SOME OF THE GREAT VIETNAM VETERANS
I KNEW, LOVED, AND WORKED WITH

Four Star Admiral
James D. Watkins

Exec. Officer of the USS Long Beach. Shot down 5 Russian MIG’s at the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Navy Chaplain

Captain Richard Black

Three tours in Vietnam.

Purple Heart for wounds in combat in Vietnam. My father-in-law and mentor for ten years.

Navy JAG, Justice
Franklin D. Cleckley

T he Secretary of Defense called him “The most sought-after attorney in Vietnam.”

Lieutenant Colonel Brack Hattler

Battlefield surgeon in Vietnam.

Chief of US Army Organ Transplants, Walter Reed Hospital

US Air Force Pilot
Joe Kittinger

Tortured in the cell beside US Navy Pilot John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton

Four Star Admiral James D. Watkins

Admiral Watkins was the Executive Officer on the USS Long Beach during the Vietnam War.  He was a protégé of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the “Father of the Nuclear Navy”

The USS Long Beach (CLGN-160/CGN-160/CGN-9) was the first nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser in the United States Navy.  She was the world's first nuclear-powered surface combatant.

When the Viet Cong were foolish enough to fire on a US Navy warship in the Gulf of Tonkin, Admiral Watkins ordered the USS Long Beach down five Russian MIGs flown by VC pilots.  One MIG was eighty miles away.  At that time, it was the longest bullseye in US Navy history.

Admiral Watkins served as:

• Twenty-second Chief of Naval Operations
• Commander of the Pacific Fleet
• The Sixth Secretary of Energy
• Admiral Watkins was a protégé of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover.
  Admiral Rickover is known as the “Father of the Nuclear Navy”
• Admiral Watkins was appointed by President George H.W. Bush as Chair of US Commissions on HIV/AIDS

Admiral Watkins in my lab at the DOE Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center. I watch as Dr. Harvey Borovetz shows Admiral Watkins an artificial heart we were working on.
It was in clinical trials in patients.

Four Star Admiral Watkins
serving as our sixth Secretary of Energy.

He created the “Tiger Team” to inspect safety at all DOE labs, including mine.

My father-in-law and mentor for ten years, Vietnam War Hero Navy Chaplain Captain Richard Black.   He was in Chon Thien in 1967 during some of the fiercest combat in Vietnam.   He went in with US Marines on the vanguard, armed with an M16.   When a Marine was wounded, he put down his M16, administered first aid, then pulled a 3” bible out of his pocket and told the Marine whatever he needed to hear.   In one year, 1419 US Marines were killed and 9000 wounded in Con Thien.   Marines called Chon Thien “Hell on the Hill of Angels.”  

In the photo below, Joe Kittinger introduces Captain Black at the dedication of the Joe Kittinger Memorial in Orlando.
Click here or on the photo to watch Captain Black’s prayer for “sacrificial military service for our beloved country” at the dedication of the Joe Kittinger Memorial.   I was at the dedication of the Joe Kittinger Memorial.

“Captain Black is the only Chaplain I know who received a purple heart
for being wounded in combat in Vietnam”  Joe Kittinger

Aboard the balloon craft Excelsior III, Kittinger set the world record for a parachute free fall.  From an altitude of 102,800 feet, he fell for 4 minutes, 36 seconds. At that altitude, Kittinger was effectively in space, a vacuum. He reached terminal velocity 614 miles per hour.

US Air Force Pilot during the Vietnam War and world record setter for a parachute free fall from space to earth.

I was at the dedication of the Joe Kittinger Memorial. Afterwards, we went to Captain Black’s house with four or five other Vietnam POW’s.  I was sitting with them when they started talking about lynching Jane Fonda because she fraternized with the enemy Vietcong while Joe Kittinger and John McNain were being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton.

Jane Fonda with the enemy VC

Dr. Hattler was a battlefield surgeon in Vietnam.  He later served as the Chief of US Army Organ Transplant Service, Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  I worked with him when he was a High-Risk Cardiothoracic Heart and Lung Transplant Surgeon at the 
University of Pittsburgh Presbyterian Hospital.

“Dr. Brack G. Hattler took patients for whom other doctors had given up all hope. In one case, he gave a woman a double lung transplant, then danced the tango with her months later.” 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Dr. Hattler invented an intravenous “artificial lung” that could be easily and quickly inserted through a catheter.  I co-authored with Dr. Hattler the original paper introducing the Hattler Respiratory Dialysis System. We published our paper in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Society of Artificial Internal Organs.

J. ASAIO, Volume. 38, Issue Number 3, 1992

The Hattler Respiratory Dialysis System, the has been used to support COVID patients in acute respiratory failure.

USNavy Judge Advocate General, Justice Franklin D. Cleckley

Justice Cleckley served as a Navy JAG in Vietnam for three years.   The Secretary of Defense called him “the most sought-after attorney in Vietnam.”   He was the first black Professor of Law at WVU. He was the first African American to serve as a Justice on the WV Supreme Court.   He received a J.D. degree from Indiana University School of Law in 1965 and Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School in 1969.

Justice Cleckley was one of my father’s best friends. They were both raised in McDowell County, WV, one of the poorest counties in the United States.  Justice Cleckley gave my father, Dr. Dallas B. Shaffer, an award for his lifetime of work for social justice and civil rights.

Justice Cleckley received the W. Robert Ming Advocacy Award from the NAACP for his championship of civil rights. In 1997, I had Justice Cleckley gave the keynote speech at the Martin Luther King Day celebration at the USDOE Federal Energy Technology Center.  Justice Cleckley talked about working with Dr. Martin Luther King.