Years ago, the Town of Brookhaven named a preserve in Ridge after Capt. Jonathan Bruce Bednarek, who died in the Vietnam War.
Bednarek had lived in Greenlawn, in the Town of Huntington, so it was unclear why a memorial to him was located Ridge. The passive park had been named for Bednarek so many years ago that officials didn’t have information on how it came about. The issue was revisted in the Sunday Community Watchdog column because the sign for the preserve with Bednarek's name went missing sometime between late last year and early this year.
Friends of the Bednarek family say that the captain’s parents lived in Leisure Village, which is adjacent to the preserve. One friend who worked with Bednarek’s father John at Chemical Bank wrote in an email, “John has since passed on, so on his behalf, I would like to offer whatever support is needed to insure that his son’s name is once again perpetually honored by displaying his name properly at the Town of Brookhaven preserve.”
The writer, said, “John Bednarek grieved the loss of his son and Captain Bednarek’s ultimate sacrifice for our country in the Vietnam war must never fade from our memory.”
UPDATE
Thanks to Ken and others who have sent us information about Capt. Bednarek. A short update is scheduled to be published Sunday in the LI Life section of Newsday.
Comments (6)
Gwen - Your posting was picked up by one of the Vietnam Veterans newsgroups so I received it this morning and thought to look into some background for your readers. Below is the information from The Virtual Wall - Mr. Bednarek was shot down in May of 1972 (7 months before the signing of the Paris Peach Accords). He was 23 years old at the time.
Notes from The Virtual Wall
1LT Wesley Ratzel and 1LT Jonathan B. Bednarek, launching from Da Nang Air Base, were downed near the city of Kep in Ha Bac Province, North Vietnam. An article in a Vietnamese publication, Nhan Dan, was thought to refer to 1LT Bednarek, but Defense Department notations for Ratzel state that he was a "no show" in the Hanoi POW camp system. Given the possibility that one or both men had survived, both were placed in a Missing In Action status.
When the American POWs were released in 1973, Bednarek and Ratzel were not among them. The Vietnamese, who had pledged in Paris earlier in the year to release all American POWs and account for as many as possible of the missing, denied any knowledge of either Ratzel or Bednarek.
In December 1988, the Vietnamese "discovered" and returned the remains of Wesley Ratzel and Jonathan Bednarek.
The comment above refers to Captain Bednarek's memorial page on the web site named The Virtual Wall.
Visitors can go to that web site by clicking on my name or go directly to Captain Bednarek's memorial page at
www.virtualwall.org/db/BednarekJB01a.htm
The comment above refers to Captain Bednarek's memorial page on the web site named The Virtual Wall.
Visitors can go to that web site by clicking on my name, below, or go directly to Captain Bednarek's memorial page at
www.virtualwall.org/db/BednarekJB01a.htm
Thanks for the review!
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