HONORING THE FALLEN

More than 20 years after beginning research, Terry Mayon has documented scores of Tri-City area servicemen whose names will be inscribed on the Fallen Warriors Memorial — and the research continues.
The most recent addition to his list, Kearney J. Landry, is an example of the hurdles he has had to clear and dead ends he has had to work around in his effort to include only factually documented names.
Landry was born in Amelia and killed in North Africa on April 30, 1943, but Mayon said clerical transposition led to the appearance of two separate people by that name, which compromised the reliability of the name and dates being included on the list.
“My dilemma was the dates of birth between his draft registration and published records of ‘U.S. Veterans Gravesites.’ The published record indicated his birth as 11, July, 1922, and his draft registration, which he signed, states his birth at 11, April, 1922. … He was authorized internment at Alexandria, La., on June 11, 1948.”
With all of the dates having an 11 in them, Mayon concluded clerical error in the official paperwork, led to the confusion.
“To make a long story short, I located a copy of his original interment record for the Alexandria Louisiana National Cemetery and it states his birth as 11, April, 1922,” Mayon said. “I now can prove that Kearney Joseph Landry belongs on the Wall of Honor of Fallen Warriors of the Tri-City area. On the draft registration for Kearney Joseph Landry, son of Noah Henry Landry and Eve Marie Babin, he states he was born in Amelia, La. ... Being born in Amelia, going to school in both Amelia and Morgan City (confirmed by a personal interview with a classmate), qualifies him to be placed on the Wall of Honor.”
The research project had its genesis in Mayon doing personal genealogy research of his family. He chronicled a lineage of military service that goes as far back as the Civil War, a war in which he had relatives who served on both sides of the conflict.
While the Fallen Warriors Memorial only goes back to World War I (1914-18), Mayon told the story of Union soldier John Albert May, originally from Ohio, with whom he claims a distant kinship.
May served as a federal soldier during the Union occupation of St. Mary Parish and after the war returned to marry a Franklin-area girl, Mayon said. The couple lived and raised their family along the banks of Bayou Teche.
His great-grandson, Billy May, is now a police officer with the Berwick police, Mayon said.
Billy May was unable to verify the relationship and deferred to Mayon’s genealogical research. But, he said he, too, was a veteran, who had served in Iraq.
While in Baghdad, May said he received a disabling injury on May 9, 2007, from an AK-47 drive-by shooting which shattered his femur and led to 14 surgeries, including a muscle flap and skin graft. He was in the hospital for six weeks as they worked on his injured left leg.
Mayon said at least 50 of his relatives, close and distant, served in the military in World War II alone. As he was researching information on World War II, he began helping the Morgan City archives do research on that war.
“The research kept expanding,” Mayon said. “The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn.”
Eventually Mayon put together an 84-page booklet with the names of 1,400-plus service men and women who served in World War II and had ties to the Tri-Cities area — from Bayou Boeuf to the Wax Lake outlet. The list has each warrior’s branch of service and other brief biographical information.
Mayon said his father, A.J. Mayon Jr., was a World War II veteran and received serious injuries at the Battle of the Bulge. The elder Mayon was upset when his son enlisted in the Air Force as the Vietnam War was just getting under way, Mayon remembered.
“He had been to war and knew what war was,” Mayon said of his father’s reaction. “He had lost friends. The possibility of me not coming back was pretty high.”
Mayon was able to return safely to his family after he served eight years as an air traffic controller and advisor to the South Vietnamese army. He was given an intricately woven leaf hat with words and images woven into the brim by the soldiers he advised when he left Southeast Asia.
“I made it back home but I lost friends and people I went to school with,” Mayon said.
Mayon said he went to school from the first-grade with Bradley Daigle.
“My mother wrote me and told me he had been killed,” Mayon said of how he received the news of Daigle’s death. “He was just 19.” The same year, 1967, another schoolmate, Danny Paul, was killed, he said.
Some of the fallen warriors who will be included on the Memorial hail from communities that no longer exist. Included in that list are Andrew Rulf who was born on Nov. 3, 1923, at Bayou Peru, which was on Bateman Island and Junios Dupuy, born Feb. 26, 1929, also of Bateman Island.
Dupuy was killed on Feb. 26, 1951, in South Korea and was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for manning a gun as his infantry platoon retreated, according to Mayon’s records. He was fatally wounded while attempting to return to friendly lines. He left behind his parents, 10 brothers and six sisters.
Rulf was killed in action on the island of Saipan on July 24, 1944. He left behind four brothers and a sister along with his parents, according to Mayon’s documents.
Most of those killed or died of wounds in Mayon’s research had lived short lives. For instance, Eugene Chaisson ran away from home at 16 before Pearl Harbor. He lied about his age and enlisted in the Army on Nov. 2, 1940, in Houston under the name Eugene Chesson and was killed in action three years later at the age of 19, Mayon said. Chaisson is buried at the Normandy American Cemetery in France.
Mayon said he has documents, memorabilia and records scattered all over his upstairs office at his house and even in the crawlspace of his home. It is important to make sure that the names and information included on the Memorial are confirmed and verified, he said.
“In research and genealogy you can’t just believe what people say and tell you,” Mayon said.
With about $90,000 in donations collected in the past few months, the erection and dedication of the Memorial in Cypress Park on Veterans Day, Nov. 11 is well ahead of schedule, Mayon said.
“We are now in the beginning phase of construction,” Mayon said. Organizers are trying to raise $150,000 for the project. That will include about $30,000 for a trust fund to keep the memorial maintained and add names to it.