Memorial Day 2025: Remembering Bobby Ray, a Tennessee hero who died in Vietnam
In the winter of 1960, snow fell gently from the gray skies over McMinnville, Tennessee. The ground was so frigid that each lacy flake was determined not to melt, no matter where it landed.
Quickly, school buses filled with kids, taking them home. Just as quickly, mittens, boots, and layers replaced dresses and jeans.
Good snow meant sledding down many hills in our little town east of Nashville, a shared joy that united us. When one hill was too packed with kids, it was easy to find another.
One day, a group of us found a hill behind the Rays' house. Mary Ray and her brother Bobby hosted sled riders and daredevils. One had to be brave because their hill was littered with trees. Trees can stop a thrilling ride quickly, as I quickly learned.
My old wooden sled, a remnant from my father's youth, was destroyed when I crashed it into a tree trunk that refused to move out of my way.
I landed face down in a pile of snow, and when the other children realized I would need no last rites, laughter began to fill the air. I must admit, I was a funny mess.
When I glanced at a group of boys laughing, one face stood out in my memory: Bobby Ray. His blond hair framed a teenage face radiant with joy, kindness and goodness. Everyone admired him and his sister, but we were unaware that we were in the presence of a fearless hero.
I moved to Georgia shortly after that fateful snow day and never saw the Ray family or many of my peers again. Yet the memories of those joyful, carefree days spent with friends still stay with me.
The 1960s were a significant period of change for many American teenagers, though not all of it was positive.
Snow-covered hills transformed into rice paddies, and sleds were replaced by tanks. The sounds of laughter were drowned out by the blasts of gunfire and grenades as the Vietnam War took center stage.
Opinion: 50 years after the Vietnam War ended, its veterans deserve our gratitude
After college, Bobby joined the U.S. Navy and became a Hospital Corpsman Second Class. He was assigned to Battery D, 2D Battalion, 11th Marines, 1st Marine Division in Vietnam.
During the early morning hours of March 19, 1969, an enemy force penetrated Bobby's battalion near An Hoa combat base. The initial blast of fire caused numerous casualties as the group hustled to fight the enemy with rockets and mortars.
Bobby was injured, but he refused medical assistance. Instead, he continued to minister to those in need.
While bandaging and comforting others, he also fought back against the enemy with gunfire. He was rapidly losing strength from his severe wounds, but he managed to navigate through hostile fire to provide medical care.
As he bravely fought, Bobby ran out of ammunition and soon suffered fatal wounds. In a final act of heroism, he chose to protect a severely injured soldier, throwing himself on top of his wounded comrade just as an enemy grenade exploded nearby. He saved the man's life but sacrificed his own in the process.
David Robert Ray was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor on April 20, 1970.
Bobby is one of thousands who valiantly gave their lives to maintain America's freedom. Since our nation began, we have lost nearly 685,000 warriors in battle, excluding the Civil War. Many more died from war-related injuries and accidents.
Those service members who never experienced another snowfall in winter or basked in the summer sun are a blessing to those who survived war. They are the reason our nation is remarkable.
In my living room, there is a large white book that reminds me of the sacrifices made by soldiers to keep us safe. Titled "I'm Ready to Talk" by Robert Babcock, it contains 160 stories from individuals, like Bobby, who served in Vietnam. Many of these veterans returned with lasting scars from the war.
Approximately 2.7 million American men and women served during the Vietnam War, and over 58,000 didn't return home. How many stories are left unknown, words unsaid, stolen by time?
More: Meet the Vietnam War-era veteran who refused to be disqualified from joining the military
How many fallen heroes received no medals or awards? How many are, instead, buried beneath the earth, somewhere in the world, because they simply did what they were asked to do: serve America.
We are individuals with short attention spans who often overlook the significant cost of maintaining our bliss while sledding down hills with our friends. We are never thankful enough for the valor of our protectors.
I often wonder why I only remember Bobby in the crowd that gathered in the snow behind the Ray house that day.
Perhaps his face was meant to remind everyone to honor the fallen, the brave, and the powerful spirit of America.
