In 1965 I was graduating from high school. We were a poor family with five children and college was never an option for either my brothers or I but since one of my classes was “General Business,” the class was given an assignment that we would all either provide the teacher with college applications or a certificate from the Ohio State Employment Service that we had registered with them.
Two weeks after graduating I was called by one of the larger manufacturing plants in Cleveland to come in for an interview, which I did, and was subsequently hired as an assembler, but (there’s that word again) 47 days after my hiring I was laid off.
I’m 18 years old, 1-A draft status, unemployed, not a student and not going on to college, Vietnam. The choice was simple, enlist so that I wouldn’t be drafted into the Infantry.
August 1967 the order comes for me to report to the commanding officer’s office for further transfer to the 1st Army Postal Unit, APO San Francisco, 96238, (is my yellow streak showing?).
While in Vietnam, I was moved into the Quinhon Airfield Security Detachment and during Tet 1968 was shot at and jumped onto a dead man 35 feet below me in order to avoid being shot dead, resulting in my injured left knee and the subsequent med-evac from Vietnam on to Valley Forge Army Hospital where I learned to walk again and was discharged from the Army.
In October 1968 I was reinstated to my job with the company that I had been laid off from in 1965 with 3 years, 47 days seniority. Eventually I went through an apprenticeship and on to supervision of a skilled trades work group seven years after becoming a journeyman, in a machining department that had over $250 million worth of automation in it. In 1990 my crew and I were trained in a efficiency process and subsequently saved the company over $38 million in 1992, most of which came from a single breakdown that would have shut down six assembly plants in America and Canada for months.
I was having a hard time walking by now, but as a supervisor I had a golf cart that I could drive doing my job, but (there it is again) there were times that I wasn’t in the assembly plant but was going on duty. If a Huey helicopter flew overhead, I would look to see if it had a red cross on it or baskets on its running boards. Whenever I heard the rotors of a helicopter, I was in Quinhon. Many nights I slept and heard the sergeant of the guard asking me, “Is he enemy?”
Vietnam paid for a lot of divorces, and my children saw their dad in country as much or more than they saw their supervisor dad. My wife and I divorced for the first time and the Veterans Administration was paying me 10 percent disability for my knee and 20 percent disability for “extreme anxiety reaction” (PTSD). We re-married and re-divorced because I still loved her, unless I was in APO San Francisco 96238 in my brain.
I still worked at the company but had been promoted to efficiency process manager for the process that my crew and I enjoyed doing. We really did enjoy our jobs and they weren’t “work.” In 1995 the company asked me if I would transfer to Atlanta if they bought my home in Ohio so I wouldn’t have to worry about selling it and move the family and me to Atlanta, guaranteeing our mortgage so that we wouldn’t have to worry about getting a home here.
I accepted but two years after the transfer I was told by the assistant plant manager that “no one was going to come down from the north and tell Atlanta how to run its business.” The instant of being told that I was in APO San Francisco 96238 being asked by the sergeant of the guard, “Is he enemy?”
The next day I went to the Atlanta VA Hospital in Decatur where the doctor told me that the best thing that I could do at that point would be to stay away from the plant until I came back state-side in my brain. I went back to that same doctor two weeks later just before I was due to run out of vacation time and the doctor saw Spec. 4 Little John coming into her office.
She asked me how long I was with the company and was I eligible for a pension. She would recommend that and would file an appeal on my “service connected disability” rating. I left the hospital and went to the plant where I signed my retirement papers 32 years after I started to work for the company.
Since that day and because I was “salaried,” the company has removed my medical insurance and reduced my pension by almost two-thirds.
Today is the first of the month and it’s payday. Today I received a little over $1,000 from a company that I worked 32 years for. Today I received a little more than $3,000 from the Veterans Administration due to less than one year in Southeast Asia.
The company that I worked those years with is not exclusive in its negligence of those [in] that guarantee. There are many Americans today that forget those in uniform that fight for and guarantee their freedom. It is the Veterans Administration that makes sure that those defenders of liberty have a place to go where they are not excluded.
Atlanta can be proud of the Veterans Administration and Department of Veteran Affairs that call Atlanta home.
John Romph
Fayetteville, Ga.
