Clearing Penry’s name: Local veterans want California Gov. Newsom to expunge Petaluma war hero’s criminal record

Penry, LeMarQuand said, had “ended up in a basement forgotten.“

Now, he and other Sonoma County veteran leaders are asking Gov. Gavin Newsom to clear Penry’s name by expunging his record.

“We want to make it right,” retired Chief Warrant Officer Duane Wilson said, “because he's not here to fight for himself.”

One story reflects many

For Wilson, a 32-year U.S. Navy veteran who served on a ship in Vietnam, LeMarQuand and others involved in the effort to expunge Penry’s record is also about more than one war hero’s legacy.

LeMarQuand is driven by his determination to see better treatment for veterans who grapple with post-traumatic stress and other mental illnesses from military service, or who struggle, as he has, to adapt to life off base and in the United States.

“We truly believe that this symbolic act by the governor can have positive effects that ripple throughout all of our systems both military and civilian,“ LeMarQuand said.

Wilson, who recalled being attacked by anti-war protesters in San Diego when walking the street in a Navy uniform in 1969, sees a chance to send a broader signal to his fellow Vietnam veterans, whose psychological wounds went unrecognized and were even compounded by their return to a country where many opposed what they viewed as a profoundly unjust and mismanaged war.

Often, those veterans were met by protesters, not red-white-and-blue parades. They endured distrust from those who viewed the U.S. forces returning from Southeast Asia through the reports of widespread drug use among troops and such atrocities as the My Lai Massacre, where U.S. Army troops killed unarmed citizens including women and children.

Vietnam veterans were at first rejected in many cases even by groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars, leaving them isolated. For his part, Penry rejected such groups in kind, criticizing them in press interviews later in his life.

Now local leaders of some of those same veterans groups, in a unique coordinated effort between the VFW and other veteran organizations, are seeking to rename the Veteran’s Memorial Building in Petaluma after Penry and make him a centerpiece of an effort to center the support systems to veterans under one roof in Sonoma County cities.

But the felony convictions represent a problem — the VFW and other groups have rules about admittance that involve criminal background checks, and a criminal record can be disqualifying.

Clearing Penry’s record will show “society has changed,” Wilson said, to be more cognizant of the legacy of post-traumatic stress. And it will be a symbol to veterans of Vietnam and other wars who continue to be wary of interacting with organizations like the VFW that could provide support.

”We were dealing with stuff that children can't process,“ Wilson said.

”I mean, the average soldier in Vietnam was 19 years old. Right? So I think, yes, this will be a huge thing that we can hold up and say, ‘Look, it's time to come home guys.’”

‘Superhuman’ actions

The official military narrative that accompanies Penry’s Medal of Honor provides limited information about the platoon’s objectives or the larger picture of what was going on around them in the field, stating only that the soldiers were on a “night ambush mission.”

In 1986, in an interview with then-Press Democrat columnist Bob Klose, Penry said his platoon had been dropped off by helicopters in a section of jungle that had recently been pummeled by B-52 bombers.

But, Penry recalled in that account, once on the ground he could immediately hear North Vietnamese army soldiers and vehicles.

“These guys are still alive,” he said as he recounted the story to Klose.

In the first wave of gunfire and explosives from the North Vietnamese soldiers, Penry’s best friend, a radio operator, was killed. Those who weren’t killed were wounded. It would fall largely to Penry to keep his fellow soldiers alive throughout the night as the enemy attacked.

Penry first moved, under fire, to his wounded company commander, providing first-aid to him and other wounded soldiers. He established a command post in a defensible position, but when trying to call in air support realized the company’s radio was busted.

He ran back out into enemy fire to find another radio amid the wrecked platoon. When he got back to the post, he found that radio also inoperable.

Again, Penry ran out under fire, locating two more radios, according to his medal citation. Penry appears to have left those radios at the command post and next begun gathering guns and ammunition to prepare his wounded comrades for further attack.

When a “determined assault by over 30 enemy soldiers” came, according to the citation, he occupied the most vulnerable position, “placing heavy, accurate fire on the attacking enemy and exposing himself several times to throw hand grenades into the advancing enemy troops. He succeeded virtually single-handedly in stopping the attack.”

Penry described close combat in the 1986 interview. “The guy could have got up and kissed me,” he said of one of the enemies.

“You can even see bullets,” he told Klose. “It’s hard to believe, but I did it.”

Back at the command post, Penry learned none of the radios he’d grabbed worked. He again left the limited safety of the post, finding a radio that did work and allowed him to contact headquarters. He called in air support and asked the bombers to drop it “right on my head,” because of the proximity of the enemy, he said.

According to the citation, Penry continued to administer first-aid and set his wounded comrades up to better repel further attacks. He moved within “a few feet” of enemy positions and located five additional wounded soldiers, who were isolated by themselves, and led them back to the defensive position.

When the helicopters finally came to evacuate them, he carried 18 wounded men — one after another — to the extraction point.

But he did not evacuate with them. A fresh platoon arrived to pursue the enemy. Penry joined them.

“The things he did are superhuman,“ his son, Jacob Penry Shriver, told The Press Democrat in a recent interview.

Years later, Penry’s exploits drew the attention of television and movie action star Chuck Norris, Shriver said. Norris told Penry he was interested in making a movie or documentary based on his exploits. Penry told Norris he was welcome to do so but that he, Penry, would not be going near a camera.

No movie was made, nor have Penry’s exploits yet been documented in such film series as Netflix’s “Medal of Honor.”

