New memorial honors heroic Vietnam War pilot Lance Sijan

An F-4C Phantom jet painted in the same colors as the aircraft piloted by Lance Sijan in Vietnam loomed Friday over folks snapping photos and leaning close to read bronze plaques explaining the Medal of Honor recipient’s heroism.

They were part of a large crowd gathered to dedicate the new memorial at the south end of Mitchell International Airport celebrating the first Air Force Academy graduate to earn America’s highest award for valor.
 

Sijan's family, including his sister Janine Sijan Rozina, organized the memorial. It included moving the jet that had been located at the entrance of the former 440th Air Force Reserve to a more visible location on Howell Ave. at the south end of the airport.
 

The memorial features granite benches next to plaques describing Sijan's Medal of Honor citation and his heroism.

“I have been waiting to say this for so long — welcome to the Lance P. Sijan Memorial Plaza,” Sijan Rozina told the crowd.

Vietnam veterans, military members, Air Force Academy graduates, former POWs, Gov. Scott Walker, Adjutant Gen. Donald Dunbar and other well-wishers attended the dedication which began with a large parade of motorcycles from Humboldt Park down Howell Ave. led by Sijan's red 1965 Corvette convertible.

Sijan flew more than 50 combat missions in Vietnam until his plane exploded in November 1967 when the bombs he was carrying malfunctioned and detonated. Despite terrible wounds, including a fractured skull and compound fracture of his left leg he sustained after ejecting from the plane, he evaded capture until Christmas Day. He managed to escape and it took an entire village a day to recapture him. Despite repeated beatings, he obeyed the POW code and refused to give the enemy information before dying of pneumonia at the infamous Hanoi Hilton on Jan. 22, 1968. 

“That kind of courage is hard to understand on a sunny day in Milwaukee,” said Dunbar. “But that’s the kind of courage on display in Vietnam.

“We remember the hero that was, is and lives on in our memory.”

Sijan was a 1960 Bay View High School graduate who earned his pilot’s wings in 1966 after graduating from the Air Force Academy. Through the efforts of fellow POWs who served with Sijan, he was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously in 1976.

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Col. Dan Yenchesky, commander of the Wisconsin Air National Guard 128th Air Refueling Wing stationed at Mitchell Field, read a letter from Sen. John McCain of Arizona. Yenchesky said before the ceremony that as an Air Force Academy cadet he walked by a life-size portrait of Sijan every day — a smaller painting of the same portrait stood on an easel on the stage during Friday’s ceremony. Sijan Hall at the academy in Colorado Springs is named after him.

"Every cadet knows his story. It's a touchstone for all of us," said Yenchesky, a 1990 Air Force Academy graduate. "You have bad days at the Academy — it's designed to be tough — but his story of his perseverance keeps us going."

In the letter read by Yenchesky, McCain said he never met Sijan but wishes he had because Sijan’s heroic tale was passed along to other prisoners of war in Vietnam who drew strength from his spirit and determination.

McCain remembered Sijan “as a man who would not yield his humanity no matter the consequences.”

The North Vietnamese guards repeatedly tortured Sijan for information because they thought he didn’t have long to live. His fellow POWs heard his screams and were impressed by his courage and resourcefulness.

Capt. Guy Gruters graduated from the Air Force Academy a year before Sijan and knew the tall, strapping cadet from Milwaukee. The next time he saw Sijan was in a tiny POW camp cell where prisoners’ hands and feet were shackled in chains. Sijan’s weight had dropped to under 100 pounds and he was covered with sores and infections from pulling himself through the jungle while evading capture for six weeks.

Sijan recognized Gruters in the POW cell. Gruters didn’t know it was his former classmate. When Sijan identified himself, “my heart stopped,” Gruters told the crowd. “I couldn’t believe it. He was so emaciated.”

Gruters, who spent 5 ½ years as a POW, spread the story of Sijan’s sacrifice and was instrumental in the Medal of Honor citation.

Friday’s ceremony included a three-volley salute, Taps, music by a bagpipe band, three parachutists carrying large American and patriotic flags who landed in a field next to the memorial plaza and a flyover by two F-16s from the Wisconsin Air National Guard's 115th Fighter Wing. An emotional Sijan Rozina thanked veterans and POWs and others who came to honor her brother.

“Our boy Lance continues to bring us together, 50 years later,” she said.