(Photos by Cynthia Paulis)
One of the most turbulent times in our nation’s history took place during the 1960s, when young people started protesting our country’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The terms “conscientious objector” and “draft dodger” were part of national conversation, as young men wrestled with a tough decision—fight or flight.
On a bustling street between Broadway and Ohio and Franklin avenues in Massapequa is a triangular parklet known as the Albert F. Klestinec Park, where several monuments with the names of fallen heroes stand. Marine Corporal Albert F. Klestinec grew up in Massapequa and was a friend of Supervisor John Venditto, who remembered him as a young man who always stood up to bullies. He graduated Massapequa High School in 1963 and then enlisted in the Marines. In late June of 1966, Klestinec wrote a letter home to his parents in Massapequa while in Vietnam.
“Keep yourself in good health and try not to worry too much,” he wrote. “If the man upstairs wants me now, worrying won’t help and if he doesn’t, I’ll be home before you know it.”
By the time his parents received the letter, Klestinec was already dead. He was an anti-tank assaultman, highly regarded by the men with whom he served and was mortally wounded in heavy fighting in the Quang Nam province of South Vietnam on July 10, 1966. He was 20 years-old and the first resident of Massapequa to die in Vietnam.
On a rainy Nov. 12, 1966, more than 200 people came out to the park’s dedication. A photo of Klestinec’s parents unveiling the stone hangs on the wall of Krisch’s Ice Cream Parlor down the road from the park. Upon learning of the dedication of the park, President Lyndon B. Johnson wrote, “The nation is grateful for the sacrifices that are being made by brave young Americans like Klestinec, in Vietnam and other troubles areas around the world, so that freedom of all peace-loving people may be preserved. The loss of a fine Marine non-commissioned officer like your son will be deeply felt by his countrymen as well as his loved ones.”
Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and Senator Jacob K. Javits also wrote letters to the parents expressing their condolences and regret on not being able to attend the ceremony.
A few blocks away, a young teen named Steven Vitoff (MHS graduate 1970) was coming of age and had his own feelings on the Vietnam war. Vitoff clearly remembered the dedication of the park.
“I remember thinking, I didn’t know this guy but oh my God people are really dying over there and I am protesting against it,” he said. “I had very conflicted feelings, but people had to do what they felt is right.”
When he was a teenager, Vitoff said he kept company with a large contingent of young activists who spent a lot of time protesting the war. At the same time, there was a large section of the working class community of Massapequa who were either being drafted or enlisted to fight.
“There was always this odd duality in the community that was kind of unspoken, as if someone was doing your dirty work for you or, even worse, that someone was being more patriotic than you,” said Vitoff. “Some were fighting, some were protesting. As years passed the popular opinion grew inescapably against the war, but in the ‘60s it was still in its formative stage.”
Over the years, Vitoff traveled and visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.
“I had no one I knew from Massapequa that had died in that war, but I always recalled one name; Albert F. Klestinec Jr., someone I never knew, who was a few years older than me,” he said. “If he ever saw me in high school I don’t think he would be in my group, or my crowd, or be my friend, but yet there was this Massapequa-Vietnam connection between me and this deceased soldier.”
Vitoff, now a public relations executive for the Marino Group in Manhattan, would stop by the park in Massapequa for a symbolic visit. A few years ago, he noticed the plaque that was dedicated to Klestinec along with other soldiers was rusted and corroded. He then took to Facebook and decided to raise funds to restore and repair the plaques. Vitoff contacted the American Legion, which was responsible for installing the plaques and over the course of a few weeks, raised more than $400 to replace them.
“It was a wonderful, heartwarming experience for me and also helped me several decades later on the same spiritual footing with this fellow, this stranger Klestinec,” he said. “The park was rededicated with the new plaques. Now I feel that connectedness with this stranger even greater in a lovely kind of capstone to the way Vietnam formed our lives so deeply in Massapequa.”
The remainder of the money Vitoff helped raise was donated to the Wounded Warrior Project.
“I think my overall experience to a degree is emblematic of the complex emotions many Massapequans surely felt over a controversial war,” he said. “It is highly ironic that my Massapequa neighbors like Albert F. Klestinec Jr. who went to fight in Vietnam, certainly believed they were fighting for freedom for all Americans, and that I had the right to exercise those very same freedoms he valued to criticize the war itself.”
Vitoff’s aim was to achieve an existential equity with Albert Klestinec, a deeper connection than simply visiting the memorial. It seems he succeeded.
