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Charlie Liteky, who received and later relinquished Medal of Honor, dies at 85
By Harrison Smith
January 23 at 5:48 PM
Charlie Liteky, an Army chaplain in Vietnam who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts to save the lives of others and then gave it back decades later to protest Reagan administration policies in Central America, died Jan. 20 in San Francisco. He was 85.
...
Mr. Liteky (pronounced LIT-key) served two tours of duty in Vietnam, during which he dodged enemy gunfire to pull more than 20 wounded soldiers safely out of battle. By the time he returned to the United States, he was a national hero with the aura of what one reporter described as a ruggedly handsome “movie war hero.”
Yet about two decades after President Lyndon B. Johnson placed the Medal of Honor around Mr. Liteky’s neck — telling him, according to one account, “I’d rather have one of these babies than be president” — Mr. Liteky transformed himself from a reticent Army veteran into an outspoken peace activist.
Lobbying against U.S. foreign policies in Central America in the mid-1980s, he walked the halls of Congress trying to convince politicians to oppose the Reagan administration’s support for right-wing groups in Nicaragua and El Salvador. When that proved unsuccessful, he left his Medal of Honor and a letter to President Ronald Reagan at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in July 1986.
...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/charlie-liteky-who-received-and-later-relinquished-medal-of-honor-dies-at-85/2017/01/23/a7123b16-e180-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?utm_term=.78912d1e2f2c
January 23 at 5:48 PM
Charlie Liteky, an Army chaplain in Vietnam who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his efforts to save the lives of others and then gave it back decades later to protest Reagan administration policies in Central America, died Jan. 20 in San Francisco. He was 85.
...
Mr. Liteky (pronounced LIT-key) served two tours of duty in Vietnam, during which he dodged enemy gunfire to pull more than 20 wounded soldiers safely out of battle. By the time he returned to the United States, he was a national hero with the aura of what one reporter described as a ruggedly handsome “movie war hero.”
Yet about two decades after President Lyndon B. Johnson placed the Medal of Honor around Mr. Liteky’s neck — telling him, according to one account, “I’d rather have one of these babies than be president” — Mr. Liteky transformed himself from a reticent Army veteran into an outspoken peace activist.
Lobbying against U.S. foreign policies in Central America in the mid-1980s, he walked the halls of Congress trying to convince politicians to oppose the Reagan administration’s support for right-wing groups in Nicaragua and El Salvador. When that proved unsuccessful, he left his Medal of Honor and a letter to President Ronald Reagan at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall in July 1986.
...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/charlie-liteky-who-received-and-later-relinquished-medal-of-honor-dies-at-85/2017/01/23/a7123b16-e180-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?utm_term=.78912d1e2f2c
R.I.P., Charlie
2 replies
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