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Mooney honors alumni killed in Vietnam
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Andrew John Babyak Jr. volunteered for the Army infantry so that his younger brother, Joe, wouldn’t be sent to fight.
It’s not something that Joe, of Boardman, likes to think much about. Andrew, whose nickname was Cheetah because of his speed in sports, was killed, burned during a firefight with hostile forces just a few months into his tour.
“We didn’t know anything about it,” Joe’s wife, Jean, said. “He did it on his own.”
Andrew, who had been a clerk, drove Jean four days to Washington state where he was to report, to visit his younger brother stationed there, who became a military policeman.
That’s when he told her. “He said, ‘Consider it your wedding present,’” Jean said.
There was only a year between the young men, and they were close.
Andrew Babyak, 21, a speciality 4th Class, was one of six Cardinal Mooney High School alumni killed during the Vietnam War who were honored
Wednesday during a ceremony at the school. Babyak was part of the CMHS Class of 1964.
Kenneth John Nervie, Class of 1962, a first lieutenant in the Army Reserve, was killed in 1968, a casualty of hostile small-arms fire. Robert George Porea, Class of 1963, a warrant officer in the Army Air Corps, was an air ambulance pilot. He was killed in an October 1967 helicopter crash.
Edward Robert Lozano, Class of 1964, was a Navy hospital corpsman who was killed while on patrol after just six weeks in Vietnam.
Robert Thomas Callan, Class of 1968, served in the Army 101st Airborne Division. He was a door gunner and died in a helicopter crash.
Michael Joseph Courtney, Class of 1969, a lance corporal in the Marines, was 19 when he died from multiple wounds in 1970.
Courtney was one of John and Lois Courtney’s 12 children.
“He collected coins, lifted weights, he liked to run – a little bit of everything,” said Stephen Courtney of Boardman, one of Michael’s brothers. “We all did the same things, even had the same paper route.”
Michael was the quiet one of the family, Stephen said, and a hard worker.
Paula Humphries of Poland, one of their older sisters, said their mother wanted Michael to go to college, but he joined the Marines.
“He said he’d go to college when he came back,” she said. “He always knew he wanted to be in the Marines.”
Paula’s husband, Don, said Michael was the family strategist.
“When we would play cards, he would sit back and think about his next move,” he said.
The couple was married just three years when Michael was killed.
“It was so upsetting,” Paula Humphries said. “It took two weeks to get the body back.”
Barbara Babyak of Boardman, Joe’s and Andrew’s sister, said Michael was a great guy.
“He was always smiling,” added Bob Babyak of Poland, another brother.
Plaques honoring each of the six men will be displayed on Mooney’s second floor overlooking the courtyard. The courtyard is where a set of wind chimes, one chime for each of the men, hangs.
Al Williamson, a 1965 Mooney graduate, Air Force veteran and retired Mooney teacher, the ceremony speaker, told students and faculty and fellow veterans and their families who gathered in the gymnasium, that Veterans’ Day isn’t about merchandising.
“I don’t want to see a gigantic mattress sale,” Williamson said.
He’d like a smile and a thank you.
“Don’t remember us with 25 percent off furniture,” the speaker said.
Just remember the men and women who put their lives on the line for the betterment of the country, he said.