Latest news with #TexasLandCommissionerandVeteransLandBoard
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Buckingham encourages Texans to visit Texas State Veterans Cemeteries to view headstone illuminations during Memorial Day Weekend
May 22—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dawn Buckingham, M.D., on Thursday announced that, in honor of Memorial Day, the headstones of servicemembers Killed or Missing in Action will be illuminated at the VLB's four Texas State Veterans Cemeteries in Killeen, Abilene, Mission and Corpus Christi. The grounds will be open 24 hours a day starting Friday, May 23, through Monday, May 26, for night viewing. "This beautiful tribute is one of the many ways the VLB shows reverence for the selfless sacrifices of our nation's fallen heroes," said Commissioner Buckingham. "Memorial Day weekend is a special time for families and communities whose loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice. As VLB Chairwoman, I am beyond honored to help provide Texans with expertly maintained Texas State Veterans Cemeteries where they can cherish the memories of the brave souls lost in battle this Memorial Day." Texas State Veterans Cemetery Locations: Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery — 11463 Fort Hood Street — Killeen, Texas 76542 — (254) 616-1770 Coastal Bend State Veterans Cemetery — 9974 IH 37 Access Road — Corpus Christi, Texas 78410 — (361) 248-4830 Rio Grande Valley State Veterans Cemetery — 2520 South Inspiration Road — Mission, Texas 78572 — (956) 583-7227 Texas State Veterans Cemetery at Abilene — 7457 W. Lake Road — Abilene, Texas 79601 — (325) 673-4446
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: SP5 George Padilla shares his story of service in the US Army during the Vietnam War
May 9—AUSTIN — Today, Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dawn Buckingham, M.D., is proud to introduce the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, they highlight the service of Information Specialist 5 (SP5) George Padilla who served in in the United States Army. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas in the shadow of Big Tex and the Texas State Fair, Padilla said he went to North Dallas High School, graduating in May 1963 before attending college. "The first college I attended was the University of Texas at Arlington where I was a pre-law major and participated in debates there before transferring to North Texas State University, which of course is now known as the University of North Texas (UNT), where I was a radio and television broadcast announcer." While he was attending UNT, Padilla said he was in the vicinity of where President John F. Kennedy (JFK) was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. "I was there on the corner of Industrial and Commerce Streets sitting in my 1960 white Chevrolet Impala watching the motorcade race up the on ramp onto the freeway. I had gotten there seconds after he had been killed, yeah, I was there," he said about that day. "That day is as vivid as yesterday, if I was to get off the phone right now, it still comes back, I know exactly what happened." Padilla left the university to get married and said that's when Uncle Sam sent him a letter he has yet to forget that told him he had been drafted. "It said 'Greetings, you are now in the U.S. Service, please report to the following location,' so I dropped out of college, got my draft notice and went and talked to my friendly recruiter at 1100 Commerce here in Dallas and he says 'Gosh boy, you've been to college, sign here for an extra year and we will guarantee you will not go to Vietnam, which is a common conversation for many in Texas during that time." Padilla said he reported to boot camp at Fort Polk in Louisiana, now known as Fort Johnson, in November 1967 as Third Squad Leader in Company D. Padilla said he learned quickly about the real world when he was in Louisiana. "I gravitated from academia to the reality of the real world, it took me out of my comfort zone," Padilla explained about boot camp life. "It taught me physically how to maneuver against another opponent since I was one of the shortest guys in the military, I learned how to defend myself quickly." After boot camp, Padilla was sent to Korea and believes he was sent there after the USS Pueblo was captured off the coast of North Korea in January 1968. A lot of people, he said, from Fort Polk were sent to Korea instead of Vietnam for that reason. "Since my college background was in radio and television broadcasting, I finagled my way out of a company morning report clerk job with the 2nd Aviation Battalion and I ended up in Public Information Office for a 15 minute interview," Padilla said. "I told them about my experience in high school and college, the debate teams, and he just told me I was hired and they would have my orders transferred in one week." While in Korea, Padilla interviewed soldiers and sent their recordings back to the States to be played on their hometown radio shows for families to hear. While all of it gave him more action in the field, something he acknowledged wasn't the case as a morning report clerk, it also afforded him the chance to interview Bob Hope during one of his tours. "The big highlight for me was just interviewing G.I.'s. My regular job was called 'Radio Hometown Interview.' I would interview from five to 50 soldiers in a 30 day period and I would package that up, send to it to Washington D.C., and they would disperse it to the hometown of the G.I. to be played on their local radio station," Padilla told the GLO. "Other than that, the other highlight was interviewing Bob Hope in December 1968, rubbing elbows with Ann Margaret, Penelope Plummer and Miss World at that time." Click here to listen to SP5 George Padilla tell his story.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: Colonel John Zink shares his story of service in the United States Air Force, Army Air Corps
