Monument honors veteran

They had all come, dozens of them, to honor a man that most did not know.

Forty years ago, Sgt. Preston Tribble Jr. died in a night battle against a “determined enemy” who had attacked a fortified American position.

Phil Skinner / pskinner@ajc.com

Tribble was killed in action on May 21, 1969 while serving his second tour of duty in Vietnam. Thursday, the Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association honored the soldier who was killed at age 22 by placing a monument to him at the Millennium Gate.

• Photos: Military honor at Atlantic Station

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It was a different country then. Segregation still ruled, college campus were in protest, and so many Americans had turned against the war that a new president had been elected on the promise he had a secret plan to end it.

But on Thursday when Vietnam vets dedicated a monument to the 22-year-old Tribble for giving his life in combat, all that mattered was his sacrifice. On an otherwise gloomy day, sunlight bathed the audience at the top of the ceremony. White-haired men, their blue blazers adorned with medals, saluted Tribble for volunteering to serve during war, not once but twice.

Two Marine helicopters and an Air Force C-130 flew by to honor the Army vet.

The Atlanta Vietnam Veterans Business Association erected the monument at the Millennium Gate at Atlantic Station, it’s 23rd monument to metro Atlantans who died in Vietnam. Three Gold Star Mothers, two who lost children in Vietnam, watched the ceremony from under a white canopy.

Tribble and his wife, Mattie, also had a son, Rick, and had adopted a niece, Florence. He had signed the adoption papers Mattie sent to Vietnam three months before he died.

At least one World War II era vet paid his respects. In 1945, Val Archer joined the Tuskegee Airmen, whose service was ignored for decades and who received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2008 — 63 years after the war.

“When they received the medal, one of the original airmen said, ‘You’re going to start seeing a lot of start to pass on now because we’ve been waiting for this recognition,’ ” Maj. General Charles Hood, vice president of the Tuskegee Airmen’s Atlanta chapter, said. “We’ve lost a lot of them this year. We’ve been going to a lot of funerals.”

The signs of transition were sprinkled throughout the ceremony. At the end, an Army honor guard fired 21 shots for Tribble.

His widow, who wept at the sight of the monument, had heard them before in 1969, when her husband had a closed-casket funeral.

This time, though, there was a difference. A woman, Sgt. Kimberly Tapia, called out the orders. She is finishing her first tour and plans to re-enlist.

“I love the Army,” she said.

It is a different country. Those who honored Tribble said he helped make it that way.