Route 40 to Harmony and Springfield, Ohio

The hot summer continued as we rode along route 40 in Ohio. The public response continued to grow, people sought us out for information. Groups and organizations were contributing to the effort in many ways, making photo copies, arranging for places to spent the night, bringing grain for the horses and numerous other ways. This endeavor was now being fueled by the American public. I felt proud to be an American. This is was the reaction I had come to believe existed in what the media mistakenly calls "the silent majority". There was nothing silent about the public response when it came to our missing men. How I wished that the families of these missing men could have seen the outpouring of support for their sons, fathers and brothers, from the public. I knew that the North Vietnamese would be monitoring the American press. On the first horse trip, I had refused to leave the million signature petition at the United Nation. I instead brought the boxes of signatures to the North Vietnam mission in New York and dumped them on their desk. Two of their security men ran into the office and we just starred at each other for awhile. The voices raised in America would be heard in Hanoi (the capitol of Viet Nam). For some reason it seem that everyone with a horse that I met had always dreamed of riding across America. I didn't know why. The months of riding I did to prepare for this trip, didn't help. Exhaustion and fatigue were our constant companions. Riding isn't a matter of just sitting on a horse, you have to use virtually all of your muscles in riding. Do that for 10-14 hours a day and you begin to understand what live was like for the people that lived in the past. We met so many good people along the way, we spoke to everyone across the broad spectrum of the population, from the mailman on the street to the governors and mayors and everyone in between. It became plain to see what a great country we had and that it was worth preserving. Only the public can preserve the values and traditions of this great land. That is done by speaking out and making sure that our elected officials never forget who put them in office and who can remove them. Tucker, sat back in Massachusetts with nothing to do. the phones had stopped ringing week before and the local Massachusetts media was determined to keep the story out of sight of the people in Massachusetts that might have risen in support. This I was to learn, was a common method of controlling the public. Isolate the active people in their area. Deny them access to the public and keep them from gathering local support. Our plan to recruit members from across the country into Friends of POWs in order to present a strong lobby to the politicians was crushed by by the stoppage of mail. We had been distributing membership forms to thousands of people, but none arrived at our PO Box. It was somewhere in this area that I spoke with a CIA man. He caution me to watch my back. The thought of being run down by a trailer truck and the effort being stopped in that manner was always in the back of my mind. We had a hard enough time riding our horses on the streets with all the bad drivers out there. Whenever possible we had police escorts accompany us. We had a warm greeting throughout the Harmony and Springfield area. the amount of involvement from veteran and civic groups kept growing. I never expected the amount of demand there would be for public speaking. There was not only the almost daily media interviews and talk shows, but we were being asked to address all types of civic groups now. this was slowing down our progress. Finally I came to the decision to take every opportunity to tell as many groups as possible the facts of the missing men. After all that was what I was out here to do, tell the world about them and not to forget them.Sometimes, even in rural areas, people would invite us to spent the night at their homes. In this modern day some people had lost the ability to calculate distance. When I asked how far away their house was, I was at times told 10 or 15 miles away. On horseback, especially at the end of a long day's ride, it was too far and we would find a place way the roadside to camp for the night. I appreciated the offers and felt bad when we couldn't accept. I know that these people were in their way trying to do their part in this.By the time we reached Dayton, cars were stopping us to take pictures of their grand kids on the horses with us, asking us to sign autographs, we had become public figures in a way I didn't anticipate. When people called us heroes, I tried to remind them that the only true heroes, were the men we left behind in Viet Nam. It wasn't easy going from a private person to a public figure. I pitied the celebrities that had to live their lives this way. I resolved that it was just a part of the job and had to put up with it as a representative for the missing men. I welcomed the times I could get off of my horse and be unrecognized for awhile.Route 40, was a historical road called the National Road, one of the first roads leading into the newly opened Ohio territory in the early 1800s. The land was relatively flat and the soil virtually without stones. It was easy to see why people in New England had abandoned the farms with its stony soil and moved west to the new Ohio frontier. throughout Ohio I had notice that the pioneers bought with them the names of New England towns that they had left. In Springfied we left route 40 and rode onto High Street to the city center. We spent a few days in Springfield speaking at different places. In the large cities, the horses had a chance to rest up, as we were driven around the city by veterans groups to various interviews and speaking engagements. What we left behind in each city and town was a public that was well informed of the situation. Next stop was Dayton.