Penry rarely if ever talked about the battle, his son and two of his surviving siblings said.

“He was very, very proud of that medal,” his sister Patty Penry said, “and yet, at the same time, he felt like he was just doing what he had to do.”

In 2002 when Petaluma dedicated a park to Penry, his commanding officer, Capt. Michael Purdy, spoke at the ceremony.

“I would not have a wife and family if Richard had not saved my life,” he said, according to a letter to the editor describing the event that ran at the time in the Petaluma Argus-Courier.

Today, fewer people in Sonoma County know Penry’s story. Even during his lifetime, what came after the war complicated the public image of a hero. But those who knew him say Penry, who never wanted any of the limelight, does not deserve a legacy tarnished by his eventual drug arrests.

“What he did to save his brothers and friends outweigh anything bad he ever did as far as getting busted for a drug charge,“ Shriver said.

”It shouldn’t mean anything honestly compared to what he did.“

'He had scars from that’

After the battle, Purdy submitted Penry’s name for consideration of the Medal of Honor. Higher-ups transferred Penry out of the combat zone, and he finished his tour of duty in Saigon.

The military command wanted to keep Penry alive while they investigated what he’d done during the battle, his sister recalled. He soon received a Bronze Star, a Distinguished Service Cross and several other military commendations.

On June 15, 1971, Penry traveled with his family from Northern California to the White House, where Nixon presented him the Medal of Honor.

But the hero of foreign combat who returned wasn’t the same young man who had gone off to war, his relatives said.

“He did have a hardness about him,” said Alice Hinton, his lifelong friend. “How could you have been there for a couple of years with everything that happened and not? He had scars from that. And he was not a complainer.”

Penry did not drink a lot, according to his relatives, but he did smoke marijuana for the rest of his life to cope with both his wounded mental health and physical ailments, the latter of which he attributed to repeated exposure to Agent Orange. That’s the weaponized herbicide the U.S. military dumped on the jungle with horrific consequences both for its own soldiers and generations of Vietnamese people.

Hinton questioned whether lupus, the autoimmune disease and skin disorder that led to Penry’s death at 45, was also a result of the herbicide. The Veterans Affairs told him his disease was not service-related, he told Klose in his 1986 interview.

Penry always remained close with his parents and some tight friends despite his later legal troubles, his surviving relatives say. He also fell in with other outsider types, particularly motorcycle riders.

In 1974, he was arrested after selling 24 grams of cocaine — an amount whose street value would be estimated at less than $2,000 today — to an undercover police officer. The arrest followed an investigation by the Petaluma Police Department and Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, according to news coverage from the time.

Local authorities labeled Penry a “major drug dealer,” a designation he denied and resented. From then on, Penry felt targeted by the police, a sentiment he voiced in subsequent news articles and one shared by his family. His hero status drew their attention, they believe.

Patty Penry remembers there was often a police cruiser sitting on their block of a quiet neighborhood in East Petaluma, with officers she assumed were watching for her older brother.

Michael Penry also shared his theory on why the police may have wanted to bust his brother.

“He was anti-establishment because he was a biker,“ he said. ”And they didn’t like that he was getting all these accolades.“

Twelve years after first being busted by authorities, Penry — embittered toward the government, local police and the national leaders he felt abandoned the soldiers in Vietnam — told columnist Klose that while proud of his medal, “realistically, it didn’t mean s---.”

His reputation did help him during this first brush with the law, when a judge sent him to probation instead of prison.

“This man has done more for his country in one day than most do in a lifetime,” Sonoma County Judge Kenneth Eymann said from the bench.

From newspaper accounts, Penry appears to have been arrested again at least twice or more. His Associated Press obituary says Eymann again kept him out of jail in 1976. But that same year, a different judge sentenced Penry to eight months in the Sonoma County jail, according to the Sacramento Bee. He served seven.

Hinton and his brother and sister say he never acted angry or violent when he was using drugs, keeping to himself and seeking to mellow out his mood. To their knowledge, he never hurt anyone or stole during that time. Penry was medicating himself, they said.

“He came back with whatever everybody who went there came back with,” Michael Penry said.

“Torment,“ his sister added.

Campaign to honor a ‘complex’ guy

That torment, say those veterans working on Penry’s case, sounds like post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We believe that the lack of adequate resources to address PTSD and the lack of community support for the reintegration of Vietnam Veterans is the proximate cause,” of Penry’s drug use and the felony conviction that followed, leaders of the Petaluma veteran groups said in a letter sent to the governor and the Sonoma County District Attorney.

Neither office has yet responded, LeMarQuand said.

A spokesperson for the DA's Office said officials were not immediately familiar with the request and that the agency would not be solely responsible for any expungement.

Nicknamed Butch or, to Hinton, “Butchie,” Penry stayed immensely kind to those he loved, ever quiet around strangers and in public but a steady warm presence in the lives of friends and family.

“He was complex, you know, he was not just the artist, or the biker, or the tough guy, or the nice guy,” Michael Penry said. “He had all of that.”

Hinton recalled a night she ran into Penry, still waiting on confirmation of the Medal of Honor, at a soda fountain, and he invited her to join him in his car, which was about to hit the 100,000-mile mark. They drove around and then, in a parking lot, he drove back and forth until the car crossed the odometer milestone.

They cheered.

“In the car that night, he wasn’t the guy that came back from the war,” Hinton said.

“He was just Butchie.”

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88