Cpl. Charles McMahon Jr. of the Marine Corps was among the many final U.S. troopers killed in Vietnam greater than 50 years in the past.
A Legacy
McMahon, of Woburn, Massachusetts, not solely left behind a legacy of service and sacrifice, but additionally his class ring, a memento he gifted to his highschool sweetheart.
Carol, his former girlfriend, died just lately. Her daughter, Daybreak DiCicco, a staffer for NBC News, was going via a few of her mom’s belongings when she found the category ring, together with a letter McMahon wrote to Carol from Vietnam. DiCicco made it her mission to return the ring to McMahon’s niece, Vanessa McMahon.
Lately, she shocked McMahon’s household with a present 5 many years within the making.
“That is the ring that we discovered,” DiCicco mentioned, pulling it from a small, clear Ziplock bag.
“It is lovely,” Vanessa McMahon replied.
George Holland, McMahon’s closest childhood buddy, was readily available when DiCicco introduced the mementos.
“I don’t consider my eyes,” Holland mentioned, greeting DiCicco. “You do resemble your mother.”
At all times Needed to be a Marine
Holland mentioned McMahon aspired to hitch the Marine Corps way back to center college.
“He all the time wished to be a Marine,” Holland advised NBC News’ Sam Brock.
The letter and sophistication ring helped Vanessa join with an uncle she by no means knew. She’s craved details about him for many years.
“The ring will go to my son, Joseph, who’s a Marine safety guard himself, following in Uncle Charlie’s footsteps,” Vanessa mentioned.
She learn the word Charlie despatched to Carol, dated March 26, 1974, a number of the final phrases written to his highschool love.
“Don’t fear. Issues all the time work out somehow,” Charlie penned. “P.S.S., see you after I come residence subsequent. Love, A Marine.”
Vanessa choked again tears as she stared on the letter, clutching it in her arms for a second longer. She checked out Holland and mentioned, “That’s good.”
“It’s emotional,” she advised Brock.
DiCicco, Holland, and Vanessa additionally visited McMahon’s gravesite, adorned with flowers, together with American and Marine Corps flags. McMahon was lower than two weeks shy of celebrating his twenty second birthday when he was killed, together with fellow Marine Darwin Decide, on April 29, 1975. At some point later, Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese as U.S. forces pulled out of South Vietnam following a warfare that raged for almost 20 years.
McMahon and Decide had been the final of greater than 58,000 U.S. troops to die in Vietnam.
Each servicemembers had been honored with navy funerals and a 21-gun salute, the pictures piercing the heavy air of a nation weary from years of warfare and painful loss.
Whereas McMahon’s letter and ring could also be small objects, they construct a bridge for his niece to find the nice and cozy, caring particular person her uncle was, whereas additionally retaining his reminiscence alive, together with DiCicco’s mom’s.
“It’s like respiratory the identical air for them,” DiCicco mentioned. “And so, I’m blissful that they’ve a chunk of that.”
