Edward Vick: Proud American -- Celebrating America 250

by Mary A. Jacobson

Ed Vick speaking on Memorial Day. Photo by Andy Volcom.

Edward Vick’s family has proudly served in the United States military for generations. In his 2024 Oral History Project interview with Mary Magnusson in 2024, he reviewed both his and his family’s military history.

Vick’s great-great-grandfather, Joshua Vick, led a company of the 7th North Carolina Regiment in Gettysburg. Wounded, captured, and later released, “he was one of the lead elements of Pickett’s Charge.” His grandfather participated in the First World War. “He went to France as a motorcycle dispatch rider.” Vick’s Uncle George, “who I was very close to… ran away from home when he was sixteen and went up to Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and flew Mosquito bombers in Europe” during World War II.

Vick’s dad had the greatest influence on him. A medical doctor, he was made a junior officer in the Navy and a medical officer. “He was in the Battle of Okinawa on a ship, and he was treating the wounded on an open deck while the kamikazes were crashing all around him… He received the Bronze Star for that.”

With that legacy of military service in his family, it is no wonder that Vick also wanted to serve his country by joining the military. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “I joined the Navy because my dad had been in the Navy.” Vick was twenty-two in 1966 and the Vietnam War was raging. Vick was initially assigned to a ship in Boston Harbor. “I didn’t want to do that. I felt like I really wanted to be in Vietnam. I suppose my feelings changed later on, but I really believed in the war at the time.” After a year, he asked his commanding officer if he knew “anybody in the River Patrol Force of the swift boats or anything like that?… So next thing I knew, the orders got changed and I was off to San Francisco to train for riverine warfare.”

Vick’s four-month training program involved small boat tactics, “daytime and nighttime, up in Vallejo, California, in the northern side of San Francisco Bay,” survival school, and Vietnamese language school. “And then I was sent to Vietnam right before Christmas in 1968” at age 24. Upon arrival, Vick learned that he would replace another junior officer who had been killed. “I was told that I was going to be assigned to River Division 534, which was up on an operation called GIANT SLINGSHOT, northwest of Saigon and it was a really difficult operation.”

Vick found this first foray upriver to be “quite an eye-opening experience. Nothing was like what they taught you.” These were not the big rivers upon which he had been trained. “They wanted to get more up into where the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese really hung out. So, we had to go into more narrow rivers which were much more dangerous… the Viet Cong would line up along the riverbanks. They’d build bunkers… and they’d wait for you to come by and they’d open fire… My very first gun fight, my boat was hit by a rocket below the water line, and we sank.” Fortunately for Vick, “All patrols moved in pairs because they were so vulnerable. They’re just plastic with no armor… So, my cover boat behind me saw that we’d been hit and were going down.” Fortunately, they all survived.

Other times, with a starlight scope – like a night vision goggle, Vick’s platoon would wait in silence to ambush an expected Viet Cong crossing of the river. “We’d tie our boat up to the bank and we’d turn all the radios and everything off. We wouldn’t talk. We’d just lie there and wait all night long. No smoking. No nothing… And then you could see them crossing. And they wouldn’t see you. So, we would catch them sometimes crossing late at night… And that’s what you were trained to do.”

All in all, Vick commanded about a hundred patrols in the area of the Mekong Delta and was awarded two Bronze Star medals. “One of the things I’m most proud of is we were awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for our actions in GIANT SLINGSHOT, the highest award that a combat unit can receive for its actions in combat.”

When Vick returned from his tour in Vietnam, he enrolled at Northwestern for a master’s degree in journalism, a small program of about thirty students. “I hadn’t been home for three years basically. And when I came back, the attitude towards the war had completely changed and vets were completely ostracized.” One university experience at that time was seared in his memory. On the first day of class, the professor asked everyone in the program to tell something about themselves. “So, everybody goes around and it comes to my turn. So, I said, ‘Well, I’m from Philadelphia and blah, blah, blah. And I went to the University of North Carolina.’ And that’s all I said. And the dean said, ‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You forgot the most important part.’ The dean was a reserve naval officer. So, he was proud of the fact that I was a naval officer in Vietnam. And for the next two months, nobody spoke to me. Didn’t say anything to me. No, didn’t say a word.”

