Bemidji men join other veterans on Honor Flight for emotional visit to Washington

May 27—BEMIDJI — They all joined the U.S. Army, were sent into the Vietnam War for a year, and came home as changed men, knowing some of their platoon brothers had lost their lives.

For Dennis Clemenson, Mike Liapis and Dave Sjostrom of Bemidji, memories of those fallen comrades are vivid. And a recent visit to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., where 58,000 names of those killed are etched in stone, only rekindled those flashbacks.

"When I looked at the wall and saw the brothers who had been killed, that I witnessed, that I was with, it was very emotional," said Clemenson. He had been told by a friend to be prepared for those emotions. "He was right," Clemenson said.

Sjostrom agreed and added that although he had visited the wall three other times, going there this time with Liapis and Clemenson was different.

"I had never been there with another vet," Sjostrom said. "I think it was in some ways easier to just let go, and finally say, 'I don't care what anybody thinks. If I'm going to cry, I'm going to cry.' I think for the first time I realized it's been 53 years, but it's been like three minutes. It was that real."

The three Bemidji men were among 49 Vietnam vets who made the trip from Fargo to Washington on a Veterans Honor Flight from April 30 to May 2. Also on the trip were 50 men from the Korean War era, including Don DeLapp of Bemidji.

The Honor Flight Network was created in 2005 with a simple mission: Honoring our nation's veterans by bringing them to Washington, D.C. to visit the memorials built to commemorate their service and sacrifice. The nonprofit program has flown 260,000 veterans to D.C., where they are treated like royalty with gifts, meals, accommodations and visits to memorials.

Clemenson, Liapis and Sjostrom were scheduled to make the trip in 2025 or later. But when Honor Flight officials learned that Liapis was being treated for colon and liver cancer, they moved all three of them up to this year.

"I was two weeks out of chemo when we left on the trip," said Liapis, who also had two surgeries in the past year. He received good news from doctors as the Honor Flight approached. "I couldn't think of any better people to be with to celebrate a clean MRI and scans. There are no visible signs of any cancer at this time."

Sjostrom, 76, was the first of the three to go to Vietnam. He grew up in Washington State, and after graduating from Pacific Lutheran University, he was drafted into the Army and sent to Vietnam in June of 1969. He was in a mechanized infantry unit in the Mekong Delta and eventually became the company armorer.

"Out of 13 guys in our platoon, 11 were college graduates," said Sjostrom. "All but one made it back."

Another who did not make it back was Sjostrom's best friend from childhood.

"I was best man at his wedding," Sjostrom recalled. "He got drafted three months after me, and told me if he was sent to Vietnam he would not come back. On March 30, 1970, I got a letter from my mom saying he had been killed. That was the hardest one for me."

As the driver of an armored personnel carrier, Sjostrom interacted regularly with the supply unit, and that's when he met Mike Liapis. The two became good friends, and after the war, at a reunion of soldiers on Turtle River Lake, Sjostrom met Mike's sister, Marta. Dave and Marta celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last year.

Liapis, 74, grew up in Bemidji and graduated from BHS in 1966, then enrolled at Bemidji State. During his third year of college, Mike and Suzanne (Amble) were married in December 1968.

"A month later I got my draft notice, and in February I was in the Army," he said.

He was sent to Vietnam in September 1969. After 90 days, his company's supply sergeant left, so Mike was assigned to that job.

Three members of his 50-man platoon lost their lives. More than a dozen of the company members still get together for a reunion every other year.

"You get to be pretty close-knit," Liapis said.

This was his third visit to the Vietnam Memorial, but the first with other veterans. Each time, in addition to finding the names of his fallen platoon members, he seeks out the names of two Bemidji soldiers who were killed in the war: Bob Glidden and Tom Lewer.

"This is the first time I went back with guys from Vietnam," Liapis said. "From my perspective it was completely different this time, especially traveling with 49 other Vietnam vets at the same time. You're sharing the same memories."

Clemenson, 71, graduated from Gonvick High School in 1969. He and three classmates enlisted in the Army that summer and went to basic together. Afterward, one was sent to Korea, one to Germany and the third guy stayed stateside. Clemenson was the only one sent to Vietnam, in December 1969.

"We landed in Cam Ranh Bay, and it was 85 degrees and humid, a sweat jungle," he said.

He was on a reconnaissance platoon in the DMZ (demilitarized zone) whose mission was to go into the front lines and provide the commander with intelligence on the enemy.

"We were out in the bush most of the time," Clemenson said. "On a clear day, you could actually see an enemy training camp flag 14 miles away. That's how close we were to the border."

Four members of the platoon lost their lives, and it could have easily been five if Clemenson had not survived a mine explosion. He was driving an armored personnel carrier when it struck a mine in the early morning hours of Aug. 17, 1970.

"Just prior to that the battalion commander had put on another inch and a half of belly armor under it," he said, "because we had lost soldiers that didn't have the belly armor and they were killed. So I was lucky."

Clemenson lost a lot of his hearing, took on shrapnel and suffered burns. He spent some time in a hospital, then was transferred to an underground bunker providing radio intel for his final few months in Vietnam.

A half-century later, Clemenson and about 21 fellow platoon members still get together every year. They will be coming to Bemidji for this year's reunion Aug. 9-13.

Don DeLapp served four years in the Air Force from 1962-66. He was stationed in South Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis and was there when President John F. Kennedy visited the base. At the age of 80, DeLapp was invited to take part in the Honor Flight as one of the 50 Korean War-era vets.

He and the other three Bemidji men bonded during the trip, sitting next to each other on the plane and rooming together in D.C.

"That has to have been the most organized trip I have ever seen," said DeLapp, who grew up in Sherburne, Minn., and moved to Bemidji in 1978. "I wish every vet could do it. It's good to be with a bunch of people who have served their country."

He said the thing that really tugged on his heartstrings was when they got back to the airport in Fargo.

"They were making us go down the escalator one at a time. There were people lined up all the way down and a band was playing," DeLapp recounted. "It choked me up. I wasn't in Vietnam, but I was thinking this is the homecoming that the Vietnam vets should have gotten when they came home, but they didn't get."