Tag Archives: OC 504-68

Reunion 2007

OC504-68.jpg

 The posts on the email group are starting to dribble in from this year’s third reunion in Washington, D.C. Most people left the hotel this morning to fly home, some as far as the West Coast. So the posts won’t pick up until this afternoon or even after sundown. "Was interesting," one earlybird and first-timer writes, "to dust off the memory banks and actually recognize faces from 39 years ago. Probably talked more to non-third platoon members yesterday then in all of OCS." Reunions in ’03 and ’05 were like that, too. Sorry I missed this one. Have to stay healthy and make the one in ’09.

Reunion “chairs”

I’m not going to make my OCS class reunion this year. It’s in Washington, D.C., which will benefit all the guys who live in the vicinity, but is just too far for me to go for a weekend. I made the first one, in ’03 at Fort Benning, and the ’05 one in San Antonio, and with luck I’ll still be around for the ’09 one, hopefully somewhere closer. D.C. has turned out to be so expensive the class has had to ask for contributions above the fees paid by attendees, to help pay for everything. So they came up with a creative idea: offered to name chairs in the hospitality suite for a price. Started off with $100 each for Infantry and Special Forces, then offered the others at $50. I sent a check for an Armor chair, my combat arms branch, although I was infantry in Vietnam. Others have since come in for the wives, the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Signal Corps, Military Intelligence, and the 25th Infantry Division. It’s working.

Our war dead

These are the men of 60th Company, Infantry Officer’s Candidate School, at Fort Benning, Georgia, a class dubbed 504-68, who were killed in Vietnam, and whom we 110 graduates (all but one of whom also served in Vietnam) remember on Memorial Day: 
 
One graduate:   1LT Jacob Lee Kinser
 
Two tactical officers: CPT Reese Michael Patrick
                              1LT Daniel Lynn Neiswender
 
Two drop-outs: CPL Sherry Joe Hadley    
                      SP4 Reese Currenti Elia, Jr.
 
UPDATE:  Two more drop-outs, inadvertently left out, but since confirmed:
 
                       CPL Robert Chase
                       SP4 Jeffrey Sanders Tigner