Local professor researching Silent Hero from Vietnam War
A local professor teaching at Cumberland University participated in a national program to recognize military personnel who died while serving.
Dr. Tara Mitchell Mielnik, Associate Professor of History and Public History, is one of 55 educators across the country, and the only one from Tennessee, researching the lives of what the National History Day nonprofit calls Silent Heroes.
NHD's Researching Silent Heroes webinar series will show the collection of the research conducted over some of the service people who died in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam War.
'It's a national competition for middle and high school students that I've been involved with for over 25 years,' Dr. Mielnik said. '[I was] asked to be a judge in 1999 when I worked in South Carolina, and that's how I got involved with it.'
The program started with WWI and WWII soldiers, especially soldiers of the latter who are buried in France after the D-Day invasion, with the purpose of developing biographies for the lesser-known service members who never returned home.
' 'This is a program that they've developed primarily for high school teachers and their students to try to bring awareness to soldiers that never came home,' Dr. Mielnik added. 'They're buried, typically in national cemeteries abroad.'
This year is the first to involve soldiers listed as missing and also from the Vietnam War.
'We were asked to choose from a list of soldiers they gave us. So I narrowed it down to two soldiers; one from Franklin, and the soldier I ended up choosing,' Dr. Mielnik said.
She chose SSGT Joe Lynn DeLong from McMinnville, Tennessee. Dr. Mielnik is also from McMinnville, so she said the choice came down to that fact.
'I was not really aware of him,' she said. 'McMinnville has a Medal of Hero winner from Vietnam, David Robert Ray. There's a school named after him, so I was very aware of Bobby Ray and his story, but I didn't know anything about Joe Lynn DeLong.'
DeLong's status as missing is important because his remains have never been recovered. More than 100 files related to DeLong's case have been declassified in the last few years by the Department of Defense, which has been looking for his remains since 1973, which is when the family was first notified of DeLong's status.
Most military personnel listed as MIA from Vietnam were pilots who were shot down and never recovered. The story of a ground soldier who was never recovered is somewhat unique.
'It seems like he needs his story told. So that's what I wanted to do was tell his story,' Dr. Mielnik said.
DeLong was born on June 18, 1947, drafted into the army in the latter part of 1966, deployed to Vietnam in March of 1967 and captured only two months later. He was killed in November of that year.
'What we know is that he was captured when his platoon was overrun. There were just a handful of soldiers in his platoon that survived at all. When they were discovered the next day, he was the only one that was unaccounted for,' Dr. Mielnik said. 'Later, it was determined that he was in a prisoner of war camp. He was in a very small camp with only eight other POWs from another incursion.'
An escape from the POW camp was attempted, and ended up failing. North Vietnamese soldiers showed the remaining U.S. prisoners DeLong's bloody fatigues ridden with bullet holes as an example of what happens when prisoners attempt to escape.
National History Day is coordinating with the American Battle Monuments Commission (ACMB) in researching the soldiers.
'National History Day's Researching Silent Heroes program is essential to our work to improve the teaching and learning of history,' Cathy Gorn, Ph.D., Executive Director of National History Day, said. 'Thanks to ABMC, teachers across the country and around the world get to dive into primary source research about the lives of service members from twentieth century conflicts. I can't wait to read the impactful profiles the teachers will write about these fallen service members' lives.'
Dr. Mielnik has been working on this since right before Christmas, but the bulk of the research occurred in February and March.
During March, she went down to spend time in the McMinnville archives, interviewing family members, and visiting DeLong's grave marker.
Dr. Mielnik said the main goal is to tell Long's story. She said she may reach out to historical commissions and societies in Tennessee to share DeLong's story. Rotary McMinnville and Warren County Genealogical and Historical Society have asked Mielnik to speak at veteran programs.
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