Michael Gene Vinassa (1946-1966-Vietnam)

For the past few years, I have been marking Memorial Day with re-postings on two of my high school friends who died in Vietnam. One of them was Michael Gene Vinassa, who died before he was twenty one.

This past weekend I was in the North Hollywood area and decided to swing by Forest Lawn Cemetery before heading back to Orange County. I wanted to visit Mike's grave because on the one previous occasion I was there, I had only found it after great effort and in a driving rainstorm which drove me back to my car after only a few seconds. I wanted to pay a proper visit where I could spend a few minutes and meditate. I also wanted to find my great-aunt's grave, which I had been unable to do the previous time. (Even with the marker numbers, it's still like finding a needle in the haystack at Forest Lawn. For the second time, I failed to locate her grave.)

When Mike was killed, I was just arriving in Germany after finishing Military Police School at Ft. Gordon, Georgia. It's one of the things you think about when you visit the grave of a vet killed in Vietnam. How is it that fate sent me to Germany and Mike to Vietnam and an early death? How is it that I am still alive standing at Mike's grave all these decades later? I am now 69 and Mike is forever 20.

The circumstances of Mike's heroic death are found in this article by a survivor of the battle in which Mike lost his life. As I reported before, Mike was due to finish his tour in Vietnam within days and had to beg his commanding officer into letting him go on the mission.

http://www.jumpingmustangs.com/bravo6571/bravocrazyhorse.html

Mike's mother, Glenadine, survived him by 8 years and is buried next to him. I don't think Mike had any siblings, and it was my recollection that his father was deceased when Mike was young. Mike was all she had.



May you both rest in peace.