Vietnam

I AM a 64-year-old resident of Philadelphia, excluding my military service that consisted of a tour in Vietnam, and I would like to respond to the brutal, senseless and racially motivated attack on a 64-year-old, combat-wounded Vietnam veteran in the area of the 5000 block of 5th St. There was a time, recently, when there was a teenage fad called "wilding," which entailed bands of black youths terrorizing and assaulting people of all colors. Now, apparently, the fad is called "whiting," where a band of thugs, black or other minorities, target older white males in senseless violence that defies logic.

Police are searching for a masked gunman who critically wounded a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran Wednesday night in West Oak Lane. James Carr of the 7600 block of Williams Avenue was shot three times, once in each arm and once in his chest, while chatting with a friend in the street, police said. About 7:20 p.m., Carr, an Air Force veteran and retired truck driver, was returning home from a trip to the store to pay a utility bill when he stopped to visit a friend on the 1900 block of 74th Avenue, said his son, James Carr Jr. The men were talking in the street when Carr noticed two men hiding in a bush at the mouth of an alley, his son said.

THE REV. BERNARD Joseph O'Dowd, an Augustinian friar who taught at Monsignor Bonner High School in Drexel Hill, served as a parochial minister at area parishes, and was an Army chaplain in Vietnam, died Nov. 27 at the age of 80. O'Dowd suffered a fall at St. Thomas Monastery, in Villanova, and died in Bryn Mawr Hospital. A native of Staten Island, N.Y., O'Dowd first taught at Bonner from 1958 to 1960. He served in parochial ministry at Our Mother of Consolation Parish in Chestnut Hill from 1960 to 1962, and later at St. Thomas of Villanova Parish in Rosemont and St. Nicholas of Tolentine Parish in Atlantic City.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - A Vietnamese war refugee who survived a 1977 pirate attack that separated him from his wife and infant boy reunited Monday with his grown son in Upstate New York after nearly 34 years apart. Hao Truong was tossed into the South China Sea after pirates attacked a boat taking refugee families to Thailand in December 1977. He said he managed to stay afloat for 16 hours before a fishing boat rescued him. In a Thai refugee camp, Truong learned weeks later that his wife had died; her body washed up on shore along with another female victim.

Cpl. Terry Roberts and four other Marines were patrolling near Vietnam's demilitarized zone one day in 1968 when they walked into a deadly ambush. Pinned down by an overwhelming force of North Vietnamese, they called for help. It came from many miles away. A strange, frightening roar like a freight train overhead was followed by the explosive thumps of 3,200-pound shells that shook the earth beneath them. Enemy soldiers were literally vaporized, the attack stopped, and Roberts' life was saved.

There are no memories. Just cracked photos, old family stories, and a silver star that Maryann Libbey-Litrenta uses to cherish her father, Army soldier Malcolm Pierce Libbey, who died in the Vietnam War. "I never grieved," said Libbey-Litrenta, 44, sitting in a coffee shop near her home in South Philadelphia. Petite, with long blond hair, she wears her father's dog tag on a silver chain around her neck. She was 10 months old when the staff sergeant, his Army battalion's bunker under attack in Long An province, provided covering fire as his comrade operated the only remaining radio.

Former Vietnamese President Vo Chi Cong, 99, died Thursday at a hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, state media said. Mr. Cong was born Vo Toan in Quang Nam province and joined the Communist Party in 1935. He was appointed deputy prime minister in 1976, a year after the Vietnam War ended, and served as president from 1987 to 1991. After retiring in 1996 as adviser to the ruling party, he rarely appeared at public events. - AP

Minh Duong Pham, 78, of Upper Darby, a former South Vietnamese Army officer who was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese for more than a decade, died of lung cancer on Thursday, Sept. 8, at his son Vu's home in Manasquan, N.J. Mr. Pham studied to be a Catholic priest at a seminary in Vietnam before deciding on a military career. During the war, he fought with Americans against the Viet Cong. Just before the fall of Saigon in 1975, he and his wife, Suu, had an opportunity to flee the country.