During that time, Vick started to write his book entitled “Slingshot.” He was “beginning to turn against the war… It’s basically good guys caught up in the web of the system and the bureaucracy. And it doesn’t come out well… The American population blamed the war on the warriors, not on the politicians.”

Vick’s professional life in the years that followed saw him rise to be CEO of the firm Young and Rubicam. His personal philanthropy centered on causes that benefitted veterans. While Mayor of New York, Ed Koch appointed him to the board of the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission. “That was quite an honor.” A jobs program for veterans was initiated. In addition, a book entitled “Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam” was published and later turned into an Academy Award-nominated film. “It was a book of nothing but letters home from Vietnam. No editorial comment or anything like that. Just letters.”

Vick was also on the board of an organization called “Give an Hour” which pairs those in need of psychological help with a psychiatrist or psychologist for an hour a week free. “And we have seven thousand psychiatrists. So, it’s really quite a good program.” He is also often seen on the parade route of the Greenwich Veterans Day parade or as a speaker at the annual Memorial Day ceremony at Indian Harbor Yacht Club.

Looking back at his accomplishments, Vick surmised, “I learned hard work in the Navy, and I learned responsibility. I learned leadership. I just learned a lot of things in the Navy. It stood me in good stead.”

The Oral History Project is proud to present blogs derived from its collection of recorded interviews as part of the Project’s celebration of America 250 Greenwich – Greenwich History is American History. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Interviews may also be read in their entirety or checked out at the main library. They are also available for purchase by contacting the OHP office. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subjected to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.

Book jacket of “Slingshot” based on Vietnam wartime experiences.

Ed Vick in 2024 with Oral History Project interviewer Mary Magnusson. Courtesy of Oral History Project.

 

A 1695 Greenwich Landmark Tells America’s Story

by Mary A. Jacobson

Thomas Lyon farmhouse, circa 1900. Courtesy of Greenwich Historical Society.

The Thomas Lyon House, built by Thomas Lyon the 2nd in 1695, is the second oldest house in Greenwich and bears witness to the statement: “Greenwich History is American History.” The house may easily be overlooked by the thousands of cars that drive by it each day, crossing from Port Chester to Greenwich. On one side of the road, there’s a sign that reads “Greenwich CT Gateway to New England.” Directly opposite, on the corner of Byram Road and West Putnam Avenue, stands a small, brown-shingled house. Hung across the front of it is a large, faded white banner. Ironically, the only words that can easily be deciphered are “This House… Help Us.”

Despite its current condition, the history of the Thomas Lyon House is a proud one. Julie Grey Pollock, a ninth-generation Lyon descendant, was interviewed by Oral History Project volunteer Richard M. Blair in 2010. She had traveled to Greenwich from her home in Alaska at the time, eager to join other family members on a day which was proclaimed Lyon Family Day by Peter Tesei, then First Selectman.

Julie Grey Pollock was anxious to share her knowledge of the Lyon family, and the history of the Thomas Lyon House. “This area was for most of its life a working farm. The lands that the Lyon family worked on were from as many as three hundred acres, to ninety-five acres in my great-grandfather’s (Underhill Lyon) time, to a final piece of eight acres. They had orchards; they raised livestock; they grew crops; they grew hay; they did a lot of trading in apples and making of cider and vinegar, which they traded to New York.”

The Thomas Lyon House was a participant in the American Revolution. As Pollock stated, “I have the (British) cannonball that hit this house during the Revolutionary War…. Most of that generation… were joining the Americans and fighting the British. But their father, Gilbert, was a Tory… So, I think that whole issue of the sons being for the Revolution, and the father being for the British Crown, had to be rather interesting in this house at that time.” As a child, “I thought everyone had a cannonball by their fireplace.”

Pollock elaborated on the Revolutionary War history of the house at a talk she gave at the Bruce Museum for the Greenwich Preservation Trust in 2012 and kindly sent the transcript to the Oral History Project for its records. In her words, “The neighborhood around the Lyon home at Byram Bridge was a highly strategic location between the advances of the British into New England and the Americans’ repeated attempts in 1779 to repel them… The British forces and Continental Army met up and fought several times along this border zone… Repeated forays of the British, including the destruction of homes, barns, crops, ships and churches along the coast disrupted normal life for many months.” Pollock’s grandmother, Julia Lyon Saunders, told her that family lore that included stories of “redcoats hiding behind the rocks across the road from the house.”

