Local hero

A thesaurus is inadequate to capture the stunning bravery of Staff Sgt. Clifford Sims.

The Delta Raiders of Vietnam Association will assist next month.

The association board of directors comes to Port St. Joe Oct. 8-9 to pay tribute to Sims, the impoverished child of a divided South who offered that last measure of devotion to save the lives of his men and commander in a Vietnam jungle 43 years ago.

For Col. Cleo C. Hogan, Jr. (Ret.), that commanding officer, any tribute to Sims leaves room for more.

“We owe Clifford Sims a lot,” Hogan said by phone from his Kentucky home. “I owe him everything.”

Such as his life.

Sims, in the midst of heavy fighting in rice paddies outside Hue, jumped onto a booby trap explosive device, giving up his life so that Hogan, and several others, would live.

The visit to Port St. Joe is, in turn, another step in the journey of Sims’ widow, Mary Parker, and their daughter, Gina, and Mary’s second husband George Parker.

As she grew older – her father was killed when she was very young – Gina had questions about her father’s fate.

Her inquiries led to George Parker, another member of the Delta Raiders of Vietnam, which had the distinction of having two soldiers earn the Congressional Medal of Honor in the same battle, the one in Hue that took Sims’ life as he earned the country’s highest military honor.

Within six months of that first meeting, Mary Sims married George Parker, who Hogan noted, is one of the loudest advocates for keeping the memory of Clifford Sims and his actions of Feb. 21, 1968 vibrant.

“George has been unrelenting in keeping Clifford Sims’ name alive,” Hogan said.

George and Mary long advocated a Delta Raiders reunion in Port St. Joe. The association holds a reunion every two years. The board of directors meet each year, planning the next reunion.

With George Parker in poor health, the board decided to pay tribute to Sims during this year’s directors meeting and conduct the meeting in Port St. Joe.

The weekend will include ceremonies at the Clifford Sims Veteran’s Nursing Home in Springfield on Oct. 9.

The Delta Raiders Association is comprised of individuals who served with Company D, 2^nd Battalion (Airborne) 501^st Infantry, 101^st Airborne Division during the Vietnam War between 1967-72.

Hogan said the visit to Port St. Joe was recognition of a debt owed to one of the Delta Raiders first members. The Raiders were formed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, prior to the company shipping out for Vietnam.

Sims would be dead within three months.

 “We really owe Clifford Sims a lot for our organization,” Hogan said.

On Oct. 8 the directors meeting will be held at the Port Inn to allow the public the opportunity to speak with Sims’ first company commander, Hogan and others on hand that day to talk about their war experiences and their time with Sims.

In particular, that astounding act of heroism.

“It is important that you recognize those people who have given everything they have to their country, especially at this time in our history,” Hogan said.

Several years ago, Hogan came to fully understand what Sims overcame to arrive in that jungle on that long-ago February evening.

Born in a segregated South, Sims had a sometimes difficult youth, losing his parents early and spending considerable time on his own, a young man largely forgotten by his community.

Times were tough, as Hogan learned in Port St. Joe during the dedication of Clifford Sims Parkway.

Hogan met some of Sims’ boyhood friends, some of whom had difficulty reconciling the youth they knew with the hero he would become.

“They didn’t believe this could be the same Clifford,” Hogan said. “He’d had a tough time. He had a hard time in Port St. Joe. Growing up in the South as a black man during the ‘50’s and ‘60’s wasn’t easy. That is not to put down anyone; that is just a fact. But even then he had that innate will to do something better.

“I think it is important that the community realize you can do better if you really want to, if you put your mind to it.”

That was evident on that night in Vietnam. The details live on – survivors provided testament to the bravery witnessed – but a “Motivational Analysis” written by LTC Richard J. Tallman and contained within Sims’ Medal of Honor citation sums up what Sims’ fellow soldiers knew as gospel.

“Staff Sergeant Sims was not a man to act rashly; he made decisions with the firm belief that he was right, and he made them without counting the cost to himself. He was intensely loyal to his men, and never put his own interests above theirs ... His devotion was to his duty and to his men. And so I believe, as he never acted otherwise that I was aware of, did he consider the safety of his men on 21 February, fully aware of the sacrifice he was making, yet more poignantly concerned for the fate of his men were he to choose any other course. In simple fact, Staff Sergeant Sims knowingly and willingly laid down his life so that his comrades might live.”

Hogan noted that 2.9 million people served in some capacity during the Vietnam War; 200 acted with bravery sufficient to earn the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Hogan figures 30-40 Delta Raiders will likely be in attendance next month.

Their goal is simple: to never forget; to never allow a community to forget the look of true heroism.

In this case, heroism is embodied in a photo of a striking young man named Clifford Chester Sims.