LOOKING BACK Cart Sk Chair by Jay Spectre Jewish Vietnam Hero Gives Lie To Slander RABBI LEONARD WINOGRAD Special to The Jewish News S 51" 4P7Watig t.r. BROWN JORDAN SPRING SALE! Collecting fine art need not be confined to something hanging on your wall Let the striking designs of Jay Spectre grace your deck this summer Hurry in for special prices on his entire collection! Livonia - 522-9200 - 295E0 W. 6 Mile Rd. • Birmingham - 6441919 - 221 Hamilton • Novi - Opening h June - 49700 Grand River - 348-0090 SOMERSET CLEANERS DAVID SYME pianist Same Day Service Monday thru Saturday No Extra Charge FREE 1 PAIR OF PANTS CLEANED AND PRESSED with any incoming dry cleaning order of $6.95 or more. May not be combined with any other coupon. Expires 7/1/90 3 2 5 81 Northwestern Highway, Farmington Hills, MI 48018 (313) 737-7122 44 FRIDAY, JUNE 1, 1990 Public and Private Performances, Lectures, and Entertainment. 737-5543 1 1 !! !I I /e 855-4464 Hunters Square • Farmington Hills hortly after I came to my new pulpit in 1969, I was called to officiate at the funeral and burial of a young man who had been killed in action in Vietnam. He had been assigned to an Arvin unit and had learned to love the Vietnamese peasants with whom he worked. He had taken his task quite to heart and had learned to speak the lang- uage of the country, which brought him even closer to the people. While on patrol, his unit had become involved in a firelight and suffered heavy casualties although he, himself, had not been wounded. A helicopter was sent in to rescue the sur- vivors, and he was safely aboard that rescue aircraft when he noticed a Viet- namese soldier whom he had assumed to be dead. The Man was moving and ob- viously still alive. Without regard for his own safety, he ordered the helicopter pilot to return to the ground and he left it to run under fire to the wound- ed man. Then he picked him up on to his own back to carry him to the helicopter. While doing so, he was killed by enemy fire. The man whom he had given his life to save was not known to him, but the villagers were so impressed that they erected a monument to the young American's memory. He was Captain Michael Arnovitz of McKeesport, Pa., and he left behind a beau- tiful young widow and an in- fant son whom he had never seen. When I met with the grief- stricken parents, I asked them how they had gotten along with Mike while he was still alive. The boy's father answered, "Mike was a square. How can a father not love a square? He always did the right thing, was always polite and hard- working. He wanted to serve his country. That is why he had gone to military school at Valley Forge. And he really wanted to help the people of Vietnam." He was Rabbi Leonard Winograd is a retired rabbi living in Pitt- sburgh. in his early 20s when he died. There are enough unsung Jewish heros of all of our wars to fill a number of books. Would that the right people would read them. It was only a few years after the Spanish-American War that a Jewish veteran of that conflict was riding on a train, when he heard two ig- norant men discussing quite loudly that Jews always managed to stay out of the service. He conceived the idea of a Jewish War Veter- ans organization whose very existence would inform the innocently ignorant that there were indeed Jewish The simple visit to the bedside of a hospitalized veteran indicates that the Jewish community has not forgotten them. veterans. Little could he have dreamed that one day our JWV would sponsor a home for Israeli veterans in Israel. The coming of another Memorial Day finds the loyal JWV members out in the cemeteries of the nation — the Jewish cemeteries and the non-Jewish cemeteries — looking for the final res- ting places of Jews who had served in the armed forces, so that they can decorate the graves with JWV markers. While this may seem to be a far cry from the original purpose of the organization, it does, at least for those gentiles who happen to notice the markers, spare them from believing the kind of slander that is still to be heard out of earshot of the nearest Jew. When a Jewish Veterans Post marches in the com- munity Memorial Day or Veterans Day parades, it is doing valuable anti- defama- tion work merely by its presence. Of course, our veterans do other important things, but the result is still the same. When an active JWV post makes its weekly visitation to the nearby Veterans Ad- ministration Hospital, and gives gifts to the patients and conducts bingo or other social events for all the pa- tients, it is doing that same vital work of anti-bigotry protection., .