PAUL NEWMAN DIED...

THE DAY PAUL NEWMAN DIED

As most of you know, veteran stage and screen star (and notable racecar driver) Paul Newman passed away. His life and times were well reported, as they should have been. By all accounts Mr. Newman was a good man, husband and citizen. He stayed out of trouble, stayed married to the same woman and created charities that bear his name. Something else happened that day...I just thought it was important that you know...

You're an 18 or 19 year old kid. You're critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley. It's November-14-1965, LZ Xray, Vietnam .

Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8 to 1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in . You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out.

Your family is half-way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day. Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear the sound of a helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed Huey.

But it doesn't seem real, because no Medi-Vac markings are on it. Ed Freeman is coming for you. He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come. He's coming anyway. And he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board. Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses...and he kept coming back.

13 more times. He took about 30 of you and your buddies out, guys who would never have gotten out. Medal of Honor Recipient Ed Freeman died on a Wednesday, at the age of 80, in Boise, ID. (Oh ya, Paul Newman died that day too. I guess you knew that. He got a lot more press than Ed Freeman.)

With everything that is happening in the world, and the superficial nature of our news media, I just wanted a few more people to know about the Ed Freemans of the world...