Honoring a San Fernando Vietnam veteran

His name is Ed, Ed Reynolds, humble, unassuming, yet larger than life. A Vietnam War veteran who dedicated his life to serving his country, a path that didn't start with a dream or a calling. It began with a choice. The head of the draft in my little town said, we give you until June, and if you don't get... A deferment, you're gonna get drafted, and so I ran down with my buddy and enlisted in aviation cadets. It was 1957, and Ed knew it was a matter of when, not if, he would be called to serve. But beneath that certainty about service lived a private fear. Ed is dyslexic, and back then was convinced he was a dummy, as he puts it. But the Air Force saw something else. Logic, instinct, and a mind that navigated the world like a compass. No map needed. I can't spell, and I can't read more than a page at a time without getting a headache. How did you become a navigator? Oh, well, that's easy. You don't read. You know, logic, logic, math, logic. Navigating, it's easy. His career would take him everywhere, England, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, but it was Vietnam, the war, the country, and most importantly, it's people that changed him. You gotta be tolerant of other people's religion. If you wanna believe what you wanna believe, but don't try to force it down other on other people's throats, and that's the problem. And that was the problem, that was the problem in Vietnam. What he saw, what he lived through in Vietnam would change his life. And eventually, promoting to senior intelligence advisor to the chief of intelligence for the South Vietnamese Air Force would define his career. He flew constantly across Vietnam during the war, to Hong Kong, To Bangkok and he was one of only three navigators trusted for night or over water missions. The only time we got shot up, we didn't know at the time that we got shot up. We saw flashes, bullet holes. Right around in here. Wow. We didn't know until we landed, actually got hit. But he also saw the war's cruelty and its casualties. He remembers entire villages and their people wiped off the map. So many lives lost and so many families who paid the highest price. There are some things you saw in Vietnam. That live with you until this day. Those images you cannot get out of your head. Oh, body bags lined up. That has always stuck in my mind. But along the way, lifetime friendships were forged. Ed would eventually be called on to help his Vietnamese counterpart escape in the final hours before Saigon fell. They stayed close for decades. And through it all, he survived more close calls than most people see in a lifetime. I had a mid-air collision in the Gulf of Tonkin where I got my head Cut open, yeah, I had that hit by lightning, yeah, that was kind of interesting. You were shot at? Yeah, yeah, coming out of a play coup, yeah. So either you're the luckiest man alive or the unluckiest man. Which is it? Well, I don't know. I don't know. It's just, I'm lucky that I'm at this age and I'm not bedridden. Today, Ed is a leader in Wings Over Wendy's, a veterans group that began with only a handful of men gathering to share stories that only they could really understand. From just a few, the meetings quickly grew into a weekly gathering of dozens. It's a band of brothers. You start the week. By getting up and getting to do something. At 89, Ed still lectures on Vietnam, still navigates the world by instinct, still shares stories of traveling around the world and seeing the front lines and the true cost of war. But through thick and thin, He strongly believes the United States is the greatest country he's ever lived in. The United States. Good old USA? Yeah, because it's got everything. It's got great mountains and great seashores and great... Sights and great people. A life of service, a life of survival, a life shaped by war, but never defined by fear. And maybe that's what makes Ed's story extraordinary. Not the danger he lived through, but the grace with which he remembers it. Gigi Graciette, Good Day LA.