Emanuel Sylvester Lawbaugh

Everything Vess Lawbaugh is and has done is based in service

Emanuel Sylvester Lawbaugh; photographed on Friday, May 15, 2015, at the Veterans Wall of Honor in Bella Vista
Emanuel Sylvester Lawbaugh; photographed on Friday, May 15, 2015, at the Veterans Wall of Honor in Bella Vista

Vess Lawbaugh was born to be a Marine.

photo

NWA Democrat-Gazette

Emanuel Sylvester Lawbaugh

He knew it early on and tried to enlist in 1947, when he was 12, but the recruiters told him to come back when he was older.

Emanuel Sylvester “Vess” Lawbaugh

Date and place of birth: March 31, 1935, Saint Marys, Missouri

Family: wife Sonia, children Christine, James, Jeff, Julia, John, Karyn, Kathleen, Kathy, Kimberly, Kevin (deceased) and Steven (deceased). We have 35 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren.

What’s by my bed: the book Blood, Sweat & Honor, Memoirs of a Walking Dead Marine in Vietnam by my friend Derl Horn.

My favorite musical: Oklahoma!

My favorite movie: Gone with the Wind. I’ve seen it dozens of times and can quote all the lines.

A self indulgence of mine: I swim everyday. Each year it adds up to somewhere between 125-165 miles.

A scent that makes me nostalgic: praline. My mother used to make praline candies, so that makes me think of her.

The sound that takes me back is the ringing of bicycle bells. When I was in Vietnam, the schoolgirls would ring the bells on their bikes as they were cycling to school.

If I could change one thing in the world, it’d be to get rid of selfishness and greed, usually usurped by financial matters and the start of war.

Fantasy dinner guests: Bill Clinton, John McCain, Derek Jeeter, Thomas Jefferson and my grandson Brian Botello. He was killed in action in 2008.

If I was stranded on a desert island, I’d have to have the Encyclopedia Brittanica. It would have a lot of information that could help me.

Still left on my to-see list: North Africa, Tunisia, Malta and Monoco.

A word to sum me up: overachiever. School was not natural for me, but I went to get my doctorate and to law school. I’m not a natural athlete, but I work hard at it.

He signed up for the military when he enrolled at Regis University in Denver on a baseball scholarship, and went to active duty straight from graduation in 1957. The plan was to wrap up his minimum service requirements and return home to coach at Missouri Military Academy. He got that coaching job and excelled at it, being named conference coach of the year in 1961.

Then, as things escalated in Vietnam, he realized his military career was far from over and he returned to active duty.

In 20 years as a Marine, Lawbaugh served two combat tours in Vietnam and commanded five platoons, two companies and the communications squadron of the 1st Marine Air Wing. During those years, he lost a lot of friends on the battlefield and was wounded himself.

He earned the Bronze Star for valor and the Purple Heart, was named the Patriot of the Year in 2011 and became the judge advocate for the national office of the Military Order of the Purple Heart in 2012. In 2013, he was inducted into the Arkansas Military Veterans' Hall of Fame, recognized for not only his service on the battlefield but also his work for veterans as a civilian.

Now 80 years old, Lawbaugh was recently elected commander for the Department of Arkansas, Military Order of the Purple Heart. His volunteerism in the organization drew attention to the state in recent years when he brought two national conventions to Arkansas.

"It's quite distinctive," says retired Lt. Col. Jim Buckner of Fayetteville, a Purple Heart member. "No other city drew two conventions to this point, and Mr. Lawbaugh had to pull it all together.

"When a person arrived, they just felt welcome, felt the warmth of a group of people who were waiting to serve them."

The events brought in a collective $90,000, which was donated to a Veterans Healthcare System hospital, the Fayetteville National Cemetery and to provide lifetime membership for those in the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

"Lawbaugh is a very progressive person," says retired 1st Sgt. Ray E. Poynter of Berryville, a World War II, Korea and Vietnam veteran. "He gives a lot of speeches, talks to different organizations and to children in schools. He's always committed to somebody."

As veteran commander, Lawbaugh's first priority is to promote Purple Heart groups around the state, assist those struggling with low membership, and find ways to reach two groups of veterans who have low engagement with veteran organizations -- those who have just returned from the Middle East and Vietnam veterans.

