Memorial Day every day for NHP veteran

Richard Tedesco

After 28 years of military service, nearly every weekend is Memorial Day for Peter Gong.

A 35-year resident of New Hyde Park, Gong, 69 regularly puts on his dress blues of the U.S. Army 1st Air Cavalry Division to help lay fallen veterans to rest as a member of the United States Volunteers Honor Guard Program.

“If the family wants us, we will fire gun salutes. We are the only service unit around that does the firing of the volleys,” Gong said. 

The volunteers provide honor guards for burials will full military honors, including gun salutes, buglers to play “Taps” and folded American flags for family members at grave-side ceremonies for deceased veterans.

Gong, who spent two years flying helicopters in search and destroy missions in Vietnam, has for the last two years given service in recognition of those who continue to put themselves in harm’s way for the defense of the nation.

Gong said he did what he had to do in Vietnam, and has now undertaken a very different kind of mission, honoring the memory of those he left behind.

“I came back in one piece and I feel I have to keep on serving my country for the guys who didn’t make it back. I have to do what I have to do I have to give back. A lot of my friends died there,” he said.

Gong has participated in 165 ceremonies for service men and women from all over the New York metro area over the past two years.

This past Saturday, he was part of the honor guard that put the nearly forgotten cremated remains of 52 service personnel to rest, including veterans from the Civil War, World War I and World War II, in the Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale in the morning. They had been stored in funeral parlors around the New York area.

His unit went on to assist at a burial of a World War II veteran in Pinelawn Cemetery on Saturday, finishing at a cemetery in Happauge in services at noon.

Last year, Gong was involved in a similar effort when New York City was about to bury unclaimed remains of 20 U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force veterans in a potters field. The U.S. Volunteers stepped in and conducted ceremonies to inter the remains in Calverton National Cemetery.

“We said they are veterans. We have to take care of our own,” Gong said.

Gong is also a member of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5253 and the Vietnam Veterans of America. The Albertson Post is running a country dance fundraiser in support of the U.S. Volunteers on Sunday, June 3 from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. 

Gong was drafted at age 21 and shipped to Vietnam to participate in a new form of search and destroy warfare as depicted in “Apocalypse Now.” 

“We flew in V formations. We had to go into villages, to search and destroy,” Gong recalled. “I had to do what they told me to do. I wasn’t Oriental and I almost got killed by my own men.”

After his service in Vietnam, Gong joined the Army reserves and national guard for a total of 12 years of service. He then re-upped and joined the Air National Guard for an additional 16 years.

“I wanted to travel,” he said, recalling trips to England and Korea.

He left the Air National Guard at age 58 in 1997, pressured into retiring, he said. He was asked to return to service during Desert Storm, but declined.

“They told me to leave. I did my time,” Gong said.

But now he continues to honor the dead of all branches of the U.S. military services – at his own expense.

“We pay for our own uniforms and I own my own M1 rifle,” he said.

And wherever a Memorial Day for a fallen U.S. veteran comes around, Gong said he is ready to go.

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