Billy Cyr and Bubbles Napierata, Part 1
Billy Cyr and Bubbles Napierata, Part 1
William "Billy" Cyr, Norman "Bubbles" Napierata, and myself were all on the same Boys Club summer league basketball team back in the middle 1960s. We formed it ourselves with a few other guys whose names I can no longer remember. I mostly remember those two because both of their names are now on the Vietnam War Memorial.
I went on to college after high school. Billy and Bubbles did not; therefore, they were immediately subject to the draft, while I got a deferment. The intention of a draft is to be fair to everyone. Obviously, it was not.
One Sunday morning while was in college reading the Sunday Boston Globe newspaper, I noticed a pullout section called "The Massachusetts Dead in Vietnam." The faces of the dead were listed by town. I immediately checked on my hometown of Webster. There they were: the faces of both my friends, dead in combat in Vietnam.
The fact that two men from a small town basketball team would die in Vietnam and a third (myself) would eventually go to Vietnam shows just how much that war affected so many families.
Their deaths may have saved my own life. I realized I needed to take control of it. I could not sit around and wait to get drafted after I got out of college. I would join the Air Force and find a better way to go over rather than as a combat soldier.
William "Billy" Cyr, Norman "Bubbles" Napierata, and myself were all on the same Boys Club summer league basketball team back in the middle 1960s. We formed it ourselves with a few other guys whose names I can no longer remember. I mostly remember those two because both of their names are now on the Vietnam War Memorial.
I went on to college after high school. Billy and Bubbles did not; therefore, they were immediately subject to the draft, while I got a deferment. The intention of a draft is to be fair to everyone. Obviously, it was not.
One Sunday morning while was in college reading the Sunday Boston Globe newspaper, I noticed a pullout section called "The Massachusetts Dead in Vietnam." The faces of the dead were listed by town. I immediately checked on my hometown of Webster. There they were: the faces of both my friends, dead in combat in Vietnam.
The fact that two men from a small town basketball team would die in Vietnam and a third (myself) would eventually go to Vietnam shows just how much that war affected so many families.
Their deaths may have saved my own life. I realized I needed to take control of it. I could not sit around and wait to get drafted after I got out of college. I would join the Air Force and find a better way to go over rather than as a combat soldier.
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