Baldwin remembers walking into a veterans organization and not feeling welcome. There was no stool reserved for Vietnam veterans at the bar.
“They didn’t think Vietnam was a real war,” said Baldwin, 72, who served eight years with the the 2nd Battalion, 26th Marines.
That was 52 years ago, and thankfully, we look at Vietnam veterans differently. Not with the same admiration as World War II veterans, but certainly not as baby killers, either.
So it’s understandable that when Jeri Lewis, organizer of the Middletown Memorial Day Parade, called Baldwin to ask if he’d serve as grand marshal, he thought it was a prank from one of his buddies.
Baldwin never considered himself grand marshal material.
“That’s for those other guys,” he said while sitting in his Madison Twp. home.
But on Monday morning, Baldwin, probably proudly wearing one of his Vietnam veteran T-shirts and baseball hats, will ride in a red convertible from Smith Park to Woodside Cemetery for the Memorial Day Service.
“Still dumbfounded,” he said of being chosen. “It feels like a dream.”
Baldwin joked that he agreed to be grand marshal as long as he wasn’t asked to speak.
“I didn’t even like giving oral book reports,” he said with a smile.
Lewis, who calls herself “an Army brat,” was impressed when she met Baldwin and learned he retired from AK Steel after 33 years, wrote a book about his Vietnam experience and gave copies to his children and grandchildren so they could understand his mental struggles.
“When you consider his service and his years at AK,” Lewis said, “he’s a good fit.”
Baldwin graduated from Franklin High School on June 3, 1967. Four days later, he was at boot camp in California. From a graduate to a grunt in less than a week.
“Talk about culture shock,” he said. “I was used to people talking to me several feet away, not screaming in my face. They chewed you up and spit you out.”
Another shock came when Baldwin was sent to Vietnam. Death was as close as those drill sergeants.
He spent three tours in Vietnam that covered 25 months. Of the six Franklin High graduates who enlisted with Baldwin, five flew home in body bags. They’re buried at Woodside and other local cemeteries.
That weighs on a man’s mind.
“Why are their names on those markers and not mine?” he asked. “It was a very deadly place. You didn’t know from one minute to the next if you were going to take your next breath.”
He worked at AK Steel for three years, then spent five more years in the Marines. But said it was difficult being in the military as a married man with a family. He was given 30 days of leave a year. He divided it into three 10-day leaves. By the time his sons, Jeff and Shane, got used to their father being home, he retuned to the Marines.
Baldwin wrote a book called, “Never Home.” Chronicling his time in the Marines was the “best therapy” to help with his post traumatic stress disorder. He also attends a weekly PTSD support group and finds comfort knowing there are other Kenny Baldwins.
“It awakened me,” he said. “It was good to know I wasn’t alone.”
HOW TO GO
WHAT: Middletown Memorial Day Parade/Memorial Day Service
WHEN: kicks off at 10 a.m. Monday from Smith Park, travels down Verity Parkway to Woodside Cemetery. Memorial Day Service starts at 11:30 a.m. at Woodside Cemetery.
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