Vietnam soldier given proper farewell in Kennewick

KENNEWICK - Rick Page's job as a radio operator in 1971 Vietnam was to connect people. He connected sons to anxious parents back home, husbands to pregnant wives praying for their return and fathers to children half a world away who were growing faster than they could imagine.

The dozen or so people who gathered at his grave Monday are evidence that he still is connecting people 40 years after his death.

Those gathered over the simple, flat gravestone in Kennewick's Desert Lawn Cemetery included three generations of the Page family -- two of whom have known only his memory.

People attending the brief memorial also included other Vietnam veterans, and at least one stranger who read about Page in the Herald on July 4 and wanted to pay respects.

But the catalyst for this union of family and strangers was Dennis Stage of Marietta, Ga., who knew Page for six months in Vietnam in 1971, and has carried his memory for four decades.

Page and Stage were radio operators stationed at an American base camp in Phu Loi in the Mekong Delta in 1971, working for the Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS), an amateur ham radio program that allowed different branches of the military to coordinate with each other and allowed soldiers to call home.

Because the base had a big radio tower, it was a target for constant Viet Cong attacks.

Page, 21, was killed at 6:31 p.m. Pacific Time, July 18, 1971, when a Viet Cong rocket hit the building -- called a hooch -- where he and Stage were working.

Page died in Stage's arms. Stage, 18, was injured by shrapnel and was sent home to Georgia to recover before returning to the camp in Phu Loi.

He never forgot the friend he knew for just six months -- with whom he would listen to The Moody Blues on dueling reel-to-reel tape players the pair had set up in the hooch.

Stage keeps a picture of Page on the mantle in his home in Marietta, and for 40 years has wondered where his friend was buried. He got the answer this year when another radio operator -- Lewis Downey, the man who replaced Page at the MARS station -- found Page's grave on a website and called Stage with the news.

With the help of reporter Jim Camden from Spokane, Stage tracked down Page's family in Olympia and West Richland and arranged for a memorial in Kennewick on the anniversary of Page's death.

"I really never thought this day would happen," Stage said. "I never thought I would find Rick's grave."

Stage said the Page family welcomed he and Downey with open arms when they arrived in the Tri-Cities on Sunday.

"I'm really glad I got to meet them," he said. "They treated us like family."

Stage, Downey and Ron Page -- Rick Page's older brother who lives in West Richland -- stood in the cemetery and bonded over their lost friend and brother.

And they each cried when the moment arrived to honor Rick Page -- even Downey, despite never having met his predecessor at the MARS station.

"In many ways, I regard him as the best friend I never met," Downey said.

Downey said he had been trained in artillery but because of Page's death ended up as a radio operator instead.

"In a very direct way, Rick's death rescued me of that circumstance of dropping high explosives on people, so I owe him," Downey said.

Stage said that when he knew he would finally get to stand at Page's grave, he tried to write a speech, but words failed him.

And that ended up being for the best, he said.

"The Rick Page I knew would have hated if I stood up here and read some canned eulogy," Stage said.

So instead, he told a story -- one he had never told anyone. It was a story about how Page had touched the lives of a young soldier who learned while stationed in Vietnam that his wife was pregnant and alone back in Atlanta.

Page bent the rules so that the soldier could talk to his wife every day. He even arranged a connection so the soldier could talk to his wife in the hospital just after giving birth.

After the war, Stage had dinner with the soldier and his wife. During the meal, the wife pulled out her address book. She wanted to know how to reach Rick Page so that she could thank him.

"For the first and probably last time in my life, I was speechless," Stage said. "I just gave her this 'deer in headlights' look."

Without being told, she knew what Stage was saying from his look.

"Big tears started rolling down her face," he said.

Then Stage began to cry, as did the woman's husband.

"Even my date who probably couldn't have found Vietnam on a map -- big tears rolled down her face," he said.

And it's those connections -- people all over America whose lives were touched by Page -- that keep him alive, Stage said.

"There can be no finer tribute to Rick's memory than that," he said. "Rest well, my friend. Rest well."

This story was originally published July 19, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Vietnam soldier given proper farewell in Kennewick."