"He wanted the commander position so he could help other groups who are struggling," says retired Cpl. Derl Horn of Springdale, Americanism officer for the Purple Heart. "He's always trying to do things for the VA Hospital and he seems to love doing it.

"It's his heart and his blood. Some people are born to lead, and he's one of them."

RETURN TO ACTIVE DUTY

Coach Lawbaugh hung up his stopwatch, told his students goodbye and left Missouri for Okinawa, Japan. Arriving with the 2nd Battalion, 12th Marine Regiment in 1965, he became a communications officer -- the guy responsible for setting up the technology to make relaying messages during battle possible.

He entered his first tour on an emotional high. This was his chance to serve his country when it needed him most, at a time when the war wasn't yet widely controversial in the States. They were heroes.

"We thought we were doing the right thing," he says. "We had high morale as we went down [to Vietnam] as a unit. Even though war isn't enjoyable, it was an enjoyable experience [because of that] and because of the people who I served with."

Lawbaugh rose through the ranks and was sent stateside to be a company commander in Norfolk, Va., and later to Marine headquarters at the Pentagon, where he was promoted to major. Before long, he was named executive officer of the battalion.

But the assignment had its drawbacks. He had to support a commanding officer he didn't have faith in. The officer would awaken troops in the middle of the night and require them to drink with him. Lawbaugh, who's never been one to drink, couldn't back the guy who gave orders.

When the CO called him in at 2 a.m. to share a drink, Lawbaugh was exhausted and frustrated. He spoke up, at the risk of losing his job.

"We had a war going on and I told him I wasn't going, I was not going to drink with him," Lawbaugh says. "I told him it wasn't good judgment on his part to order people to drink, to wake them up in the middle of the night and that it'd be better for the morale of the company if that didn't go on."

Two days later, after an operations officer had reported the practice to Marine headquarters, the CO was livid and blamed Lawbaugh -- the only one who had taken a stand to his face.

"He told me, 'Major, your career is over.'"

Lawbaugh was swiftly reassigned as a liaison officer and found himself much closer to the action.

Among his assignments was working on Operation Sea Tiger, a Navy swift boat mission to keep the Vietnamese coast open so commercial fishing could continue; and being sent to the Iron Triangle, a particularly contested region for North Vietnamese communists and South Vietnamese troops.

A few months later, he became company commander and, on the first day, saw signs of a pending attack.

Traveling through the last village before the ambush, the children who normally bombarded them for candy and gum stayed away. The adults who would normally stop to watch them drive through the village turned their backs. Then his company was ambushed by the Viet Cong.

They became the targets of a row of enemy AK47s. Huddling with his platoon commander, they determined that the enemy was about 300 yards away.

Lawbaugh checked his watch, 12:45. Then everything went black.

A box mine of roughly 40 pounds of TNT had detonated, taking out most of his company. Lawbaugh had been launched into the air by the blast. When he came to 15 minutes later, he was rightly confused and worried that he might be blind.

"When I woke up, the first thing I asked was 'What time is it?' then 'Do I have eyes?' because it didn't feel like I had them," he says. The ache of a concussion, veterans say, is sometimes more painful than shrapnel because you feel like your whole body is being squeezed. "Then, 'How are the others that were with me?'"

The men around him, not wanting to concern him further, reassured him that they were OK. When Lawbaugh asked to speak with them, they took turns pretending to be the Marines who had died.

KNOWING YOUR ENEMY

It took a painful four hours to get off the battlefield, but once Lawbaugh arrived at the hospital, medical staff told him the explosion had taken off a kneecap and insisted his leg would have to be amputated.

He lobbied to keep it and convinced medics that he could, if gangrene didn't set in.

"When we meet with other members, we get to know each other by asking 'How did you earn your Purple Heart?'" says Chuck Adkins of Fayetteville, senior vice commander of Purple Heart chapter 460. "Being ambushed in Vietnam and flung 15, 20 feet in the air, he came back down in rough shape but he was a tough Marine who pulled through. That's a hard way to earn it, through an enemy-generated explosion."

It took more than a week to move to better medical facilities in Guam because his eyes kept bleeding. Staying in the hospital indefinitely with the possibility that he'd never walk again, Lawbaugh grew resentfully determined.

He would walk again. And when he did, he would make the Viet Cong pay for what they did to his company.

