Riverhead Medal of Honor recipient Garfield Langhorn to be reinterred at Calverton National Cemetery

PFC Garfield M. Langhorn Jr., Riverhead’s Medal of Honor recipient, will be reinterred July 3 at Calverton National Cemetery, where he will be laid to rest beside a road named in his honor.

The graveside service is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. in Section 23 of the national cemetery, off PFC Garfield Langhorn Road. Members of Langhorn’s family, veterans organizations, local officials and members of the community are expected to attend.

Langhorn, a 1967 Riverhead High School graduate, was killed in action in Vietnam on Jan. 15, 1969. He was 20 years old.

He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” Langhorn threw himself on an enemy grenade to protect wounded soldiers after his platoon came under attack during a recovery mission in Pleiku Province, Republic of Vietnam.

Langhorn has been buried in Riverhead Cemetery, which dates to 1859 and is the final resting place of other local war dead, including Civil War soldiers and Pvt. Van Rensselaer D. “Vannie” Skidmore, Riverhead’s first World War I casualty, for whom Riverhead VFW Post 2476 is named. His grave is in a family plot where his parents, Garfield Sr. and Mary Langhorn are also buried.

Calverton National Cemetery opened in 1978, almost a decade after Langhorn was killed. The transfer of his remains to Calverton was arranged by retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 Timothy Dahlen, a Vietnam veteran and former helicopter pilot, with the consent of Langhorn’s surviving siblings. Dahlen obtained a court order authorizing the exhumation and reinterment.

The family’s support for the move was first reported by the Riverhead News-Review, which quoted Langhorn’s sister April Armstead saying she wanted her brother “to be with the rest of the soldiers.”

Dahlen said Langhorn’s placement in Section 23 was chosen because the section borders PFC Garfield Langhorn Road.

“The cemetery automatically said he should be interred in a plot right on that road,” Dahlen said in a phone interview Monday.

Tuthill-Mangano Funeral Home in Riverhead is handling the removal and reinterment at no charge, Dahlen said. Other expenses remain, including excavation costs, and Dahlen has created a GoFundMe campaign to help cover them.

Dahlen said he expects a strong turnout from veterans, military organizations and the Riverhead community, where the Langhorn family has deep roots. A two-helicopter Black Hawk flyover is planned, he said, and Langhorn will receive full military honors. Combat veteran motorcycle riders are expected to attend, and local fire departments have been asked to bring ladder trucks displaying American flags.

The Rev. Cynthia Liggon, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Riverhead, will officiate, Dahlen said. Langhorn was a devout Christian raised in a devout family and was an active congregant at First Baptist, serving as an usher there until he left for basic training. 

MORE COVERAGE: Family and friends of Riverhead Medal of Honor recipient record memories of fallen soldier (May 6, 2013)

An air cavalry mission

Dahlen, who served in Army aviation in Vietnam, said Langhorn’s story has particular meaning to Army aviation veterans because Langhorn was serving with an air cavalry unit when he was killed.

Langhorn was assigned to Troop C, 7th Squadron, 17th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Aviation Brigade. His platoon had been sent to recover the crew of a Cobra helicopter shot down by enemy fire. The two pilots had died in the crash. As Langhorn’s unit was bringing the bodies back, the platoon came under attack.

Langhorn was not “just an infantryman in Vietnam, he was assigned to an air cavalry troop,” Dahlen said. “We don’t call them infantrymen. We call them aero riflemen, because they’re special. They ride into battle on a helicopter.”

Langhorn was inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame in 1998.

For Dahlen, the reinterment is about placing Langhorn among those who shared the life of military service and sacrifice.

“He started this journey as a soldier,” Dahlen said. “Now, he’s going to be back with soldiers.”

Decades of remembrance

The PFC Garfield M. Langhorn Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Suffolk County, will be present at the July 3 ceremony “in full force,” chapter president Richard Kitson said.

Kitson credited fellow Vietnam veteran Clarence Simpson, a longtime member of the Suffolk chapter, with working tirelessly over the past three decades to help keep Langhorn’s memory alive in Riverhead and beyond. Simpson has been closely involved with Langhorn’s family and with many of the ceremonies, school programs and commemorations honoring Langhorn through the years.

“Everything Clarence does is from the heart,” Kitson said.

Simpson, who grew up in Manorville and whose closest friends lived in Riverhead, knew Langhorn’s sister Yvonne from his high school days. He later grew close with Langhorn’s mother, Mary, because he, too, lost a son to war. Simpson’s son served during Desert Storm.

“We had a special bond,” Simpson recalled.

Mary Langhorn died at age 94 in 2019.

Simpson has been a constant presence in Riverhead for commemorations of Langhorn’s life, from the Garfield M. Langhorn Jr. Memorial Essay Contest, established by Pulaski Street School teacher Mary Ann Harroun in 2003 and still going strong, to the production of a documentary film about Langhorn by the Suffolk chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America. The film was previewed for Pulaski Street School students at the Suffolk Theater in January.

Simpson also played a key role in the naming of the Riverhead Post Office on West Main Street in Langhorn’s honor. He worked with then-Congressman Tim Bishop on the effort. Bishop sponsored the legislation that named the post office for Langhorn in 2010. A commissioned portrait hangs in the post office lobby.

Bishop said in an interview Monday that Calverton National Cemetery is “a perfectly appropriate final resting place for a true American hero.”

“At Calverton he will join fellow Medal of Honor recipient Michael Murphy,” Bishop said.

Bishop said he was “delighted” to have helped secure the post office naming.

“That also is a very appropriate way to honor a son of Riverhead, who brought great honor and distinction to Riverhead and to his family,” Bishop said.

Riverhead Council Member Ken Rothwell, who worked with Langhorn’s family to select a new location for the bronze bust at the new Town Hall, said Langhorn’s reinterment at Calverton National Cemetery will ensure his grave is permanently maintained and visited by people who come to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

“Now he lays in rest among other heroes,” Rothwell said. “He will always stand out as an individual for what he did and how he gave his life.”

Rothwell said the annual essay contest is a powerful example of how Langhorn’s memory has been carried forward to new generations.

“That’s what we’ve strived for, for many years — to keep his memory and his sacrifice alive to the next generation,” Rothwell said. “So many years later, kids really do get it.”

Local tributes

Riverhead has memorialized Langhorn through a series of local tributes, in addition to the annual essay contest..

A bronze bust of Langhorn was placed outside Riverhead Town Hall in 1993. The Garfield M. Langhorn Jr. Memorial Library was established at Pulaski Street School in 2011. The street where Langhorn lived as a child was named PFC Garfield Langhorn Avenue in 2011. A Veterans Wall of Honor named for Langhorn was created at Riverhead High School in 2021. The Town of Riverhead established the second Friday in October as PFC Garfield M. Langhorn Day in 2022. Langhorn’s Medal of Honor was placed on display in a glass case in the lobby of Town Hall in October 2024, and the bust was relocated at the building entrance there in 2025.

Dahlen, of Speonk, said he attended First Baptist Church of Riverhead Sunday to announce the reinterment plans. He said he learned the extent of the Langhorn family’s deep roots in Riverhead when Liggon called out by name many of Langhorn’s cousins seated in the pews.

“It was amazing. It’s a big family, and a very, very close-knit community,” Dahlen said.

“I stood there and I said, it’s not like nobody here knows about Langhorn. Everybody here knows,” he said.

The July 3 reinterment will mark another chapter in Riverhead’s long remembrance of Langhorn — this time placing him among fellow soldiers at Calverton National Cemetery, along a road that already bears his name.