Vietnam veteran finally gets hero’s welcome

By DAN SCHNEIDER, DMG Writer
HOUGHTON — Neil Isaacson could be bitter.

It was almost 38 years ago, one night in June 1970. The Marine was digging a fighting hole somewhere in what U.S. Marines called the “Arizona Territory” in eastern Vietnam.

His shovel struck an explosive.

“I tripped a booby trap,” Isaacson said. “They have a new name for it in this war now, it’s an ‘improvised exploding device.’”

The blast blinded him; broke his jaw; tore off his right thumb and index finger; embedded shrapnel in his arms, legs and torso. His spleen and parts of his intestine were later removed. He spent two-and-a-half years in the hospital before he could return home permanently.

That kind of thing is justification for being angry.

Yet Isaacson wasn’t when he got back to Calumet.

“Neil didn’t seem like he was angry when he came back, he was the same self as when he went,” his mother Agnes Isaacson said.

Terry Budreau, a Vietnam veteran from Allouez, said it wasn’t always easy for veterans of that conflict to come home even if they weren’t injured.

“It was rough,” Budreau said. “We had no country. Nobody appreciated us when we came home.”

When Isaacson came back to Calumet, his mother said, there were no parades. She said he did get recognition for his service.

“Just from friends, no big parties, nothing like that,” she said.

Isaacson’s thoughts on his homecoming: “I was happy to be alive and so were a lot of people, but it was real low key, real low key,” he said.

Isaacson said the local Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion chapters did greet him at the airport. He would provide support for other local soldiers returned home from Vietnam battlefields.

“He’s got a strong heart and he’s taught a lot of us to stand on our own feet by following his example,” Budreau said.

When Isaacson returned home, he began a different life. Despite his blindness, he built the Sandy Pebble Golf Course in Ahmeek.

Isaacson was a member of the Third Marine Amphibious Force, Second Combined Action Platoon, Third Company, Third Platoon. They were “rice guards” in the villages of Vinh Hoa and Vinh Ky.

“That’s what they called us, ‘rice guards,’ that’s what we did is we’d guard the rice for the Vietnamese because the Cong and the NVA would skive off with it,” Isaacson said.

He saw other Marines from his unit taken wounded from Vietnam in helicopters.

Saturday, 38 years after his return from Vietnam, Isaacson received a hero’s welcome as grand marshal of the Third Annual Parade of Thanks.

“It’s pretty cool,” he said. “A lot of people are really happy that I got the job of being a grand marshal.”

Many people came up to him and expressed such sentiments as his brother, Rick Isaacson, led him by the arm among groups of veterans Saturday morning.

Budreau was one of two motorcycle riders at the front of the parade, both Vietnam veterans, whose passengers held up placards announcing Isaacson as the grand marshal of the parade.

Isaacson rode behind in the passenger seat of a red BMW convertible, waving to spectators along the route when they yelled out “Hey Neil” from the curb.



Dan Schneider can be reached at dschneider@mininggazette.com