At Charity Tournament, Roxborough Veterans Reflect on bin Laden

A day after Osama bin Laden was killed a team of Navy SEALs in a Pakistani suburb, Roxborough's Northwestern Veterans Association hosted a celebration. Though their annual charity golf tournament was scheduled long before the 9/11 mastermind was finally brought to justice, it was a coincidence the group welcomed. It offered an opportunity for reflection.

The Northwest Veterans Scholarship Fund Golf tournament is held every year in honor of one of the 21 soldiers from the 21st Ward who were killed in the Vietnam War. The tournament, held at the Walnut Lane Golf Club, raises approximately $10,000 towards tuition at Saint Joseph's University for a deserving student--usually the child of a veteran. This year's tournament was played in memory of Gary Tinneny.

Though it was an unimprovable afternoon for golf, the weather was understandably not the thing on the tongues of the former service members. Certainly not Jimmy Williamson's.

"I was sleeping when the announcement that we'd killed him was made," said Williamson, Army '65-67, and the group's vice president. "But when I woke up in the morning and turned on the TV, I saw it. It felt really good."

Williamson sat in a pickup truck across the street from the course with George Evans, Navy '61-63, and James Diamond, Army '68-69, while other vets played on. "We're workers, not golfers," Evans explained.

"That man sure didn't do anything for us," Williamson went on. "I wonder why they rushed to bury him at sea. I know it was a Muslim thing, but... well, he's gone now."

Though he said he was hopeful the uptick in patriotism bin Laden's death has precipitated--chants of USA at baseball games, whole neighborhoods worth of American flags moving from garages to the front porch, spontaneous rallies--would last, he doubts it will translate to action.

"Too many people just forget what's going on out there," he said. "Something like one or two percent of the population are soldiers. That's it?"

"They only give one paragraph in schools about what Vietnam was about," interjected Evans. "When we talk at the schools--Levering, Holy Child, Roxborough--we can't talk about guns or death. They don't want us to talk about violence--but that's what war is."

Williamson sipped at his soda, then took back the floor.

"I do think it's great he got blown away though. It'll pump people up a little bit," he said, adding that he doubted it would get our troops out of the Middle East any sooner.

James Diamond, a retired assault jumper from the 101st Airborne who won three Purple Hearts during his enlistment--"I was shot in the rear end, my left knee got blown off, and then I got a bayonet in the arm," he explained--said he was glad to see that bin Laden was killed, but he didn't envy the young men who did it.

"Blood on your hands is never fun," Diamond said. "No matter who it is."

He said he would have pulled the trigger had he been asked though.

"Nobody asked me to do it. I guess it's because I'm too old. They should ask some of us old ones though. It'll save on the social security," he joked.

None of the three have children who are serving, though Williamson and Diamond each have nephews who are enlisted. Among themselves, they don't talk about fighting. Nobody minds.

"They don't say much," said Diamond of the two Marines. "Just that they're glad to be home."

"I don't blame them."