Conley Publishing - Special Sections
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C o n l e y M e d i a • M e m o r i a l D a y • 2 0 1 6 • 5 ank you to all the men and women of our armed forces for your selfless dedication to our nation, and a special thank you to our employees who served. Your service and sacrifices will never be taken for granted. Pvt. Willie Bedford Found: UWM Journalism Student Finds Last Wisconsin Vietnam Photo M E M O R I A L D A Y 2 0 1 6 Pvt. Willie Bedford Found: UWM Journalism Student Finds Last Wisconsin Vietnam Photo by Rachel Maidl UW-Milwaukee Journalism Student For Willie Bedford's five siblings, his face was a distant memory. They lost their brother 45 years ago in Vietnam. In the decades since, one-by-one, their photos of him were also lost, especially after the family matri- arch died. It had been about 20 years since any of them had seen his picture. Until Memorial Day weekend 2015, that is. This is where Andrew Johnson, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and a journal- ism class at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee come in. Johnson and Bedford's siblings had never met but have a great deal in common. They are both Gold Star families. That means they have both lost an immediate family member in combat. And each had the same goal: To find a picture of the young Marine from Milwaukee who drowned in a dam in Vietnam in May, 1970, at age 19. His was the last out of 1,161 Wisconsin service members who died in Vietnam whose photos were needed for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund's Wall of Faces project to match a face with every name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Last Friday, a student journal- ist from UWM, Rachel Maidl, and her instructor, Jessica McBride, brought a photo the student had unearthed from a North Division High School yearbook to three of Bedford's siblings—Carol Shaw and Robert and Eddie Claybrooks of Milwaukee—and messaged it to a fourth—Charles Bedford, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They all con- firmed it was Willie; the photo was labeled "B. Bedford" even though Willie never went by a name starting with B that his family can remember. Willie Bedford's face had almost been lost to history because of a typo. "That's him!" Shaw exclaimed emotionally when she saw the photo. "That's him… That's him… That's my brother!" she said emphatically thumping her hand down on the coffee table, breaking down. "That's him." "That's my brother, Willie," concurred Eddie Claybrooks a short time later, expressing how important it was that Willie's photo was found, not just for the Wall project but also for his family. There aren't many people in the world who do things for others anymore, he told the student journalist, with deepen- ing emotion. The other siblings commented how much Eddie Claybrooks resembles Willie in the yearbook photo, which none of them had ever seen before. Three existing photos Bedford's only child, Tonya Scott, also of Milwaukee, who was just three months old when her father died, and Scott's mother, Loretta, provided two other photos to the UWM journalism class instructor for the Wall education center, rounding out what may very well be the only three photographs of Bedford anywhere. All of the photos have now been sent to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in Washington D.C. for an education center that will be built in a few years there. Willie's siblings had completely lost contact with his daughter and her mother; they didn't even remem- ber their names and at one point Shaw offered to drive around to see if she could remember the house. But after the Scotts contacted the UWM class, after learning about the search through the media, the instructor connected them with Shaw, who said she had a lengthy, warm conversation with Willie's only child, and they are meeting up soon. "I have his picture, and now my niece back. This has truly shined a light on my life in a good way," said Shaw. Loretta Scott met Willie Bedford when both attended North Division High School in the late 1960s. She also knew him through his membership on the NAACP Youth Council, which he'd joined "because he was working for equality," Loretta said, adding that Bedford had joined the military to provide for her and for his soon-to-be- born child, Tonya. The Youth Council's adviser was Father James Groppi, and it helped lead fair housing and other demon- strations. Tonya, 45, was stoic and silent, expressing repeatedly that the only way she could deal with the loss of her father was to completely wall it out of her mind because it caused her so much pain growing up to not have a living dad. But she broke a brief smile when she revealed a maternal uncle had told her once she was a lot like her dad because "he said I will give any- thing to anyone and always try to do things for other people." To Willie's siblings, he was the pride of a family which had struggled through poverty and discrimination in the Jim Crow South, moving from Illinois to Milwaukee. Eddie Claybrooks recalled how, in Cairo, Illinois, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the family members had to go in the backdoors of restaurants, couldn't swim in the same pools as whites, and were limited to jobs picking cotton and beans. They came to Milwaukee for jobs, but they fell on hard times here, too, which contributed to the loss of the photos. Two of his brothers said their last memories of Willie were from jail. They were both incarcerated, but he came to see each of them one- by-one, wearing his uniform. "He was the one who was going to go on the right side of life," said Willie's brother, Robert Claybrooks. The disappearing man In the last 45 years, traces of Willie had been slowly disap- pearing. It started in 1973 when the National Personnel Records Center in Overland, Missouri burned down. Millions of files and pictures were lost. When Charles moved away from Milwaukee County where he and Willie grew up, boxes were mismanaged. Eddie's photos were thrown out by his landlord while he was incarcerated (he now says he has turned to reli- gion). When their mother died, no one remembered where her photos went. Tonya had a photo that was lost in a fire, and Loretta used to have more but lost some in moves. All of this contributed to the physical memories slowly slipping away. Slowly, the only photos of Willie Bedford's life narrowed down to three—two in a box at Loretta's house and one in a yearbook that no one remembered and was mislabeled "B." (MPS says Bedford attended three high schools and was not pictured in the other two). The photos collected are posted on the Virtual Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Willie's page was relatively blank. It listed his name, his hometown, and when he served and died for his country. The real heartbreak- ing and personal information was in the remembrance section of his page. It contained a remembrance from a platoon leader who knew him, but that man, when contacted, said he had no photos, either. continued on page 6 Willie Bedford photo provided by Tonya and Loretta Scott. Willie Bedford's sister Carol Shaw with UWM journalism student Rachel Maidl.