May 2—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dr. Dawn Buckingham announced the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program May 2. This week, they highlight the service of Colonel John Zink who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps and U.S. Air Force. Zink, the son of a World War I Veteran, decided to join the military after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II. He went into the service in June 1942 while attending flight school. Even though Zink had never ridden in an airplane before flight school, his love of aircraft began as a young child. "Well, as far back as I can remember, I was always interested in airplanes. One of the car dealers in my county had a Stenson Reliant. He used to land it in my neighbor's pasture field, and every time he did, I'd run down there and drool over the airplane — I guess that's the right term — and I always wanted to fly." Like his peers, Zink felt that joining the military at this pivotal moment for America was the "right thing to do." He also recognized that the emergency circumstances created by Pearl Harbor's bombing would allow him to fly in the military without attending college. When discussing his first flight, Zink said he had two feelings. "Number one was I'm gonna do it, and the other one was, I'm sort of scared to do it. And I guess the joy overtook the other one." Zink graduated with the rank of second lieutenant and was extremely pleased to go on to fly fighter aircraft, specifically the Lockheed P-38 Lighting. Zink described this historic fighter, saying, "A P-38 was a twin-engine fighter plane built by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. It was designed in the late 1930s by Kelly Johnson and his engineering staff. Kelly was the head of engineering at Lockheed in those days. And first flew in late 1940 [...] The first ones were probably delivered to the Air Force in mid-1941 in very small quantities. And then, when the war broke out, the contracts were increased." At an Air Force base in Rabaul, near the Solomon Islands, Zink recalled that the Japanese had six airfields with over 400 planes. He was a part of the 13th Air Force, and they were to cover 24 Douglass SBD Dauntless dive bombers and 24 Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers on a dive-bombing mission. "We had 16 P-38s on the mission, and as they started the dive-bombing run why, the Japanese fighters attacked from above. We don't know exactly how high they were, but we were about 16,000, so they were probably 20,000. There was a thin deck of cloud above us, and we couldn't see 'em. And so, we followed the dive bombers down, and as we went down, I saw several P-38s crash in the water." Zink also described the dangers of compressibility that afflicted the P-38 and how one pilot was rescued after being shot down during that mission. "As you gain speed in a P-38, the lift point would move back on the wing, and if it got to a certain point, it would actually blank out the elevator, and you couldn't pull out of the dive. Whether these airplanes got into compressibility or actually were shot down, we'll never know for sure, but we did see three of 'em go down in real tight formation and hit the water [...] there were 16 P-38s — 8 of them shot down or lost. We picked up one pilot seven days later, and, by the way, he's 90 some years old and still living. We escorted the bombers back out off the target, and then we headed home." Zink spoke about the difficulty of losing friends and people he had attended flying school with and how combat was a rough experience as they fought the numerous Japanese forces. However, as they learned, Zink said, "We became more mature [and] gained experience from the mistakes that we made. We stopped losing airplanes, losing our fighters to the Japanese fighters. One of the things we've always been very proud of is that we never lost a bomber we were escorting to the Japanese fighters." The P-38 pilots flew several bombing missions themselves, and Zink recalled being proud of the accuracy of their bombing with relatively little experience. He flew missions near northwest New Guinea, the Celebes, the East Indies, and Borneo for nine months. Zink recalled participating in long-range missions that cover over a 700-mile radius. He flew an incredible 157 missions over the Pacific Ocean while being deployed for 20 months. Though he was discharged and needed rest due to combat fatigue, Zink's military career did not end after his service during World War II. He would also make an impact during the Korean War as a top-notch pilot. Click here to listen to Colonel John Zink tell his story.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: Captain Claude Platte shares his story of service in the US Army Air Corps during WWII
Apr. 4—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dr. Dawn Buckingham on April 4 introduced the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, they highlight the service of Tuskegee Airman Captain Claude Platte, who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. Born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, Platte grew up in a time of segregation and recalled as a child what that was like and what went through his curious young mind. "One of the main things I remember that encouraged me was in a situation where there were colored signs and white signs and black fountains and white fountains and I had been taught that when I saw a colored sign that is where I was supposed to be or drink water," he explained. "One day I saw a little white boy drinking out of the colored fountain-the black fountain, his father scolded him, but doing so, I became curious. Why couldn't I drink out of the white fountain? And what was wrong? When no one was looking, I decided that I would drink out of the white fountain. And when I did, my biggest shock and surprise was — the water was the same, there was no difference." Platte said he decided he wanted to learn how to fly when he was young and never forgot the moment that influenced him the most, standing out front of his boyhood home as an aircraft flew by. "I saw an airplane hovering very low and I could see the pilot flying over and it dawned on me that I could go and see the other side of the area, outside the segregated area, or even go all over the world if I wanted to see what it looked like so I decided this is what I wanted to do, is fly," he explained. It was the moment that changed the course of Platte's life, sending him in a direction that allowed him to be a teacher of men, to pilots that too had that dream of flying for their country. After graduating from I.M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth, Platte left