David Robert Ray: 2/14/45 - 3/19/69
Lynn Walker Gendusa is a writer in Georgia and the author of the book "Southern Comfort." She is originally from Monterey, Tennessee.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Memorial Day 2025: Remembering a hero who died in Vietnam | Opinion
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News24
30 minutes ago
- News24
Zulu royalty elegance: Shaka iLembe S2 debut lights up Montecasino with culture and style
Be among those who shape the future with knowledge. Uncover exclusive stories that captivate your mind and heart with our FREE 14-day subscription trial. Dive into a world of inspiration, learning, and empowerment. You can only trial once. Start your FREE trial now Show Comments ()
Forbes
34 minutes ago
- Forbes
2 Ways To Rewrite Your ‘Self-Concept' For Success, By A Psychologist
What if your own mind is your biggest saboteur? Here's how shifting your self-view can break you ... More free from the patterns holding you back. We all carry mental blueprints or schemas of how the world works, what love should feel like, how success should arrive or what's possible for us. These schemas are internal roadmaps that determine how you navigate through life. At the very core of all these maps is your 'self-concept'— the beliefs you hold about yourself, about who you are, what you're capable of and what you're allowed to have or hold onto. Your self-concept isn't something you're born with but something that has been building ever since you were born and continues to form as you live through varied experiences. From childhood onward, your self-concept is shaped through repeated messages, cultural narratives and most importantly, your emotional interpretations of life events. In simpler words, anything your brain picks up from your environment as a 'suggestion' about who you are can become part of your self-concept. It doesn't even have to be explicitly said; sometimes it's just what you felt. For example, if you went through an experience that ended up making you perceive yourself as 'not good enough' or perhaps even 'too much,' that very conclusion quietly becomes a self-belief and eventually a part of how you see yourself. In case that belief keeps getting reinforced, maybe through similar experiences or the way people treat you, these beliefs become stronger. Your brain starts scanning the world for more evidence of them, which happens because of confirmation bias. This means once you believe something about yourself, your mind selectively notices and remembers the things that confirm it, while filtering out what contradicts it. Over time, this becomes your internal baseline. Even if life gets better or can get better, your self-concept may keep you stuck in that older story unless you consciously shift it. Here are two ways your self-concept sabotages your desires. Often, the reason you may not be pursuing your desires isn't laziness or lack of ambition. It could be that it doesn't align with your current self-concept and so, it just doesn't feel possible to you. This can lead you to shrink what you desire to keep yourself congruent with your current beliefs. When your self-concept quietly says, 'That's not for someone like me,' your brain doesn't even allow the desire to fully register as an option. This kind of rejection often doesn't even happen consciously, but at unconscious levels of your core identity, which can have an even more powerful impact on your choices. This idea is explored in a 2017 study published in Psychological Inquiry. Researchers developed the Identity-Value Model (IVM) to explain how deeply identity shapes our motivation and self-regulation. Their work shows that when a behavior or goal feels aligned with your self-concept or when it feels like 'you,' your brain assigns it more subjective value, which makes it far more likely for you to pursue and sustain it. However, when something doesn't match your identity, no matter how desirable it is, your brain can quietly decenter it. In other words, your self-concept even shapes what feels worth wanting. So, when your internal identity says a desire or goal is not for you, your subconscious won't even let the desire land fully, let alone act on it. Next time a desire feels off-limits, catch the thought in the moment and journal about it. Try reframing it into an empowering statement, such as 'I'm someone who can learn this.' Then, take one tiny action to act on your goal, like reading a page, making a quick call or spending five minutes practicing. Such micro-commitments can send a signal to your brain that a bigger and bolder dream is possible for you, even if it happens in steps. All you have to do is let yourself desire it and see it happening for you as much as it can for anybody else. When your identity is stuck in who you have been, no matter how hard you work, it can be hard for newer outcomes to emerge. This is because your internal reference point may still be tied to an outdated version of you, including old roles you played, unresolved pain or perceived past failures. These experiences also subtly influence your present behavior without your conscious knowledge, and you may find yourself stuck in similar patterns in different situations. Instead of living in the current moment, you might be living on autopilot, where the same beliefs, reactions and even results get recycled. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence explored how the way teenagers talk about their life experiences (their narrative identity) relates to how they build their sense of self (their identity commitments and exploration). Researchers focused on two aspects of their stories. The first was self-event connections (a question of, can they link life events to who they are?) and agency (do they see themselves as someone who takes action or has control?). This was compared to identity-building behaviors like making commitments, exploring different paths in life, ruminating and overthinking choices, and so on. Data was collected from two groups, a large group of 1,580 Dutch teenagers at one point in time and a smaller long-term sample of 242 teens over two years. Researchers found that teens who made clear links between life events and their self-image and saw themselves as agentic were more likely to have stronger commitments and explore options more deeply and broadly. Over time, those who saw themselves as agentic in their stories tended to grow in identity strength and exploration. Teens who didn't share any story or couldn't link it to themselves were less engaged in identity formation. The findings suggest that adolescents who narrate themselves as having a greater sense of agency and who actively shape events in their lives are more likely to build stronger commitments and explore life's possibilities in adaptive ways. This implies that how you narrate your life can reflect and even shape who you are becoming. If you want to break out of old patterns, start paying attention to how you tell your story to yourself, as well as to others. Try reflecting on whether you are always the victim of what happened or the one who learned and adapted to become better. Even if your past wasn't ideal, seeing yourself as someone who can grow from it rather than be defined by it can help activate a growth mindset. With this mindset, it becomes more likely that you'll build a sense of self that's evolving and open to new outcomes. When you think of changing your self-concept, remember that it isn't about overhauling everything at once. Take it one step at a time. This is going to start with awareness of the beliefs that tend to hold you back. Limiting beliefs often show up in situations where you feel stuck, patterns of repeated emotional responses or in repeated thoughts that feel true but disempowering. Start by noticing what keeps coming up for you. When something triggers you or makes you feel small, journal about it. What was the situation? How did you interpret it? Over time, this may help you spot patterns. Since these are often rooted in beliefs you've internalized over the years, it can seem like an overwhelming process, but a rewarding one in the long run. Once you've identified a limiting belief, try to consciously affirm the opposite. An affirmation is simply a thought, and a belief is just a thought repeated enough times to feel true. By practicing daily affirmations and searching for positive evidence in your everyday life that directly counters your limiting beliefs, you can start to rewire your internal script. It's one of the simplest yet most powerful tools to reshape how you see yourself. However, some beliefs are deeply rooted and may be hard to identify and untangle alone, especially if they stem from childhood experiences or long-standing emotional wounds. In those cases, seeking professional help can offer the support and tools needed to shift those deeper layers of your identity. The idea is to consciously become the author of your internal story, one belief at a time. Because when you shift how you see yourself, everything else begins to shift too. Curious how confident you truly feel about your goals and capabilities? Take this science-backed test to find out: Growth Mindset Scale
Washington Post
40 minutes ago
- Washington Post
The surrendered sword that gave birth to America returns to Virginia
Paul Morando lifted the lid on the wooden crate that had been shipped to the National Museum of the U.S. Army from England the night before. He paused, took a pair of blue gloves from a coat pocket, and put them on. He and an assistant, Lisa Noll, removed the crate's two inner covers. They pulled out the white packing paper. And Morando, the museum's chief curator, lifted out the 275-year-old sword. 'There it is,' he said — the sword of British Gen. Charles Cornwallis that, experts theorize, was presented to the Americans during the British surrender at Yorktown on Oct. 19, 1781. (Cornwallis himself never showed up.) It was the sword that 'represents the birth of America,' Caroline Stanley, Britain's Countess of Derby and a Cornwallis descendant, said at the museum last week. Though they cannot be absolutely certain, experts think this was the sword that signified the end of the Revolutionary War, Morando said, a physical object that symbolized victory over British oppression after six years of bloody conflict. The sword is part of a new museum exhibition, 'Call to Arms: The Soldier and the Revolutionary War,' that celebrates the Army's 250th birthday Saturday and the nation's 250th next year. The exhibition opened June 7 at the museum in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, about 15 miles south of D.C. It is set to run through June 2027. The British surrender came as the forces of Washington