Thomas Lyon House moved across the street in 1927 because of widening of Boston Post Road. Courtesy of Greenwich Historical Society.

Pollock and her family members have preserved many of the artifacts that were essential to life in those times. “We have the spinning wheels that they used for both flax and for wool… We have utensils, we have implements… so that we would have something really solid to contribute to the overall knowledge of the place,” including documents that tell the economic story of the family from “about 1800 until after the Civil War.” Pollock was particularly proud of a desk she possessed called “Uncle Seth’s desk,” belonging to Seth Lyon, born in 1790. He lived in the house, “a prominent person in his time” and was acclaimed for “working with the African Americans who were in a lot of struggles during that period for freedom.”

In the 1920s, a road-widening project of Boston Post Road nearly resulted in the destruction of the house. Funds were raised, “almost $12,000 which was a lot of money in 1926,” to save it by moving it across the road where it now stands. Pollock’s grandparents moved out that year and gave the historic house to the Rotary and Lions clubs in the hopes that “a handsome visitor center and museum to be known as ‘The Gateway to New England’ would be created.”

With the Depression of 1929 and World War II, those hopeful plans for the Thomas Lyon House did not materialize. “My grandmother, I think, felt very down about what had happened to the house. It became a private rental, and it never became the Gateway to New England” as she had hoped. Instead, it became “a maintenance nightmare and a money sink.” In 2007, the Lions Club gave the home to the Town of Greenwich.

The Thomas Lyon House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. The Greenwich Preservation Trust, headed by Andrew Melillo, is now seeking to lease the site from the Town of Greenwich. “Hopefully, we will have the lease signed with RTM approval as well as Planning and Zoning approval by December.” With its eventual maintenance and accessibility plan secured, it is hoped that the story of this historic Greenwich home may be preserved and shared with present and future generations. To quote Julie Grey Pollock, “Like old stone walls, old homes have a story to tell.”

The Oral History Project is proud to present blogs derived from its collection of recorded interviews as part of the Project’s celebration of America 250 Greenwich – Greenwich History is American History. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Interviews may also be read in their entirety or checked out at the main library.

They are also available for purchase by contacting the OHP office. Our narrator’s recollections are personal and have not been subjected to factual scrutiny. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.

Thomas Lyon House interior room with fireplace as seen today. Photo by Mary A. Jacobson.

Andrew Bella 

From Byram Boy to High School Principal

by Mary A. Jacobson

There aren’t too many residents of Greenwich who can trace their ties to the Greenwich Public Schools from their earliest childhood years at New Lebanon School to their retirement after a career spanning forty years. Such a man was Andrew Bella for whom Bella House at GHS is proudly named.

Andrew Bella.
Courtesy of the Oral History Project.

Andrew Bella was interviewed for the Oral History Project in the 1970s by Margaret F. French and Brooks Lushington. Born in 1907, Bella’s memories of his early life in Byram are vivid in his mind. “Byram was more or less a self-contained community . . . called East Port Chester in those days because without cars people did their shopping in Port Chester.” He was born into the German Lutheran Church - a “P.K.” or “Preacher’s Kid” - as he said. Most of his dad’s parishioners were immigrants who worked at Abendroth’s, the foundry in Port Chester. “. . . as kids we could look in there, and you could watch the red-hot molten metal being poured.” His dad would advise his immigrant newcomers, “Go to church, get your citizenship papers, and buy a home.” According to Bella, “Many of the homes on Mead Avenue in Byram . . . are still owned by the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of those people who came here at the turn of the century.”
 
Bella’s description of his early school days at New Lebanon were far different from those experienced today. “We had a crowded school even when I was here, and we had to use the church on William Street for some of the classes.” Bella’s favorite game of baseball was played on a field where the ashes from the school furnace were disposed. “The playground actually was just the open field with stones for bases and ashes in the outfield . . . We passed the hat and made enough to buy the balls and bats and the equipment we needed. So that was the Recreation and Parks Department!” As Bella recounted, “No one had a car. My dad didn’t have a car till I was sixteen (in 1923). Cars and airplanes were a novelty. If you’d see a plane, everybody would look up.”
 
