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Joseph Tanzi served in Vietnam on a boat like this one.
Episode 2648 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature Vietnam Vet Joseph Tanzi’s inspiring story of service to his new country both on and off the battlefield. The featured story appeared in The Examiner News and was titled, A Radio in the Vietnam War Saved His Life: A Veteran’s Day Story. It was submitted by Michael Gold. Pleasantville-based writer Michael Gold has had articles published in the New York Daily News, the Albany Times Union, the Hartford Courant, The Palm Beach Post and other newspapers, and The Hardy Society Journal, a British literary journal.
Examiner Media was launched in 2007 as part of an effort by a group of local award-winning newspaper journalists to dispel the notion that “print is dead.” With that goal in mind The Examiner was born on Sept. 11 of 2007.
Gold’s story is about Vietnam Veteran Joseph Tanzi who was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967 only eight years after he had moved to America from Italy as a fifteen year old lad.
Gold reported that Tanzi was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1967, when the Vietnam War “was in full force,” he said.
Joseph, a first-generation Italian immigrant, arrived in America in 1959, had just gotten married and worked in a supermarket in Brooklyn when he got the call to serve at 23 years old.
His Army unit was based next to the Mekong River, enduring eternally humid air. At Christmas time, “the temperature was in the 100s,” Joe said. The landscape featured rice paddies, rivers, dikes and mud.
Tanzi ended his story with these comments; “My coming home and meeting my daughter was unbelievable.” He said he knew while in Vietnam “I had to come home and meet her and take care of her and that’s why I survived.”
“I mourn people that never came back,” Joe said while reflecting on the war. “I feel deeply for all their families. We sacrificed all those years. We’re proud of being Vietnam veterans.”
Listen to episode 2648 and discover more about Vietnam Vet Joseph Tanzi’s inspiring story of service to his new country both on and off the battlefield.
