February 21, 2005

Corpsman's Sacrifice Resonates In Daughter

By Robert F. Dorr

Every sailor who faces the enemy is a hero, no matter how brief his service. That is how the sacrifice of Navy corpsman Gary Young looks to those who knew him, and to one person who didn’t – his daughter.

Stephanie Hanson, 35, of Troutdale, Ore., never saw her father. In fact, Young never knew he was a father. Stephanie was born two months after Young was killed in Vietnam.

“I know about his childhood from his brother, Steve,” Hanson said. “I know he loved being a corpsman. I’d like to learn more about that part of his life.”

Gary Young was born in 1948 in Portland, Ore. He joined the Navy in 1966, when he was about to be drafted. From the start, his goal was to be a corpsman.

Young went through boot camp in San Diego, according to his daughter, and then was assigned to hospitals there and at Camp Pendleton, Calif., before volunteering for Vietnam. Before going overseas, he first attended Fleet Marine Force School, also in San Diego.

At Da Nang, South Vietnam, Young was assigned to Marine Air Group 15, where he worked tending to sick-bay patients. But he wanted to get into the field with combat Marines, so he requested duty on medical evacuation helicopters.

After five months, Young got his wish and joined Marine Air Group 16 at nearby Marble Mountain. On Feb. 7, 1969, oung flew his first – and last –medevac mission aboard a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364, or HMM–364, nicknamed the “Purple Foxes.”

The citation for a posthumous award of the Air Medal, referring to Young, tells a simple, tragic story:

“Arriving over the designated area, the aircraft immediately came under intense enemy fire and sustained several hits. During the approach to the landing zone, he was mortally wounded when the CH-46 crashed as a result of the heavy volume of hostile ground fire.”

According to a Web site maintained by veterans of the squadron, Young’s CH–46, piloted by Capt. Ernest E. Bartolina Jr., did a nose-up flob and rotated a full 360 degrees and went wheels first into a rice paddy. Only one of the seven men on board survived.

Young’s daughter followed a convoluted path toward discovering her father. Young’s fianceé, Toni, who asked that her surname not be used, gave Stephanie up for adoption at birth. Dale and Gabriella Hanson, who have since divorced, raised Stephanie.

As an adult, Stephanie Hanson began a search for her biological mother that led to Toni, Steve Young, and a cache of three letters Gary Young had written from Vietnam. That was how Hanson learned she had a father who perished in battle before he was born.

“Now I want to know more,” said Hanson, who has been embarked on a three-year campaign to locate sailors and Marines who knew her father. She hopes to write a book about her attempt to know a man, and to understand what Vietnam means to her generation.