Post Messenger Recorder -

As has become rote, a nearly every year in late April trip was recently made to Oak Grove Cemetery at Tomah, Wisconsin. This yearly Sunday trip always brings with it memories of that last Thursday night in May 1965, followed by April 30, 1975.

That Thursday night was the last time we would head down to Chesty’s on State Street in Madison where we met up with the gang. The guys from MATC, and the girls from Madison Beauty Culture School. Our common thread was we were all small town Wisconsin kids fresh out of high school. Our first year of freedom, and our first chance to legally (at that time) drink a beer at age 18, in the UW and MATC student bars dotting State Street in Madison.

Those Thursday nights were our one big weekly fling; the girls, Kathy and Misty from Montfort, Susie from Markesan, and June from Baraboo. The guys, Wolfgram and Genz-O-Matic from Kendall, Mother Tucker from Dodgeville, and this writer. We weren’t coupled up, just a bunch of small town kids in the big city for the first time. Our small town backgrounds were the glue that held us together.

As was always the case, Genz-O-Matic, who was one year older than the rest of the gang, took it upon himself to be our chauffeur for our weekly trip to the Bunny Hop, an 18-year-old bar and dance club just west of Middleton. The eight of us always piled into the 59 Ford convertible for the 15-minute drive with Genz-O-Matic at the wheel, doing an excellent job of playing the perfectly polite chauffeur.

Returning to Madison, we dropped off the girls at the apartment they were living in. We hugged one last time, and made promises that we would keep in contact with each other. This last night of the school year was happy/sad. Happy we were done with our school. Sad because the Thursday nights spent together were over for us. We were suddenly adults, and not sure we were ready for this big change that would last us a lifetime.

Little did we realize that within a year many of our classmates would be drafted into the Army for a little adventure to a place we had heard of, Vietnam, but had no idea where it actually was, or why many of our peers would end up there within the next 12 months.

Surprisingly, Genz-O-Matic was the only one of us who ended up in the military. Genz-O-Matic, our serious chauffeur, had a fascination with helicopters, and flying them. He took it to the point where, while still in high school, he purchased a Benson-Gyro-Copter kit from one of the ads in the back pages of Popular Science. Genz-O-Matic and a few of his classmates built the helicopter in shop class in Kendall, Wisconsin.

Genz’s first flight was, to say the least, rather interesting. His shop teacher encouraged Genz through the entire project. Then came the day for the big air mobility test. The guys pushed the craft out to the road as Genz started the motor and worked the gears to go aloft. There were some problems getting the helicopter to lift off, but with quick thinking the ground crew guys tied a 100-foot clothesline rope between the helicopter and the bumper of the teacher’s Chevrolet Corvair.

Down State HWY 71 they went. Suddenly the copter went airborne, up and over the teacher’s Corvair. After this first test, the guys made a wise command decision, it may not be wise to try a second test flight. They knew it flew. Thus ended the story of the Benson Gyro-Copter. Despite this partial failure, Genz was unable to get piloting helicopters out of his blood.

He signed up for the Army with the guarantee that he could become a helicopter pilot. The Army, unlike the other branches of service, allowed men with no college to go through helicopter flight school, graduating with the rank of Warrant Officer. After going through his training at Fort Rucker, Alabama, signed off as a tested to fly in combat pilot, it was off to Vietnam to do his time there.

During one of his several stints in Nam, Genz took an AK-47 round through the knee. Because of this type of injury, the Army disqualified him from flying, out of fear that in a tight situation he may not have the knee movement needed to quickly hit the pedals to get into and out of hot LZs (landing zones). He could have taken an administrative slot with the Army but chose not to.

Headstrong as he was, Genz wasn’t about to give up his love of flying. He took some time off checking out potential similar jobs. Eventually he hired on with Air America, aka Spook Airlines, the CIA’s secret airline.

Forty-five years ago today, April 30, 1975, South Vietnam fell to the communist north. And on that day, two Wisconsinites performed over and above the call of duty. Genz-O-Matic was one of the Air America pilots flying the last rescue missions off the rooftop of the American Embassy in Saigon. It was on one of these rescue and evacuation flights to waiting Navy ships that Genz met Me Thi, a Saigon resident. After the war, Genz and Me Thi married.

And as is so often the case, the soldier (Genz) survived the war, but not the peace. He died in a 1988 motorcycle accident only two miles from his home in Kendall, Wisconsin, while home on vacation from Air America.

A second Wisconsinite also performed an incredible act of saving lives 45 years ago today. John Riordan, of Milwaukee, had served in Vietnam in the early years of the war. After leaving the Army, he went to work for Citibank. The bank had a branch in Saigon. Riordan, because he was fluent in Vietnamese, was picked to head the Saigon branch of the bank.

On that day, April 30, 1975, Riordan was able to sneak out 105 of his Vietnamese employees. As the rescue planes were being loaded Riordan was questioned by those in charge of the evacuation, who are those people? “They are all my children!” He got them all out alive, or they would have died at the hands of the quickly approaching North Vietnamese Army. Some of his alleged children were older that Riordan. Riordan, known as “the Oksar Schindler of Vietnam War,” has written an excellent book about that day, They Are All My Children.