In 1967 I learned that Les Widick is my father, that he joined the Marines at the tail end of WW2 when he was 16 years old, and in 1967, he was assigned to a year in Vietnam. I met Les in 1987 and we had an off-again, on-again relationship until the 90s when he decided it wasn’t all that bad to have a daughter like me. We emailed and spoke by phone. I stayed with Les and Pat in Florida several times and they visited me in NC on several occasions as well.
Les wrote his Vietnam story in 1996 and sent copies to his children and a copy to me. Since I am older than the others, Vietnam was my era, and 20 years after his death, I decided that his story should be made public. I cleaned it up a bit and added some pictures. Now I know where I got my penchant for writing life stories.
In his original manuscript, Les used both knots and miles per hour when referring to his plane’s speed. I left these terms in the story as he wrote them because I didn’t want to add incorrect information to his story.
Les was from Burlington, Iowa, and met my mother, Mary, at Burlington High School. When Mary became pregnant with me, Les wanted to marry her, but in his words, ‘she wouldn’t have me’. When I was 3 months old, Mary gave me to the Yohe family who adopted and raised me. Les and Mary remained enamored with each other for the rest of their lives and I called them the Teenagers.
Les joined the Marine Corps when he was a teenager and served in Korea and Vietnam. He met Pat in Pennsylvania in the early 1950s. They married and had five children, 4 girls and a boy. After 24 years, Les retired from the Marines in 1970. The family moved to Florida and they lived there until their deaths.
