Thomas Lipscomb

Last month for the first time in more than 25 years, there was a White House celebration of Medal of Honor Day. Twenty-five Medal of Honor recipients joined President Trump, Vice President Pence, Secretary of Defense Mattis and the head of the Veterans’ Administration, David Shulkin, for an Oval Office commemoration of their courage and service to the nation.



But was this a sincere gesture or just a cynical play to win over American veterans for a stronger role in Trump’s base of support?

In January, a year earlier, in the first of the presidential primaries in Iowa, Trump had refused to join a Fox debate of the GOP presidential candidates. He elected instead to host a fund raiser for America’s veterans which he claimed had raised $6 million dollars to be distributed to veterans’ causes and movements.



But as weeks went by there were numerous challenges from hostile media and other candidates. How much had really been raised? Where had it gone? By March The Washington Postcould only account for distribution of about half that sum.

Finally, five month after Trump’s claim, at a press conference picketed by a Hillary Clinton rent-a vet-group, Trump gave the press a list of the groups that had received the money.

Tellingly, the press preferred its assumption of likely bad faith, to making any real effort to check on Trump’s long personal and financial involvement with veteran’s issues. And it wasn’t that hard to do.

Some of us remember marching down Constitution Avenue to the dedication of new Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington one windy, cold mid-November day in 1982. The veteran’s community had been split badly over the design of the memorial. There were only a little over 10,000 marchers in what was termed a “welcome home” parade for the often reviled and ignored veterans from the Vietnam War.



The New York Timesdescribed it perfectly: “But it was not the heroes' welcome, the ticker-tape parade with roaring crowds and an outpouring of gratitude that many veterans openly long for. Long sections of the viewing stand were half empty, and some blocks along the 10-block parade route had but a single broken line of spectators on each side.”

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Sad as it was, this parade led to other local Vietnam Veterans’ Memorials being planned for other parts of the country. But raising funds was not going to be easy. Less than ten years after the end of an unpopular war, who wanted to commemorate a bunch of loser veterans who often hid their military service on job applications?

A few months later, New York Mayor Ed Koch appointed Donald Trump co-chairman of the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission. The mission statement: “to raise the necessary funds in order to build a memorial in honor of the men and women who served in the Vietnam War, and to create a counseling and employment program for veterans.”

The commission reported it “raised in excess of three million dollars. It was Donald Trump’s challenge to the City of New York, and his personal contribution of one million dollars, that was instrumental in the completion of this project.”



The Commission was made up of Vietnam veterans, like its other co-chairman Scott Higgins. They were working executives in New York who had vowed not “to leave behind” the more than 400,000 veterans in the New York metropolitan area, more than 80% of whom were black and Hispanic. They wanted to help the many of them who were unemployed, underemployed or suffering from drug or alcohol abuse or had convictions that had been barring their way to a better life.



So, the Commission not only wanted to build a distinctive memorial in the Wall Street area, but it wanted to fund “a living memorial” which spent just as much money helping change lives that had gone astray after military service. Tom Pauken at the Federal ACTION Agency had established a federally funded “Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program” in all 50 states with just that objective.



The New York Vietnam Veterans’ Leadership Program, run by a brilliant former infantry platoon leader, Eugene Gitelson, was able to take the money Trump contributed and helped raise through the Commission to create the largest program in the country. Gitelson’s VVLP, as the Commission’s “Living Memorial,” trained veterans first to become “job ready,” and then find jobs. He and his staff helped place thousands of them.

And to top it all off, at the dedication of the Commission’s New York Vietnam Memorial in May of 1985, the “heroes’ welcome” The New York Times noted had not occurred at the sparsely attended parade in Washington actually happened.

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Streaming across the Brooklyn Bridge and down Broadway came tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans, often marching in their units. American Division, 101st Airborne, 1st and 3rd Marine Divisions, Special Forces, to name just a few, often under one of their old commanding officers, flags flying, headed by Mayor Koch himself pushing a wheelchair for John Behan, a Medal of Honor winner who had lost both legs to a landmine.

And close behind him, General William Westmoreland, their former commander in Vietnam, marching along with them and another 18 Medal of Honor winnersfor the largest parade of participants in the history of New York City.

They marched to the lower tip of Manhattan island as tons of tickertape and paper turned the skies above them a blizzard of white as the crowds packing the sidewalks roared its welcome.

As The Los Angeles Timesheadlined it:“New York's Biggest March — 10 Years Late: Vietnam Veterans Get Their Parade at Last.”



But neither The New York Times nor The Los Angeles Times stories ever mentioned the name or involvement of the supposed “self-promoter” Donald Trump.

It never would have happened without him. And that was 32 years ago.

Thomas H. Lipscomb has been both a magazine publisher of consumer magazines such as The Ladies Home Journal and a CEO in book publishing. His most recent publishing position was as founder and president of Times Books – then The New York Times book division.

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