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HE WAS TOO YOUNG TO DIE |
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Ted Nelson "When I Touch the Wall" an oil painting presented by three Vietnam veterans from Berthoud was unveiled in a ceremony Tuesday at Berthoud High School. The painting honors and depicts three young men who died in Vietnam -- Barry Thomas, Tony Velasquez, and Spike Bales. In 1965, Tony Velasquez became the first casualty from the Berthoud-Loveland area to die in Vietnam.
REMEMBERING BARRY DON THOMAS BERTHOUD, COLORADO -- More than 30 years ago, Ray and Frances Thomas of Lyons got a letter from their 18 year old son, Barry, who was ending an 11 month tour of duty in Vietnam. He was coming home, he wrote, and asked his parents to pick him up in San Francisco. Before long, another letter came. The infantryman had been called back to combat because reinforcements were needed. On a Sunday morning, May 7, 1967 (one week after Barry's 19th birthday), two Marines drove up to the Thomas' home. Barry had been seriously wounded while fighting with the Second Marine Division on Hill 881 in South Vietnam. Four hours later, the Marines returned. Barry was dead. On a snowy Veteran's Day three decades later, Ray Thomas stood before a capacity crowd in the Berthoud High School auditorium and talked about his son. Barry Thomas was born April 30, 1948 in Mountainair, N.M. His family moved to Lyons about 1960. Barry joined the Boy Scouts and participated in basketball and track at Longmont High School. Barry worked at Loveland Packing Co. for a while before joining the Marines in 1965. "He was just a typical 17-year-old when he went in,' Ray Thomas recalled, `he wanted to go in so bad. He wasn't satisfied with the job prospects around here. He joined the Marines because he wanted to be in the best and the toughest." The young Marine wrote to his parents that he spent a lot of time out on patrol in cold and wet weather. He said his unit repeatedly took a hill, only to get run off again. The Marines told the Thomas's their son died on a Navy hospital ship, the USS Repose, from critical shrapnel wounds. "You can't believe it,' Ray said, `when Barry was in Vietnam, every time the phone would ring, I'd think, "Uh-no."' Then you think it couldn't happen to you. But it does happen. Sure, time heals, but you never forget it. I think about him every day. He was so young. He was too young to die." Ray Thomas does not feel good about the cause for which his son gave his life. "It was a useless war," the World War II Navy veteran said. "The boys thought they had to go, but they didn't accomplish a thing. A lot of good, young kids died." Ray said he was shocked when asked to speak at the Veteran Day dedication in honor of his son, because it has been so many years since he died. "It hurts to have to bring it all back up again," he said. "But I think it's good that people still think about it and remember him and want to do something in honor of Barry and the other kids that died."
Frances Thomas
did not attend
Tuesday's ceremony. She told her husband she cared very much but that
the memories would be too painful.
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