By Gene Robbins, Packet Media Group
Phyllis Loften of Hillsborough jokes that she was a mail order bride.
She “met” her husband, Ricky J., through letters with him while he was in the Navy during the Vietnam War in 1966. Eventually she planned their wedding through the mail while he was still serving in southeast Asia at the height of the conflict.
The war that brought them together as a married couple for 36 years, however, ultimately took him away. As a result of exposure to Agent Orange and other chemicals during the fighting, Mr. Loften suffered a variety of physical ailments and ultimately died in 2011.
He was one of the U.S. soldiers who died because of the war, but he wasn’t killed in battle in the war. That meant his name wouldn’t be inscribed on the Vietnam War Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.
Two weeks ago, that difference was erased, however slightly, when Mr. Loften was one of the 166 deceased veterans, including eight from New Jersey, whose names were added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund’s In Memory walkway around the memorial.
“I think it’s a great honor,” she said, “but I think it came way too late. I hope my husband was watching above and knew he was recognized for all that went through.”
Mr. Loften had joined the Navy hoping to serve on a ship, but he was stationed with the Marine expeditionary brigade in Danang, a hot point of the fight between the two Vietnams.
In his letters, he told his wife-to-be that U.S. forces seeking to eliminate leaf cover for the Vietcong would fly over jungles at night and spray chemicals, she said. By morning, all the vegetation had been destroyed. In his job running convoys of supplies from one base to another, he drove right through the defoliated jungles, she said.
Ricky returned home to work as a junior accountant, before landing a job with the Hillsborough and Montgomery Telephone Company, a forerunner of the Embarq of today. He worked there until he left on disability in 2005.
As he aged, the damage from Agent Orange and other chemicals incubated, she said. His physical problems started with diabetes, she said, and he had renal failures, breathing difficulties and neuropathy. She said he was spared an agonized death when he succumbed to a heart attack on Dec. 27, 2011.
“All Vietnam veterans are so quiet about it,” she said. “It was years before my husband talked about it. He had PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and nightmares. It was tough, He went through a lot of trauma.”
Mr. Loften pressed for his rightful care from the Veterans Administration, which acknowledged in 2008 that he was suffering from diseases that had their root in Vietnam warfare, said his widow.
“He lived at the VA fighting for his rights,” she said.
At age 50, Mr. Loften said he’d be lucky to see 60, she said. He lived to be 65. He never wanted to talk about his time in Vietnam, she said, and didn’t until he shared similar experiences with his son, who served with the Marines in the Middle East from 2000-02.
When her husband returned from Vietnam, his plane was rerouted to the back of the Los Angeles airport to avoid conflict with anti-war protestors, Mrs. Loften said.
The walkway ceremony went a bit toward undoing the scorn and disrespect heaped on Vietnam veterans years ago, she said. And it went a bit further, recognizing the sacrifice of veterans like Mr. Loften came after the war ended.
While The Wall shows the names of those soldiers who died in the war, veterans who suffered from medical issues caused by their service in Vietnam, including exposure to defoliant spray and psychological wounds, are absent. More than 2,000 service members have been inducted innto the In Memory Honor Roll.
During the June 20 ceremony, the names of the honorees were read aloud and tributes bearing their names were placed at The Wall. These tributes were later collected by the National Park Service and stored in a permanent archive. Hopefully, some day, they will be on display at a education center, Mrs. Loften said.
The center is planned to be an interactive learning facility on the National Mall that will tell the story of military heroes’ stories and sacrifice, and feature the faces and stories of the more than 58,000 men and women on The Wall and honor America’s legacy of service, including those serving in the armed forces today.
With Mrs. Loften on June 20 were her son, William, and his wife Caroline and their three children; and her daughter, Sheri Zimbardo, and her two daughters.
Mr. Loften was a past chaplain of the local Vietnam Veterans of America chapter 452 and a member of the Neshanic Volunteer Fire Company.
Members of Chapter 452 took a one-day bus trip to the D.C. ceremony. On June 23, one of the members, George Mariasz of Hillsborough, asked the Township Committee to lobby for support of passage of a Congressional bills S 901 and HR 1769 to research the diagnosis and treatment of descendants of veterans exposed to toxic substances. No New Jersey congressman is a co-sponsor, he said.
Mrs. Loften speaks lovingly of how she and her husband got together.
She said she was “set up,” so to speak by Loften’s grandmother, who asked the then Phyllis Minor to write to him. Before she could put pen to paper, grandma had written to Ricky and he had sent a letter to Phyllis.
They corresponded for four months. When he was given time off, he came to New Jersey to visit his grandparents.
“As they say, it was love at first sight,” said Phyllis.
He returned to Vietnam for six more months, but on Oct. 18, 1969, they were married, within seven days after his return.
“You can be with someone and not know as much about them as when you correspond with them,” said Phyllis this week.