"I was determined to go back to Vietnam," Lawbaugh says. "I wanted revenge. I was going to go back to the village near where we were ambushed and make them turn over the VC to us .... I was going to go back and force that on them."

At the hospital in Guam, a doctor promised to have him walking in a year or two, performed two operations and then left him to recover at his own pace. Looking for a way to fill his time, he read a biography of Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and was surprised to find he empathized with the Viet Cong. Lawbaugh couldn't blame them for fighting the same war he was fighting.

He would return, sure, but he was no longer out for revenge. He went out of duty.

Four months into his recovery, on a mild November day, the nurse caring for Lawbaugh took him out to the beach to practice walking. She helped him into the ocean, until he was about chest deep, and then she left him there.

Standing on the beach watching the still-hobbling soldier, she told him that if he wanted to get back to shore he'd have to do it himself. So he did.

In less than half the time than anyone expected, he was walking and bargaining to get back to work. He sweet-talked an officer into giving him a chance, and when he reported for a physical, the person behind the desk failed to notice he was still walking with a cane, so they cleared him.

A TEACHER, NOT A FIGHTER

Lawbaugh finished his tour in Vietnam and, back stateside, was among the first troops selected for the Marine Advanced Degree Program. He took the opportunity to earn a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Mississippi.

His degree opened the door for him to educate and train troops, a side of the military that didn't hinge on battles or moral decision-making.

He traveled to training centers and determined the best training fit for troops at each location. As an education officer, he selected more candidates for the advanced degree program and taught courses. And as a communications officer, he learned new technologies that sent him on assignments to England and to work with NATO in Belgium.

While traveling for work, he met Sonja, who was teaching basic skills to recruits who were having difficulty making it through training. They hit it off instantly, connecting on their love of travel and music. Of the latter, she loved playing it, and he loved listening to it.

Both had children from previous marriages -- Lawbaugh, who was a widower, brought four kids and she brought seven to the family. He promised to take her to Jamaica and Kenya, the two countries she had most wanted to see, and they married in 1977. Since then, they've traveled to more than 100 countries, crisscrossing the globe and seeing all seven continents.

teacher's motto

Growing up as the oldest child of the family in Saint Mary, Mo., Lawbaugh learned to be responsible early on. He started delivering newspapers at age 6 and stocking the shelves of his father's two drugstores at 12.

He was in charge of the business when his parents took vacations, and at age 14 went off to boarding school.

On the prep school campus, Lawbaugh ran track, swam, boxed with the Golden Gloves, and met Father Egan. The Jesuit teacher's motto to "be all and see all" stuck with him and has influenced every turn of his life.

"I wanted to be all of what I wanted to do," he says. "I wanted to be a coach, I wanted to be a Marine and I wanted to be a lawyer. I managed to dabble in each."

The dream of being a lawyer was planted through The Trial of Steven Truscott, a book by Isabel LeBourdais that he read during his military service. The true tale revolved around a teenager accused in 1959 of a murder he didn't commit and the speedy trial that imprisoned him. The saga made Lawbaugh want to be a part of the judicial system. After his retirement from the Marines in 1981, that hope brought him to the University of Arkansas School of Law at Fayetteville.

He earned his juris doctorate in 1984 and eased into legal practice, doing it part time at first while he earned his living in academia, first as dean of admissions at now closed Yankton College in South Dakota, then as director of development at Buena Vista University in Iowa.

By 1990, Lawbaugh decided to make criminal law his focus and returned to Fayetteville, from which he commuted to a job as city attorney for Westville, Okla., a post he held for more than a decade.

The calm demeanor that made him a good criminal lawyer is the same trait that got him elected to judge advocate for the national office of the Military Order of the Purple Heart, where he investigated cases of stolen valor -- people who falsely claimed to have received the honor so they could get military benefits.

"He takes his role very, very seriously," Poynter says. "If someone's wearing an award not awarded to them, he'll catch them. I wouldn't think you could get anything past him."

If anyone can set the record straight without causing too much fuss, Arkansas veterans say, it'd be Vess Lawbaugh.

"He's the kind of leader you want to work for," Buckner says. "He's a gentle commander. He has that commanding presence about him that anybody who's been in the military will recognize and appreciate the way he goes about it ... not shouting in your face, but like he's shaking your hand and whispering."

High Profile on 05/24/2015

Upcoming Events