Sixth grade students at Pulaski Street Intermediate School experienced the first-ever showing of a documentary film about Riverhead Medal of Honor recipient Garfield M. Langhorn Jr. Wednesday morning at the Suffolk theater.
Students, teachers and more than 30 green-jacketed members of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Suffolk County Chapter filled the theater’s seats to capacity for the premiere of the film about Langhorn’s life and legacy. The students, who have already studied the hometown hero’s life, sat in rapt attention for the screening of the film.
Pulaski Street students have a special connection to Langhorn, because they attend school in the building that used to be Riverhead High School, from which Langhorn graduated in 1967. Their school houses the PFC Garfield M. Langhorn Jr. Memorial Library and has an annual essay contest in Langhorn’s memory; its topic: heroism.
Langhorn is the town’s only Medal of Honor recipient and Suffolk County’s only Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient. The Medal of Honor is the highest military honor in the United States, awarded by the president in the name of Congress to service members who display valor “above and beyond the call of duty” in combat against an enemy.
The film, which was produced by the Suffolk County Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, features an actual audio recording obtained from the Department of Defense, in which Langhorn, a radio operator, seeks help after a brutal ambush in a Vietnamese jungle. The radio transmission came moments before Langhorn, 20, made the heroic choice to sacrifice his own life, by jumping on a live grenade to absorb its blast, in the hope of saving wounded soldiers in his unit.
Vietnam veteran Clarence Simpson of Medford, vice president of the organization’s Suffolk County chapter, narrated portions of the film, reading from the U.S. Defense Department’s official account of the events of Jan. 15, 1969 in a jungle in Pleiku Province in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam. Simpson also read from Langhorn’s Medal of Honor Citation. Simpson was on hand to speak to the students about Langhorn’s life and the film project, which he spearheaded.
Langhorn’s unit was on a rescue mission in search of two downed American helicopter pilots. Instead, they found the pilots’ bodies.
The DOD report states:
As they were taking the bodies back to the pickup site, the platoon suddenly came under attack from North Vietnamese soldiers hiding in camouflaged bunkers. Within minutes, they were surrounded.
Langhorn immediately radioed for help from the gunships flying above. As air support fired minigun and rocket fire onto the enemy, the private called for cover fire for the wounded who had been moved to the center of their small perimeter.
Eventually the sun went down, leaving the platoon in darkness and making it impossible for the gunships to provide accurate support. That gave the enemy enough courage to start probing the surrounded soldiers’ perimeter.
When an enemy grenade landed in front of Langhorn and several wounded men, his fellow soldiers said he didn’t hesitate. Several soldiers reported after the incident that Langhorn said, “Someone’s got to care!” before throwing himself onto the explosive device and absorbing the blast as it went off.
Langhorn sacrificed himself to save his fellow soldiers, many of whom survived the war.
The film also features interviews with Langhorn’s sisters, Yvonne Reid, Anna Mack and April Armstead, his nephew and namesake Garfield Reid, his childhood sweetheart and fiancée Joan Brown-Smith, and high school classmate Dennis Beaver, who share their memories of Langhorn through his childhood and youth. It also features interviews with former U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop, who sponsored legislation to have the Riverhead Post Office named in Langhorn’s honor in 2010, and Pulaski Street teacher Trevor Hewitt, who coordinates the Garfield M. Langhorn Memorial Essay Contest at Pulaski Street school, which asks 6th graders to write an essay describing what they can do to be a hero at home, inspired by Langhorn’s heroic actions in Vietnam.
It also includes a recording of the remarks of President Richard Nixon in the White House on April 7, 1970, when he presented the Medal of Honor to the families of 21 men who had been killed in Vietnam. Among the grieving families at the White House that day were Langhorn’s parents, Garfield Sr. and Mary.
The audience for yesterday’s screening at the Suffolk included members of the Garfield M. Langhorn Memorial Essay Contest Committee, who each year read and rate the essay submissions from Pulaski Street 6th graders. The contest asks students to write an essay describing what they can do to be a hero at home, inspired by Langhorn’s heroic actions in Vietnam.
The student winners in the annual contest read their essays aloud to their classmates during a special assembly each October in the Pulaski Street school auditorium to honor PFC Garfield M. Langhorn Jr.
Many of the essay contest committee members knew Langhorn from church or in the community. They have fond memories of the young man, a devout Christian remembered as kind and caring, a guy with an easygoing manner and broad smile.
Eugene Robinson of Riverhead, a few years Langhorn’s junior, recalled that Langhorn, who performed in a band as a youth, taught him how to play the guitar. When Langhorn was drafted into the Army and was heading to basic training in 1968, knowing he’d be sent to Vietnam, he gave Robinson his car — his prized possession, a 1958 Chevy. Robinson was the Langhorns’ paper boy, delivering the daily newspaper to their house every day. Robinson got to know Langhorn when, at age 12, he became an usher in their church. He looked up to Langhorn, he said.
That same admiration was expressed in the film’s interviews by Langhorn’s younger sisters, his classmate and his financée. After Garfield’s death, Brown-Smith remained close with her fiancé’s family. She remained especially close with his mother for the rest of her life. Mary Langhorn died in 2019 at age 94.
Riverhead Town government did not formally recognize Langhorn’s sacrifice or his Medal of Honor for more than 20 years, when the town had a memorial made in his honor. In 1993 a bronze bust of the fallen soldier was erected on the lawn outside Town Hall.
The memorial was authorized after an advocate for the Langhorn family, Mike Johnson of the African American Leadership Council, pressed the Town Board to act. Johnson said plans for a monument were underway in 1976, but they went unfulfilled, according to Town Board meeting minutes. Everett Robinson, Eugene Robinson’s older brother, also addressed the Town Board, asking that it “get the ball moving, because Garfield was a real good guy…a real American hero.”
The Riverhead Post Office was named for Langhorn in 2010 by legislation introduced by Rep. Tim Bishop and signed into law by President Barack Obama. Watch video of the ceremony dedicating the post office in his honor. A portrait of the fallen soldier remains on display in a glass case inside the building, opposite the front entrance.
The town named Maple Avenue in Langhorn’s honor by the town in November 2011. Langhorn lived on Maple Avenue with is family when he was drafted into the Army in 1968.
In October 2022, the Riverhead Town Board decreed the second Friday in the month of October — the traditional date of the essay contest assembly — as PFC Garfield M. Langhorn Day.
The Langhorn monument was moved to the new Town Hall on West Second Street last year.
Langhorn’s grave is located in Riverhead Cemetery, which adjoins the grounds of Pulaski Street school, where Langhorn attended high school from 1963 to 1967. His father, Garfield Sr., who died in 2008, and his mother, Mary, who died in 2019, were laid to rest next to their son in a family plot.
A road in Calverton National Cemetery, which opened in 1978, is named for Langhorn.
More articles about PFC. Garfield M. Langhorn
A Gold Star Mother remembers (May 30, 2010)
Family and friends of Riverhead Medal of Honor recipient record memories of fallen soldier (May 6, 2013)
Remembering PFC Garfield M. Langhorn (May 29, 2017)
‘Somebody’s got to care’ — Riverhead Medal of Honor recipient’s last words evoke the life he lived (Jan. 14, 2019)
PFC Garfield M. Langhorn Day set aside to remember Riverhead Medal of Honor recipient (Oct. 5, 2022)
PFC Garfield Langhorn’s Medal of Honor is on display at Riverhead Town Hall (Oct. 11, 2024)
Lessons in heroism: the life—and death—of Riverhead’s Medal of Honor recipient (Oct. 13, 2024)
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