It was 47 years ago this week, on Oct. 23, 1967 that Lt. Joseph J. Rhodes, 28, of 44 Woodrow Ave., became the first Seabee officer in the United States to lose his life in the Vietnam Conflict.
      Lt. Rhodes, a 1957 graduate of Boardman High School where he was a member and linebacker with the football team, served as commander of Delta Company of Mobile Construction Company 121.
      He was killed when his jeep struck a Viet Cong land mine during a reconnaissance mission two miles south of Phu Bai. Two other servicemen lost their lives in that explosion, Gordon Dibble and Jon R. Morvay.
      Lt. Rhodes was laid to rest Nov. 2, 1963 with full military honors at Calvary Cemetery.
      After graduating from General Motors Institute in 1962, Rhodes joined the U.S. Navy, graduating from Officers Candidate School in 1963. Lt. Rhodes then spent a full year in Antartica, serving with the navy’s Operation Deep Freeze.
      While in Antartica, Lt. Rhodes received the Medal of Commendation for directing a medical evacuation near the South Pole.
      Upon completion of that tour, Lt. Rhodes re-enlisted for active duty in Feb., 1967 and requested he serve with a Seabee battalion headed for Vietnam. That is how he was assigned to Delta Company, to a battalion headquartered in Gulfport, Miss.
      “From the day he reported to us, his officer-like bearing and boundless enthusiasm caught the admiration of officers and enlisted men alike,” Commander W.N. Ahrens said of Lt. Rhodes, adding “His enthusiasm quickly became a mainspring of the battalion.”
      Dibble, a father of three boys and due to retire from the Navy in the spring of 1968, is said to have re-upped for his third tour in Vietnam because of his loyalty to Lt. Rhodes.
      “Theirs was an uncommon bond of loyalty,” Commander Ahrens recalled.
      Ahrens said that Lt. Rhodes was an ideal American youth.
      “If loyalty such as his would spring from every breast, our country would not be suffering the scourges that is presently endures,” Ahrens said.
      Lt. Rhodes duty to his country and fellow servicemen, did not go unnoticed by the U.S. Navy.
      On Memorial Day, 1968, new bachelor officers quarters, Rhodes Hall, was dedicated in his name at the Naval Station in Gulfport, where Mississippi congressman William Coalmer was the featured speaker.
      Directing his remarks to Rhodes mother Elizabeth, Rep. Coalmer noted “We extend to you, on behalf of the Congress of the United States, our sympathy and our gratitude for having furnished this splendid man who died on a foreign field in order that the rest of us might live and enjoy the institutions which we have in this country.”
      Former national commander of the U.S. Amvets, John P, Brown, of Tanglewood Dr., Boardman, said this week that Rhodes service to his country should not go unnoticed.
      “He made the ultimate sacrifice, for us,” Commander Brown said.