Honoring an outstanding veteran

From the Times Ledger:

The Vietnam Veterans of America Queens Chapter 32 will march in Monday’s Little Neck-Douglaston Memorial Day Parade with their former leader, Michael O’Kane — still slowed by knee surgery — riding along in a camouflage Camaro. This year the organization will pay a special tribute to former service members from Queens who died alone and sometimes homeless.

“We are sponsoring the Francis Lewis High School Junior ROTC, who will be carrying 125 folded casket flags belonging to indigent veterans that our chapter has had the honor of escorting to their final resting place,” O’Kane said.

For nearly a decade Chapter 32 has partnered with the Hess Miller Funeral Home in Middle Village to provide dignified burials for veterans who can’t afford one. Each flag-draped casket is transported to Calverton National Cemetery in Suffolk County, where the veteran receives full military honors and since there are no family members to receive the flag, the Chapter 32 members take it back to their Whitestone headquarters where the flags are put on display.

“In an effort to reconnect a family member with their relative, a listing of the veterans’ names, date of birth and date of death will be distributed along the parade route,” O’Kane said. “Contact information will also be provided if a relative is found and the casket flag will be returned to them. This is a very proud moment for the chapter.”

He recently stepped down after serving two years as president of the chapter, but he remains on the board of directors. Last week, the Glendale resident was inducted into the New York State Senate Veterans’ Hall of Fame after he was selected by state Sen. Joseph Addabbo (D-Howard Beach).

O’Kane served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, where he earned the Vietnam Service Medal, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal and the U.S. Navy Combat Action Ribbon, Presidential Unit Citation, and Meritorious Unit Citation for engaging the enemy several times in fire fights along the various rivers and canals in the Republic of Vietnam.

Ridgewood monument should get more respect

From the Queens Chronicle:

On Jan. 31, 1968, Private First Class Richard Gilley, of Maspeth, was killed in action on a Vietnam battlefield three weeks shy of his 21st birthday.

Almost 50 years after his death, a memorial dedicated in his name sits unkempt and dirty next to the former American Legion post at 776 Fairview Ave., underneath the Forest Avenue station along the M train line, in Ridgewood.

Multiple homeless people live alongside the chainlink fence in front of the memorial and bottles, plastic bags and old food containers litter the area surrounding Gilley’s plaque and rusting flagpole.

The property the shrine sits on belongs to the Greater Ridgewood Youth Council, which plans on moving into the adjacent building it purchased in 2009, but hasn’t yet due to financial reasons.
Until 2004, the building belonged to American Legion Post No. 562, which dedicated the memorial in 1972.

GRYC Director Bob Monahan said his organization deserves some of the blame for not maintaining the memorial properly, but that beautification work should start in the near future.

“I would imagine over the next week or so that we’ll get rid of the weeds. We’ll do the best we can to clean it up,” Monahan said. “That whole corner is being replaced and it’s going to be a beautiful little area. It will be quite stunning.”

According to Monahan, the GRYC has attempted to clean the area before, which also includes a general plaque for all soldiers killed in Vietnam, but the presence of homeless people living next to the monuments precludes the space from staying clean for very long.

In 1972, this may have been an ok spot to place the monument. But this is 2014 and just the fact that there is a train station above this spot that hosts a number of daily slobs who throw stuff down onto the tracks is reason enough to move it out of there.

Countries won't take back their criminals

From Fox News:

Long after they were ordered out of the country, thousands of criminal aliens from places like China, Cuba, Vietnam and Pakistan remain free in the United States to commit new crimes because their home countries refuse to take them back.

For years, this unique problem percolated under the political radar. But recent crimes by immigrant felons have lawmakers scrambling to punish nations that refuse to repatriate their own citizens. The Obama administration and many Democrats in Congress, however, are blocking punitive legislation, preferring to let the State Department handle the issue diplomatically.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, is leading the charge in Congress to change the law, pushing to withhold visas to nations that refuse to take back their own.

"I don't know why the State Department seems to take the side of foreign countries over our own American interest in the United States," Poe said, urging the U.S. to tell those countries: "Look, you take these people back or the consequence is going to be no visas for your nation."

Under a 2001 Supreme Court decision, U.S. immigration officials are only permitted to hold someone for six months after their incarceration. So when a home nation refuses to take back their national, the U.S. is required to release them -- no matter what they've done.

The issue recently came to Poe's attention after three especially heinous crimes were committed by men ordered deported years ago.