and his French allies trapped the main part of Cornwallis's army at Yorktown, a village on the York River in southeastern Virginia. The exhibition includes a large collection of muskets, pistols — two of which belonged to Washington — exquisitely etched powder horns, rare uniforms, tattered battle flags, and mannequins clad in period garb that represent actual war participants. The latter include a life-size model of Native American soldier Daniel Nimham, of the Wappinger people, who served in the Stockbridge Indian Company. He, his son, Abraham, and 14 other Indians were killed in an ambush by British Loyalists in 1778, the museum says. One of the faded flags is that of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment, which included a large contingent of Black soldiers, many of whom were enslaved and agreed to fight in exchange for their freedom. One of them was Cato Varnum, who is shown as a life-size figure wearing the regiment's white uniform and black hat. He joined the regiment at age 16. Another flag, that of the German Ansbach-Bayreuth Regiment in the employ of the British, was the last banner surrendered at Yorktown, Morando said. The white flag bears the image of the Brandenburg red eagle under the Latin motto 'For the Prince and the Country.' More than 2,000 hired German soldiers surrendered with the British, the museum says. Morando has assembled artifacts from institutions around the country, as well as military museums in Britain, France and Canada. From the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa came the red and black uniform of Lt. Jeremiah French, a Loyalist officer. Morando said it is the only surviving complete uniform from the Revolutionary War — with the gold-buttoned overcoat, red waistcoat and white breeches. From France's army museum in Paris came a French soldier's light-gray and blue coat that Morando said had never before been exhibited in the U.S. From Britain came the sword, which has been lent by the countess, who said her family has owned it for generations. She watched last week as it was mounted in a museum display case. Morando said that there is no concrete proof that this was the Cornwallis sword presented at the ceremony but that there is 'a lot of supporting evidence.' In paintings depicting the surrender, the sword is 'just a simple British officer's sword. And that's what this is. There's nothing fancy. Just a standard English dress sword from that time period.' 'I honestly believe this is Lord Cornwallis's sword,' he said. 'Whether or not it was the sword that was presented, you can make arguments for and against. Looking at the research, looking at the documents, looking at the images and paintings, you can make a strong argument that this indeed is the surrender sword.' The countess said 'it's never left the family.' 'It was always in my father's dressing room,' she said in an interview. 'Probably not being looked after in the way that it should have been looked after. It was in a coat stand with … umbrellas and stuff like that.' 'Even though he knew how important it was … it's always been much more of a sentimental item,' she said. 'The battle of Yorktown is arguably, almost definitely, the most important battle,' she said. 'When Yorktown happened, that was the end of the war, even though it went on for a couple more years. It was effectively over.' The sword, which is on loan for six months, is believed to have been given to Cornwallis in his youth by an uncle who was a general, she said. The sword dates to the 1750s, she said. By 1781, Cornwallis was 42 and a battle-tested leader when he surrendered his army at Yorktown. The ceremony that Friday afternoon took place in front of thousands of soldiers — victors and vanquished. Washington was present. So was the French commander, Rochambeau. Cornwallis was not. He was either too embarrassed or was ill, historian Jerome A. Greene wrote in his 2005 book 'The Guns of Independence: the Siege of Yorktown, 1781.' Although, the countess said, Cornwallis and Washington met privately later, the British general's absence at the surrender annoyed the Americans. 'We are not to be surprised that the pride of the British officer is humbled,' wrote James Thacher, a doctor in Washington's army, according to Greene. 'They have always maintained an exalted opinion of their own military prowess [and viewed] the Americans as a contemptible, undisciplined rabble,' Thacher wrote. Cornwallis instead sent one of his subordinates, Gen. Charles O'Hara. As the ceremony began, O'Hara tried to offer the sword to Rochambeau, even though O'Hara knew Washington was the allied commander, Greene recounted. Rochambeau pointed O'Hara to Washington. But when O'Hara tried to surrender the sword to Washington, the latter directed him to one of his subordinates, Gen. Benjamin Lincoln. If Cornwallis was sending a subordinate, he would surrender to a subordinate, Greene wrote. Lincoln took the sword, held it for a moment and gave it back. Tradition has it that during the ceremony a band played the tune 'The World Turned Upside Down.' (The Broadway musical 'Hamilton' has a song about Yorktown with that refrain.) But Greene wrote: 'There is little evidence to support this claim.' A few weeks after the surrender, a French soldier wrote his mother: 'I know now that I have been an actor in events which the world and history will never forget.'