Texas for Tuskegee, Alabama. "When I arrived at Tuskegee my biggest shock when I got there was, Tuskegee had the only VA hospital for Negroes in the country; they were all manned by black doctors and white nurses and so forth. The other thing that was very interesting was Dr. George Washington Carver was there. Because of George Washington Carver and the peanut, I got an opportunity to see people like President Roosevelt, Lena Horn, Joe Lewis and all these VIP people that come through Tuskegee on tour so to speak," he recalled, adding meeting those people encouraged him to go farther than he had ever imagined. Platte said even though he was still interested in flying he enrolled in, what was known at the time, as Mechanical Industries because he wanted to be an engineer. It wasn't until about 1939 when President Roosevelt enlisted the Army Air Corps and the War Department to organize better security for the United States. "They in return got six black colleges to take part in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) and Tuskegee was one of them," Platte recalled. "In that program that's where I was able to earn my private license, a commercial license, and a flight instructor's license." Platte would, as an instructor, go on to train more than 300 black pilots. When asked why he would decide to train others than live out his boyhood dream of flying, he said he didn't look at it as a decision, rather a chance to do something incredible. "It wasn't a decision. I felt that I had an opportunity to be an instructor. But the same thing may happen to me, I might decide to be a cadet and I may not make I better take what I got and enjoy that while I could," Platte said. Platte also formed the DFW Tuskegee Airmen Chapter in May 2005 to help educate people at home. In 2007, he, along with his fellow surviving airmen, received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush. Click here to listen to Captain Platte tell his story.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Voices of Veterans: CW2 Melissa Harcrow shares her story of service in the US Army
Mar. 21—AUSTIN — Texas Land Commissioner and Veterans Land Board (VLB) Chairwoman Dr. Dawn Buckingham on March 21 introduced the next installment of the series highlighting the VLB's Voices of Veterans oral history program. This week, they highlight the service of Chief Warrant Officer (CW2) Melissa Harcrow who served in U.S. Army. Harcrow was born in Fort Bliss, Texas, in 1984 and moved around during her childhood while her father was in the service. She attended Burges High School in 2002 and joined the Army after graduation and receiving a call from a recruitment officer. Following boot camp training in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, she selected the job of a unit supply specialist. "My first duty station was Fort Hood, Texas, which is now Fort Cavazos. I was assigned to headquarters, 2nd chemical battalion. I made some friends and learned more about my job. I was in the S4 section, so it was helping manage the government vehicle and doing reports for equipment." "We deployed at various times between the end of March to April of 2003. First, we went to Kuwait, and then we convoyed into Iraq. We were a chemical battalion, so we issued some decontamination equipment to other units that were there before they left to Iraq. Then in April we went into Iraq." Her time in Iraq was spent at the Balad Air Base where she worked burn detail and guard duty and escorted other officers around and off post. After her deployment, Harcrow returned to Texas. In August 2004, she had her daughter and, shortly after, reenlisted. She then went to Korea in May 2005. "I got to explore the culture, and I had a great leader who pushed me to work towards getting promoted. Overall, my time there was very good. I was in the 3rd Military Intelligence Battalion." After her time in Korea, Harcrow returned to the U.S. and was located at Fort Bliss, Texas in 2006. At this point in her career, Harcrow had been promoted multiple times and her next deployment was to Qatar in 2007 as the Company Supply Sergeant. "I had a really good command team, and my job consisted of a lot of inventory and keeping track of equipment. We did travel back and forth to Kuwait a few times to do those inventories, and that's where I met my husband, who was in the same company. We were in Echo Company 343 Air Defense Artillery Battalion." Harcrow returned to Fort Bliss in 2008 after her deployment to Qatar and in 2011 was accepted into Warrant Officer Training School. "It was a combination of one of my bosses encouraging me to go who was a warrant officer, and I loved my job," Harcrow said when asked about being accepted into Warrant Officer Training School. "It was something I wanted to do, I was also a subject matter expert. It's a lot of academic type work, but also field training and ruck marches. It's very disciplined, too." Following her graduation from Warrant Officer Training School, Harcrow moved to Fort Campbell in Kentucky where she assisted the Property Book Officer (PBO) for 2nd Brigade Combat Team — 101st Airborne Division. Shortly after this time, she was deployed to Afghanistan with the 184th Explosive Ordinance Disposal Battalion to Afghanistan but returned to be with her children. She then finished her time with the Army in 2014. Melissa Harcrow returned to school and completed her bachelor's and master's in logistics and operations management. From her time in the Army, she received five army commendations, five army achievement medals, three good conduct medals, NCO of the year, and other awards. She is currently involved in several Veterans' organizations, including Team Red, White, and Blue, Texas Democratic Veterans, and U.S. Global Leadership Coalition and has been a Chair for the El Paso Veterans Committee for the past three years. She is also on the board for the Women's Fund of El Paso and was just appointed to the El Paso County Women's Commission. When asked about what she has learned from her experience in the Army and after leaving the service, Harcrow says, "Get involved with your community, somehow someway. Always give 100% even when there's days you feel like you're done. You're going to get through it." Click here to listen to CW2 Melissa Harcrow tell her story of service in the U.S. Army.
