Saturday, October 16, 2004
Korean vets get their due
By Howard Wilkinson
Enquirer staff writer
READING - The young American men in uniform and the Korean people who resisted the wave of communism that swept into their country more than 50 years ago forged alliances that remain intact today.
But the one-time soldiers, sailors and Marines are now men in their late 60s and 70s with vivid memories of the hardships and pain they felt in the early 1950s, as they fought the communists in a country many had never heard of, 7,000 miles away
![[img]](korea.jpg)
From left, Joe Celenza, Al Kretschmar, Gene Molen, Roy Miller, Bob McGeorge and Pat Dilonardo at the Reading Korean War Memorial.
(Enquirer photo/MICHAEL E. KEATING)
|
Sunday afternoon, in Reading's Veterans Park, the military veterans will come together with Korean-Americans of all ages to dedicate a Korean War veterans' monument - the only one of its kind in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky - that will have special meaning to both groups.
"It's there to honor all those who served and all those who lost their lives,'' said Bob McGeorge of White Oak, who fought in Korea with the 401st Heavy Mortar Battalion, never leaving the front lines for one 10-month stretch.
"We thought it was overdue.''
For the Cincinnati area Korean-Americans who helped the Korean War Veterans Association raise $5,000 for the monument, it was a chance to say thanks.
"We can never repay the debt we owe the Americans who fought for our homeland, but we can do this small thing,'' said Dr. Bae Suk Lee, a retired anesthesiologist from Evendale. As a young medical student-turned soldier, Lee fought alongside the Americans.
The idea of a Korean War monument was born a year-and-a-half ago, as McGeorge and some of his fellow officers of the Ohio Valley chapter sat around a table at a VFW post in Groesbeck, talking chapter business.
For decades, most of them had thought of themselves as the veterans of a largely forgotten war, one that got lost in the shuffle between the glory heaped on the World War II generation and the divisiveness of Vietnam.
. "It wasn't until 1999 that it was even declared to be a real war,'' said Al Kretschmar of Reading, a Navy veteran who served throughout the war and who chaired the association's fund-raising drive.
Each of the 80 members of the Ohio Valley chapter was given 10 copies of a fund-raising letter to send to friends, family and local businesses. "The money started coming in, but it was slow,'' said Pat Dilonardo of Reading, who fought with the Army's 2nd Infantry Division. "Then we met Dr. Lee.''
Lee was shown the letter by a dentist friend. He immediately wrote out a $1,000 check to the association.
"I have lived all my life in gratitude for what America did for the Korean people,'' Lee said. "Of course, I wanted to be involved.''
He was born in 1929 in Hamhung, a city in North Korea then occupied by the Japanese. Shortly after World War II, North Korea was taken over by a communist dictatorship and the 17-year-old Lee escaped across the 38th Parallel to live with an aunt and uncle in Seoul.
Shortly after the war broke out in 1950, the North Koreans occupied Seoul for a time and the young medical student was forced into hiding. His aunt and uncle were taken by the communists and never seen again. Lee went to work as a translator for the U.S. 10th Corps. After the 1953 cease-fire, he served 15 years in the Korean Air Force.
In the 1970s, he came to the United States and began a career as an anesthesiologist at a hospital in Marietta, Ohio.
"My life has been blessed; I was one of the lucky ones,'' Lee said. After making his own contribution, Lee wrote a letter to his many friends in Cincinnati's Korean community, which numbers more than 2,000, asking them to contribute to the cause. Small checks began pouring into the Ohio Valley chapter's account.
"I don't think we could have done this without Dr. Lee and the Korean people here in Cincinnati,'' Kretschmar said.
Korean war facts
