Purple Heart order on upswing after years of doldrums

“I’m here to brag for them,” City of Las Cruces Veterans Advisory Board member Rod Gajewski said about Raymundo Rivera III, Greg “Doc” Long and Jeronimo Del Bozque.

“If it wasn’t for them, the chapter wouldn’t have gotten going again,” Gajewski said, referring to the Mesilla Valley Military Order of the Purple Heart, Chapter 2004 (MVMOPH), which was started in Mesilla in the 1990s, languished after a few years and was revitalized in 2015 in Las Cruces.

“It was a lot of work,” said Long, a Purple Heart recipient for his service in Vietnam in 1966-67 with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, a past commander of MVMOPH and a current post trustee.

Long said he attended a veterans’ event in Albuquerque and talked to another veteran who was wearing a Purple Heart shirt. That revived his interest in having a vibrant Purple Heart chapter in Las Cruces. He, Rivera, Bozque and Oscar Duran each donated $100, “and that’s how it restarted,” Long said.

Las Cruces became the second Purple Heart city in New Mexico and 99^th in the country in August 2015. A year to the day later, chapter members joined local Gold Star mothers in dedicating a Purple Heart monument at Veterans Memorial Park in Las Cruces. And, Mayor Ken Miyagishima and the Las Cruces City Council declared Aug. 7, 2017 as Purple Heart Day in Las Cruces.

On Aug. 7, 1782, Gen. George Washington created the military decoration that would become the Purple Heart. It honors members of the armed forces who have been wounded in combat, and it became an official military decoration in 1935.

Recipients were “wounded all over the world,” said Rivera, a corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps who received a Purple Heart in 1968 during his service in the Vietnam War.  He still has a metal plate in his head from the severe injury he received.

It took Rivera five years to learn to talk again after the injury, he said. He is a member of the New Mexico State Council of the Vietnam Veterans of America and, like Long and Del Bozque, is a member of the U.S. Marine Corps League.

The oldest MVMOPH member is Paul Roach, who is in his 90s and is the chapter’s only World War II veteran, Gajewski said. The chapter also has four veterans of the Korean War, six veterans of the Gulf War, two active-duty military members and one woman.

If he sees anyone driving a vehicle with a Purple Heart license plate, Long said he will “chase you down and give you an application” to join MVMOPH.

The local chapter has grown from six to 65 members since it was restarted, and regularly helps Purple Heart recipients and their families “whatever their needs,” Gajewski said. The chapter also regularly participates in veterans parades and conducts a candle placement ceremony every Memorial Day at Veterans Memorial Park in Las Cruces. On May 31 this year, chapter members placed 204 candles on the Veterans Memorial Park wall to honor the fallen since World War I.

Chapter members devote a lot of time and resources to the 150 retired military living at the New Mexico State Veterans Home in Truth or Consequences. They recently donated more than 400 pairs of diabetic socks to the men and women at the home. They have also donated a wheelchair and other necessities to Veterans Home residents.

“Those people appreciated us coming,” Gajewski said.

On their last visit, residents were “grinning like kids,” he said. “It just made their day (that) somebody cared to actually come up there and do that.”

Now that Covid-19 is receding, chapter members can also begin hosting ice cream socials at the Veterans Home every few months, Long said.

The chapter also has sponsored a local veteran on an Honor Flight. Chapter members have also helped veterans get the retirement and medical benefits they are entitled to, and, sometimes, the military decorations they are entitled to but have never received.

Local veteran Frank Tuma, for example, spent more than a year in a hospital after his Vietnam War injury with the U.S. Army. It took 49 years for Tuma to receive the Purple Heart he had earned. He finally got it in 2019.

“We look after each other,” Gajewski said.

MVMOPH members also help New Mexico State University ROTC students operate a water station during the annual Bataan Memorial Death March at White Sands Missile Range.

Reviving the Las Cruces chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart is “real important,” Long said, “because people today don’t really know the price of freedom.” Long was a corpsman (medic) with the Navy and Marines who was wounded saving the lives of other Marines in Vietnam.

“They don’t respect it,” Gajewski said.

“People don’t understand the price that you pay for your freedom,” Del Bozque said. “They don’t understand the sacrifice you have made.”

Del Bozque joined the Marines in 1953 and retired in 1977.

MVMOPH meets monthly in Las Cruces.

For more information about MVMOPH, call 575-496-1312 and email beanrod@beanrod.com. Visit https://purpleheartlascruces.com/, https://nmpurpleheart.org/ and, on Facebook, Mesilla Valley Military Order of the Purple Heart, Chapter 2004.