Volunteers refurbish memorial for first Kennewick man killed in Vietnam War

The obelisk memorial near Kennewick’s former Fruitland Elementary School had been forgotten when the Tri-Cities moved on from the Vietnam War.

The white paint cracked and peeled off the concrete. The brass plate tarnished, partially obscuring the simple dedication: “In memory of Gerald L. Carmichael, Vietnam, 1948 - 1966.”

Gerry Carmichael was the first Kennewick man to die in the Vietnam War.

Local veterans with Combat Veterans International Chapter 3 have recently refurbished the memorial at the busy intersection of Garfield Street and Vineyard and Carmichael drives, removing the old paint and giving it a fresh, new white coat in time for Veterans Day.

That’s just a beginning, according to members of Kennewick’s Historic Preservation Commission. They have plans to make the memorial more visible, perhaps through landscaping or signs.

It’s a memorial with a bit of mystery, since no one can quite recall how it came into being. A Kennewick High School student planned for it in the late 1980s, according to Herald archives.

JoAnn Poolman, Carmichael’s older sister who lives in Dayton, only found out about the memorial at the time from an article in the Tri-City Herald, she said.

Poolman has always appreciated the city’s decision to rename part of Garfield Street as Carmichael Drive in honor of her brother, she said. They went to school near that part of the street, first to Fruitland Elementary and later at Kennewick High School.

Many veterans sacrificed themselves and many families suffered tremendously from those losses, she said. “(Gerry) just represents the rest.”

The Tri-City area and Walla Walla lost at least 53 men to the war, according to the Vietnam Veterans Wall of Faces.

Becoming a man

Carmichael was a 17-year-old junior at Kennewick High School when he decided to leave school and enlist in the Marines on Feb. 4, 1965.

Poolman says her brother, who was bright but not committed to school, was challenged by a teacher to become a man. He became a corporal early based on recommendations from his commanding officer.

“He wanted to stand on his own and find out who he was,” she said.

Poolman, who lived in Seattle at the time, recalls taking her brother to Sea-Tac Airport as he left to head back to southern California at the end of his leave. He couldn’t be sent overseas until he was 18.

“We knew we would never see each other again,” she said.

Carmichael arrived in Vietnam on March 11, 1966. He believed he was doing the right thing by going there, his sister said, but he didn’t sugarcoat the war in his letters, instead telling her the gruesome reality.

She tried to counsel him and encourage him to plan for a life after the war, such as saving for a car, she said. After she wrote to tell him she was pregnant, he began to sheltered her by always saying everything was routine.

Then, his regular weekly letter failed to arrive. A telegram was delivered to her door instead.

The telegram told her that Carmichael died Oct. 15, 1966. “He sustained a gunshot wound to the chest from hostile rifle fire while in a defensive position,” it said.

Carolyn Kimbrough, one of Carmichael’s younger sisters who lives in Bellingham, remembers how dark it was the night two men in uniform came to tell her parents her brother had been killed, she said. She was told to go to the basement, and she can remember hearing her mother, Pauline, crying.

Carmichael, who was an amphibian tractor driver, had been on patrol for 45 days in the same area near Chu Lai. He had been scheduled to leave for Okinawa and wasn’t supposed to be on patrol the day he was killed.

Poolman was told by one of his fellow soldiers that Carmichael had volunteered to go because the crew was short-handed and he didn’t want his friends to go out with too few men.

There is no greater love than that, she said.

Life after death

It took Poolman two decades to overcome the guilt of feeling like she had wished the death on her brother, she said. Her first thought upon receiving the telegram was to hope it wasn’t her husband, Bill, who also was serving in Vietnam.

Bill Poolman, who had been drafted into the Army, was part of the military escort that brought Carmichael’s body home. He never went back to Vietnam, as Pauline Carmichael claimed her son-in-law as her sole surviving son and his tour was cut short.

Carmichael’s family waited for two weeks for his body to arrive so they could have a funeral. Poolman, who flew to Pasco after getting the telegram, said their mother took his loss hard, trying to commit suicide three times during those weeks.

“She felt terrible guilt that he wanted to go into the service at 17,” Poolman said.

Pauline Carmichael never forgave herself for giving her son permission to go into the military early, keeping that guilt with her until her death, Kimbrough said.

Kimbrough remembers how their mom cried every time the guns went off during the 21-gun salute at her brother’s funeral.

Poolman can still see their father, Bob Carmichael, wrapped around a pole at Bethlehem Lutheran Church after Gerry’s funeral.

“He was heartbroken,” she said. “He loved that boy.”

Poolman said her younger sisters, Kimbrough and Paula Rameau of Bellingham, suffered a great deal from their brother’s death because they didn’t get to grow up in a strong family unit. Their father died only two years later, when Carolyn was 13 and Paula 11.

All three sisters have found ways to deal with their grief, Kimbrough said. Kimbrough turns to humor. Poolman and Rameau have volunteered in ways that help veterans.

“I feel cheated, and not in a bitter way,” Kimbrough said. “There is definitely a loss there that can never be recovered.”

Kimbrough never got a chance to have an adult relationship with the big brother she idolized. He never got a chance to meet her children. She doesn’t remember much because of how young she was. And she didn’t get the chance to make new memories.

Poolman said she was finally able to let out the grief when a replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall was bought to Moscow, Idaho about 20 years after her brother’s death.

“I had suppressed that for so long,” she said.

Pregnant at the time, Poolman nearly lost her daughter, Julie. She shut her grief away and was able to save her.

The hole in Poolman’s heart from losing her brother is difficult for people who have not had a similar loss to understand, she said.

“You never stop loving that person,” she said. “You never stop missing them.”

This story was originally published November 8, 2014 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Volunteers refurbish memorial for first Kennewick man killed in Vietnam War."