He’s been found!
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By Barb Ickes | Thursday, September 28, 2006 |
(Contributed photo)
TODAY: (Updated 1:10 p.m.) The photograph of two Vietnam War buddies that appeared in today’s Times did the trick.
Mike Martens, of Park View, Iowa, called the newspaper today to say, “That’s me in the picture.”
A long-ago friend Martens made in Saigon had been looking for him.
Ron Maybon, Oxford, Neb., sent the picture, along with a letter, to the Times. He explained that he’d suffered a serious brain injury and couldn’t remember the name of a friend he’d served with in Saigon in 1966.
“All I know is he came from Davenport, Iowa,” Maybon wrote.
The men plan to talk and, hopefully, meet again soon.
Barb Ickes will have their story in Sunday’s edition of the Quad-City Times.
EARLIER STORY
It was a stroke of luck that the letter even got here. The envelope was addressed, simply: “Any Newspaper, Davenport, Iowa.”
Inside, a Polaroid picture was stapled to the top of a letter. It shows two men in trunk-like shorts — one in black and the other in white. The return address is in Oxford, Neb.
Ron Maybon wrote the letter. The 61-year-old Vietnam veteran is nearly desperate to find the man in the white shorts.
“My mind will not give me the name of the individual I served with who came from Davenport, Iowa,” he wrote.
In a call to Oxford, Ron explained more.
Twenty-two years ago, he blacked out while working on a roof. He landed on a concrete slab, sustaining a serious brain injury that left him in a coma for four months. At nearly 40 years old, he set out on his second childhood, relearning all the basics.
He believes the fall from the roof, and the seizure-like episode that triggered it, was a latent reaction to exposure to Agent Orange. Ron believes he was sprayed with the powerful herbicide, which American troops used in Vietnam to defoliate jungles.
Now half of his brain is forever asleep.
“When the picture I sent to you was taken, I believe it was during the barbeque and beer blast, and I believe that was the night we were sprayed,” he said. “I just can’t bring back his name.
“I met him in Saigon, I believe, and his hometown of Davenport sticks in my mind. Unfortunately, that’s about it.”
After his fall and the four brain surgeries that followed, only half of his brain recovered. Without function on one side, he suffers from heart and lung problems and is blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.
“What I’m writing to you dear people for is to see if you could find the gentleman in the white shorts,” Ron wrote. “(Please locate) his name and address so that this disabled Vietnam veteran could communicate with that dear friend.
“And I hope that he is in better shape than I am.”
Ron said he served in Vietnam at Headquarters Company, 1st Signal Brigade at Saigon and Long Bien. He served there for a year, beginning in May 1966.
“I can see people and not know who I’m looking at,” he said. “The VA (Veterans Administration) won’t fess up with me being sprayed by Agent Orange.
“I’m on oxygen 24 hours a day, three breathing treatments a day, black out occasionally, have poor balance, very bad depth perception, and I take 20 pills a day. With all of that, my battle with the U.S. government still goes on.”
His struggles with the VA are part of the reason Ron wants to find his war buddy. But he also wants simply to reconnect.
“If he’s got the same problems I have or knows of any of the other guys who do, then maybe I can go to the VA with it,” he said. “If you could help me find this man I served with, me and God will be very appreciative.”
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