Veterans Day service set Friday in Alliance
Alliance Veterans Council plans a ceremony to honor American service veterans at 11 a.m. Friday at Freedom Plaza in downtown Alliance.
The Veterans Day service is planned to honor veterans of all military services. The council includes members of American Legion Post 166, Disabled American Veterans Alliance Chapter 50 and Vietnam Veterans of American Chapter 157.
The commanders and presidents of the local veterans’ organizations will lay wreaths in honor of their fallen comrades. The combined firing squads of American Legion Post 166 and Vietnam Veterans of American Chapter 157 plan a 21-gun salute to the honored dead. Augie Grove will play Taps, and a member of the Alliance High School band will perform Echo.
Speaker for the event will be Ted Mathies, a veteran of the U.S. Army who served in Vietnam.
The Cuyahoga Falls native and 1965 graduate of Cuyahoga Falls High School worked a series of jobs as a mechanic, machinist and a welder, and worked for Massey-Ferguson in Cuyahoga Falls as a welder.
Mathies was drafted into the U.S. Army on Dec. 3, 1968, and completed basic training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky before moving on to advanced individual training as a medic at Fort Sam Huston in Texas.
Mathies arrived in Vietnam on May 3, 1969, with an assignment to Headquarters and Headquarters Company 3rd Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division, for combat proficiency training, and then was assigned to HHC 1st Battalion, 501st Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, at Tan Son Nhut, Vietnam. He was attached to Company B as a senior aid man, accompanying the unit on all combat operations and treating military and civilian personnel.
On Nov. 16, 1969, Mathies was reassigned to HHC, 1st Infantry Division and further detailed to Company B 2/18th Infantry, 1st Infantry division, also as a senior aid man. Upon his return from Vietnam in April 1970, Mathies was assigned to HHC, 547th Medical Company at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
He received his honorable discharge Dec. 3, 1970. His awards and decorations include the Bronze Star, Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Combat Medic Badge.
Upon leaving the military service, Mathies returned to Massey-Ferguson, and completed training in heating, air conditioning, refrigeration and electronics. Mathies worked in refrigeration and electronics maintenance as facilities engineer and then as a machine controls manager at Lexington Technologies in North Canton before retiring in 2014.
Mathies served as a volunteer with the Marlboro Volunteers, with the military vehicle restoration and preservation group and has developed a display called “Military Medicine: History and Education” at MAPS Air Museum in Green.
This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Veterans Day service set Friday in Alliance