From New Lebanon School, Bella went to Greenwich High School, which was located on Havemeyer Place. However, for Bella, there was “no gym, no yard, no nothing.” For physical education, the students would do calisthenics in the third-floor hallway. “Weather permitting, we would run around the block.” There was also no auditorium. For assemblies, Mr. Folsom, the principal affectionately known as “Pop,” would climb on a platform in the corridor “and we would stand around him, and we’d have our assemblies there.” The year Bella graduated in 1925, however, construction began on the new high school on Field Point Road (now Town Hall).

Havemeyer School, on Havemeyer Place, eight years after its opening in 1892.
Site of the first Greenwich High School graduation in 1895.
Courtesy of Greenwich Library.

Despite the lack of facilities, “we managed, and I think we had an excellent faculty.” In particular, Bella extolled the science department. “We did have an excellent science department.” Bella excelled in physics and chemistry and enrolled at Yale, graduating as a physicist. However, “By then the Depression had struck, and no one knew what a physicist was, let along hire one.” His luck changed through a chance meeting with Pop Folsom. “I came home one vacation from graduate work at Yale and I met Pop Folsom who said ‘We have an opening in the physics department. Would you be interested?’ . . . So that’s the way I came back to Greenwich High School (in 1929 at age 22), by meeting Pop Folsom on the street one day.”
 
By 1940, with a master’s degree in educational administration from Columbia, Bella was named principal of Greenwich High School. During his tenure, until his retirement in 1969, the high school experienced much growth and development. “The athletic program evolved from football, baseball, and basketball into the complete spectrum of sports we have today (1977 at the time of interview), including lacrosse, tennis, and soccer . . . We developed ice hockey when the rink was built in Playland . . . We were the only out-of-state school that skated in Playland. Many times we were champs of the Westchester County Hockey League.”
 
Bella also supported increasing school services for students who had learning difficulties or were academically challenged. “The whole guidance movement developed during my tenure at the high school.” Bella was also particularly proud of a program developed in the aftermath of World War II. “Boys who had not finished their high school education were allowed to come back as veterans . . . they were the best students; they knew what they wanted to do.”
 
As the post-World War II baby-boom generation moved through the school, its facilities became cramped with some classes held in the auditorium and gymnasium. “Toward the end of my career at Field Point (now Town Hall), our proms were so large that we had to have two orchestras. We had one inside the girls’ gym and we had a tent on the front lawn, so there was continuous music inside and outside.” “Afterglows” (post-prom gatherings) were held at The Clam Box in Cos Cob so the students would have a place to go after the prom.
 
Bella fondly recalled an incident in which he was summoned to the second floor because there was a car in the hallway. “A crowd of maybe a hundred students followed me up and, sure enough, there in the corridor was this Volkswagen completely assembled . . . What they had done is, during the night, under blankets with flashlights, taken this car apart, and hoisted it up to the second floor . . . no gasoline . . . no scratches . . . They did it and they were fine students.”
 
Bella had definitive views about the value of discipline. “I think that discipline, if it’s fair . . . is something that students want . . . If they don’t have it, they’re going to look for it, and they’re going to look for it by doing something that demands discipline . . . Youngsters want to know what the lines are.”

Greenwich High School on Field Point Road in 1960.
Opened in 1925.
Now serves as Greenwich Town Hall.
Courtesy of Greenwich Library.

Bella’s tenure extended from the World War II era to that of the Vietnam War and the turmoil of the sixties. Through those years, he led with a steady hand. The present high school on Hillside Avenue opened in 1970, the year after he retired. Bella had championed for a new school to accommodate the swelling student population. A clandestine petition, signed by hundreds of students, requested that one of the houses in the new school be named Bella House after him, a recognition in which he took great pride. “I go to about three reunions a year and you get this outpouring of affection for the school . . . And that’s where you begin to feel the real quality and value of what went on at that time.”
 
The interview entitled “From Byram Boy to High School Principal” may be read in its entirety or checked out at the main library. It is also available for purchase at the Oral History Project office. The OHP is sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library. Visit the website at glohistory.org. Mary Jacobson serves as blog editor.