Highland Beach resident John Shoemaker, a Vietnam War veteran, visits the South Florida National Cemetery. He encourages others to visit as Veterans Day approaches. Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
By Rich Pollack
John Shoemaker knows that heroes living throughout Highland Beach are hidden in plain sight.
They are the retired brigadier general living a quiet life in the next condo over, the gastroenterologist who served during the Vietnam War, and the parish priest, an Air Force major who served as a chaplain in Iraq and Afghanistan.
They are police officers, firefighters, a homeowners association president, and present and former town commissioners like Shoemaker. He has made it his mission for the past several years to shine a light on veterans throughout the small town by telling their stories on a portion of the town’s website.
“I’m committed to helping to make people aware of the heroes in their midst,” says Shoemaker, himself a Vietnam War veteran. “We have a lot of veterans who live quietly in Highland Beach and it’s important to bring recognition to what they’ve done.”
Some profiled by Shoemaker in the “Veteran Heroes of Highland Beach” section of the website will bristle at being called heroes, since their service was far from front lines.
Still, Shoemaker bestows the title readily, recognizing the sacrifices that come with military service, including being away from family for months on end, living in a foreign country in sometimes harsh circumstances and living a regimented lifestyle.
“No one knows what it’s like until you’ve slept on the floor of the jungle in the pouring rain, or until you’ve been on a ship in such rough weather that you can’t see the bow because of crashing waves, or until you’ve been sitting in a bomber for hours on a mission,” Shoemaker said.
With Veterans Day being celebrated this month, Shoemaker knows that there will be valued recognition of those who served. But he believes that by telling the stories of his neighbors, he has gone beyond the surface and is giving readers deeper insight into who the veterans are and how they served their country.
“I’m bringing meaning and detail that helps readers understand the contributions of our military people,” he said. “These stories reveal who these neighbors are and the magnitude of their sacrifice.”
One of the stories on the website is Shoemaker’s own. In it he tells of his decision to go to college at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and get a degree so he could enlist, rather than be drafted, and attend officer candidate school.
“I wanted to enlist on my own terms, go to officer candidate school, be in the infantry and go to Vietnam,” he said. “I wanted to be close to the action.”
He got his wish and after two years of intense training was sent to Vietnam in 1970. He was 23, married and already a father.
A lieutenant, Shoemaker served as a platoon commander supervising a 23-person infantry squad. Five of the members of the team didn’t make it home, a half-dozen others were wounded.
Shoemaker spent seven months in the Vietnam jungle and rice paddies, coming close to injury or death on his first day in the field when a mine exploded just a few feet away. Two of his team were badly injured and it wasn’t until decades later that a routine MRI revealed shrapnel in his leg.
Shoemaker spent his last five months in Vietnam as a company commander, away from the combat, supervising support for a battalion.
Now 78, Shoemaker focuses on helping veterans through other portions of the town’s veterans website, which he helped create. It includes links to resources they can use.
“My hope is that in reading these stories people will be more respectful of veterans,” he said.
This Veterans Day, he hopes that people will continue to treat veterans they encounter with “polite awareness.”
He is encouraging residents to visit the South Florida National Cemetery, on U.S. 441 south of Lantana Road, with family, especially children. The cemetery is a burial site for those who served in the armed forces and their eligible family members.
“It’s important to maintain a continual awareness and recognition of the contributions of veterans,” Shoemaker said. “It’s necessary for our country to survive.”
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