Vietnam vet in charge of Maricopa’s new Purple Heart chapter

Walter Martin was shot down over Laos in 1971. A sergeant 1st class in the U.S. Army Special Forces, the Green Beret had the wounds to prove it, but he remembers little about what happened except waking up in the hospital.

In June, he was made the commander of the newly launched Maricopa chapter of the Military Order of the Purple Heart (MOPH).

“We are there to just look out for what our veterans need and step in and do whatever we can,” Martin said.

Mike Kemery, past commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Maricopa, said the post wanted to bring recognition to those who were wounded in combat and give them the opportunity to network with others. “Walter was the right man for the job,” he said.

Martin’s wife Anita agrees. “He’s a doer,” she said. “He doesn’t just talk, talk, talk and not do anything. When he takes something on, he sees it through.”

Martin was commander of a MOPH chapter in Simi Valley, California. He calls Anita his “service officer,” a role she will also play in Maricopa’s chapter 2020.

The Purple Heart is a medal presented to personnel wounded or killed in military action.

Martin said MOPH offers a special kind of camaraderie that other organizations cannot offer veterans. Merely having veteran status in common does not create comradeship among those who served in very different capacities in very different locations. It’s a mistake he said the federal government often makes when dealing with veterans’ issues.

“They can’t fix it because they can’t identify with it,” he said. “The government thinks you can just set up a meeting and share. But our backgrounds are different. How do I relate? People really don’t understand what we’ve been going through.”

More needs to be done for spouses and families of veterans to help them understand, he said, and MOPH helps fill that void through its auxiliary. That’s where Anita Martin steps in.

“A lot of these guys don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “We women, we push, push, push. We want to know. We’re the nurturers. So we have to learn. We would like to have the younger wives come and learn.”[quote_box_right]Walter Martin
Age: 73
Hometown: Lenapah, Oklahoma
Residence: Province
Military Service: 20 years in U.S. Army, wounded in Vietnam War
Family: Wife Anita, three daughters, one son, 18 grandchildren[/quote_box_right]

The auxiliary unit is for wives and husbands of wounded service personnel.

To form the Maricopa chapter of MOPH, the VFW found over a dozen local recipients of the Purple Heart. Anita Martin, originally from Louisiana, said there are many more recipients in Maricopa, “but they don’t come forward.”

Those who wish to join need their DD214 form to show their Purple Heart. Lifetime membership is $50.

Walter Martin said often veterans in need have to go through too many steps and too much red tape to get short-term help like food or a place to stay for the night. In California, he authorized officers in his chapter to be able to spend $100 for immediate aid to a veteran.

They want to have a similar arrangement with Chapter 2020 in Maricopa. “That’s why we need donations,” Anita Martin said. “We’re new, so we have to write letters to big companies to make sure donations are coming in. It’s 99.9 percent that goes all to the veterans.”

The only expenses to be paid are for copies and mailings, she said. Projects have ranged from buying bibs for elderly veterans to flying a vet home to see his family.

Another event they would like to adopt from their California unit is a Thanksgiving shopping spree for community members over the age of 65. They had enough donations to buy $100 gift cards at a local grocery for those who signed up. That morning, cadets from a local Junior ROTC program accompanied the senior citizens on their shopping spree to help them keep track of their totals.

Martin emphasizes helping the elderly and working with local youth. Martin joined the Army when he was 17 “because I was poor and I got tired of working in the hayfield. I wasn’t getting an education that I should have gotten because work always came first, and those were long hours. Once I got in the military, things were a little better after boot camp.”

He received his GED in France. These days, Martin believes a form of the draft should return that requires high school graduates to give two years of military duty to learn discipline and service.

“We weren’t trained to be quitters,” he said. “And that stays with you until death.”

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This story appears in the August issue of InMaricopa.