rocky Versace graduated fourth in
his class at the school, which has since moved to Virginia Beach.

Strong-willed was the common way friends and loved ones described Versace.

Born on July 2, 1937, he was the oldest of five children. His father's career in the Army meant the family moved often. Versace filled the void left by his father's regular absences, his family said.

``He could pretty much drive anybody crazy,'' said Stephen Versace, a professor at the University of Maryland. ``There was no gray for Rocky and he lived that way. Right is right. Wrong is wrong.''

As the end of high school approached, Rocky Versace struggled with a choice: West Point or the priesthood.

He picked the Army.

The first call to rise at West Point came every morning at 5:45, said Gurr, who is now retired outside Charlottesville. Most of the cadets slid back toward their bunks after the first rise and shine.

Not Versace. He'd walk over toward the chapel.

``Into the cold, dark winter,'' Gurr remembered. ``And there he goes.''

At 6-foot-1 and 185 pounds, Versace excelled at sports, too, winning the intermural wrestling championship at West Point.

After graduation, he went to Korea, then Vietnam in 1962 as a military adviser. He asked for and received a six-month extension of his Vietnam tour in the Mekong Delta.

``He was so eager to accomplish his mission of gathering intelligence that it was bound to get him into trouble sooner or later,'' retired Lt. Gen. Howard G. Crowell Jr., who bunked with Versace, told a historian preparing the Medal of Honor application.

By 1963, Capt. Versace had had enough. Scheduled to return home, Versace planned to leave the Army and study to become a priest with the Maryknoll Order missionaries.

But Versace was captured on Oct. 29 by the Viet Cong, sustaining three bullets to one leg, shrapnel wounds and a blow to his head. As the senior member of the imprisoned Americans, Versace insisted that his captors follow the Geneva Convention rules on humanitarian treatment, according to his fellow prisoners.

He sang popular American songs to lift morale. He berated his guards, who in turn shackled and gagged him.

His captors tied a rope around his neck and dragged his emaciated, jaundiced body from village to village to show locals they had defeated this strong American soldier, witnesses told Versace's historian.

But the dog and pony show only steeled Versace's resolve.

``He wouldn't just say nothing,'' Gurr said. ``Rocky's nature was combative and stubborn. He would yell and curse. They were wrong, communism was wrong and he wasn't afraid to say so.''

Adding to the Viet Cong's ire, Gurr said, Versace rebuked them in French and Vietnamese.

``And he paid the price,'' Gurr said.

He was kept hungry. His captors placed him in a tiger cage, its bamboo walls only 6 feet long, 2 feet wide and 3 feet high.

``Like a coffin,'' Gurr said.

For other prisoners, the guards thatched only the top to beat back the heat. For Versace, they covered the sides to turn up the temperature.

``He went from 185 pounds down to something over 100,'' Gurr said.

He attempted to escape three times. But in September 1965, North Vietnamese radio announced that he and another American prisoner had been executed in reply to the death of three terrorists in Da Nang.

His remains have never been found.

Testimonials about his valor came first from James ``Nick'' Rowe, who escaped from Viet Cong captivity in 1968. Rowe secured an audience with Richard Nixon. Awestruck at Versace's heroism, the president reportedly ordered the deceased Army captain be given the Medal of Honor.

But the Army awarded Versace the Silver Star instead, enraging supporters who argued that his refusal to give in helped protect other captured Americans from the Viet Cong's abuses.

After a group of Alexandria men tried and failed to have a local school named after Versace, the Army's Special Forces Command joined up with Versace's classmates at West Point to resurrect the effort to award him the highest medal.

Today, supporters will unveil a bronze statue of Versace accompanied by two children in Alexandria. His achievement on Monday will be enshrined at the Pentagon in its Hall of Heroes.

``There is no bitterness in the end about the wait,'' Gurr said. ``There is instead a marvel that it happened.

``Our system did work,'' he said. ``Rocky would be proud.''

Reach Matthew Dolan at mdolan@pilotonline.com or 446-2322.

BIG BUMP FOR ROCKY!