One last tour of duty for Vietnam veteran


Story	Story	Story	Story	Story
One last tour of duty for Vietnam veteran By SHERRY HALBROOK Neil Tallon, a PEF member at the state Division of Parole working at Clinton Correctional Facility in Comstock until his retirement last November, is no stranger to political campaigns. Tallon made two unsuccessful bids for Congress — running as a Democrat for a seat that had been held by Republicans for more than a century. However, he succeeded when he ran for supervisor of the Town of Beekman in Clinton County, where the party enrollment was more evenly divided and where he had to reach fewer voters (“I went door-to-door to meet 5,000 voters.”) than in the sprawling Congressional district. “It was very difficult,” said Tallon, who added that he learned first-hand the truth of an old political axiom: “In politics, everything is local.” So, he quickly recognized the value in the local focus of Hero training he received from Camp Wellstone. “The program was quite interesting,” Tallon said. “They taught a grassroots approach for getting people to hear different views of the issues.” Tallon’s political experience goes far beyond his own runs for office. “I helped get Chuck Schumer elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, and 12 years ago I spent a week in New Hampshire working on Bob Carey’s Senate campaign.” A Vietnam veteran, who was 20 years old when he went to that country in 1967, Tallon served in military intelligence. The experience was so intense, Tallon said, that it changed his life and still affects the choices he makes and the challenges he takes. “You go through life,” he said, “looking for something to equal it. “When Jim Gonyo (PEF Division 342 council leader at Clinton CF and chair of the Beekman Democratic Committee) urged me to apply for this PEF/SEIU campaign, I knew I wanted to be involved,” Tallon added. “I felt a civic duty to do this. “I had already gone to New Hampshire and South Carolina to work on (Democratic presidential frontrunner) John Kerry’s primary campaigns. I worked on them with Max Cleland (U.S. senator from Georgia and a disabled Vietnam veteran) and the veterans who served with Kerry on a river patrol boat in Vietnam.” Tallon said he felt a keen respect for Kerry as a Vietnam veteran and political leader. “I was one of the few Kerry supporters from the get-go. I believe Kerry has a lot of honorable leadership qualities. Very few (other) Yale grads volunteered for Vietnam. He had very dangerous duty on the river patrol boat. The men who served with him, spoke very highly of him. After all, how wrong could you be, with a Yale education and a Silver Star?” Tallon said he feels “the middle class is being destroyed in this country” by the Bush administration. “And if you’re going to have to vote for a multi-millionaire, you might as well vote for the right one. “This is going to be a very historic election. It’s exciting. “We’re going to build a political foundation of voter involvement, not just for this election, but for the future,” he said. “That’s why I’m willing to take on this one, last tour of duty. They don’t call it a campaign for nothing.”