Four Veterans, Four Paths, One Bond of Service: A Veterans Day Conversation on the Good Neighbor Hour

On a crisp November morning in Goodland, the Good Neighbor Hour turned into something more than a radio show. It became a living scrapbook of American service. Host Rollie Halligan welcomed four veterans into the studio, each with a different branch, a different era, and a different story, yet all connected by the same thread of duty.

Those voices belonged to Mike Elliott, Ron Vignery, Jerry Franklin, and Jim Mull. They laughed, remembered, reflected, and taught us something about sacrifice, loyalty, grit, and the strange mix of humor and heartbreak that shapes a soldier’s life.

As Veterans Day arrives, their stories offer more than history. They remind us what service really looks like when boots hit the ground and when real people step into moments bigger than themselves.

Captain Mike Elliott: From K-State to Italy and Beyond

Mike Elliott grew up in Goodland and graduated from Kansas State University in 1970. The draft number lottery had drawn his number early, so he knew he was headed for service one way or another. ROTC put a gold second lieutenant’s bar on his shoulder, and the Army sent him straight to Fort Benning for the Infantry Officers Basic Course.

“About four months down in Georgia,” Mike remembered, “and then a lifetime of lessons.”

His years in the Army Reserve took him across the map, including a massive test of National Guard readiness that deployed his maintenance unit to Italy. The 995th Maintenance Company, made up of soldiers from Colby, Russell, and Hays, flew out of Kansas, stopped in Bangor, Maine, and eventually stepped onto the ground near Pisa and Livorno.

“It rained so hard I thought my tent was going to float away,” he said with a grin. Their mission was fixing equipment for active-duty forces. Their challenge? Parts delays so long that everything they repaired sat for 180 days before being used.

“It was trial by experiment,” Mike said. “We proved the Guard could do the job.”

And he did it long enough that by the time he hung up his uniform, he had traded the “butter bar” for Captain’s bars and carried a lot of stories he “can’t tell on the radio.”

Lieutenant Ron Vignery: A Local Kid Practicing Law at Sea

While the others wore mud on their boots, Ron Vignery wore a very different uniform. He served in the U.S. Navy as a JAG officer from 1970 to 1974.

Ron grew up in Goodland, graduated high school in 1962, finished college at Pittsburg State, and earned his law degree from Washburn. Even with a student deferment, Vietnam eventually caught up with him.

“I got drafted my senior year of law school,” he told Rollie. “After all that education, I didn’t want to be a second lieutenant in Vietnam without using it.”

A recent Supreme Court ruling had required better legal representation for service members, and the military responded by formally creating the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Ron applied and was accepted.

After Naval Justice School in Rhode Island, he was assigned to Seattle and spent two years doing court-martials. At times, he served as prosecutor, defense counsel, and judge all in the same week. Later, the Navy sent him to San Diego Naval Hospital, which housed 400 doctors, 2,000 corpsmen and nurses, and 2,000 patients daily.

“I was the only lawyer,” he said. “And the doctors gave me plenty of grief about it.”

But his toughest moment came when a former POW walked into his office. The man had survived seven years in captivity and three years in solitary confinement with just a concrete floor and one meal a day.

“He sat down on my floor, arms around his knees, rocking back and forth,” Ron said. “‘This is how I sat for three years,’ he told me. ‘It’s just more comfortable for me.’”

Even decades later, that moment still shakes him.

Ron also visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial years later, where he traced the name of childhood friend Kenneth Chris, a McDonald native and Air Force Academy graduate killed in 1968.

“Good kid. Smart kid. And a dead kid,” Ron said quietly. “Vietnam took too many.”

Lieutenant Jerry Franklin: From Fort Dix to the A Shau Valley

Jerry Franklin graduated from Goodland High School in 1965 and Southwestern College in 1969. He received what he jokingly called a “nice letter” from Uncle Sam informing him he’d be drafted in October. He decided to go the officer route.

Jerry went through basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. “It was the first time I ever saw people sleeping on benches,” he said of the airport. Then came cold, snowy months at Fort Leonard Wood, followed by Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning.

Vietnam became real before Jerry ever set foot there. On the flight over, soldiers filled out forms asking how many limbs they wanted to lose before their families were notified.

“That’s when the game stopped being a game.”

He was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division in the northern region of Vietnam near the DMZ. The A Shau Valley. Hamburger Hill. All the hard names of that war.

Jerry wasn’t parachute-qualified, but as part of the first air-mobile brigades, he jumped out of helicopters. “Ten feet is a long way with a rucksack,” he said. And if the landing zone was hot, ten feet quickly became fifteen.

He is proud of one thing above all: he never lost a soldier in his platoon.

“I’d do it again if I had to,” he said. “But I’m glad I don’t.”

And he’ll never forget two smells: the awful stench that hit him when the plane door opened in Vietnam, and the sweet perfume of pineapples and flowers when he stepped off the plane in Hawaii coming home.

Sergeant Jim Mull: The First Waves Into Vietnam

Jim Mull, who graduated from Lawrence High School and later attended Fort Hays State, served in Vietnam earlier than the others. As part of the 101st Airborne Division, he arrived in 1964, one of the first full units deployed.

“We were lucky,” Jim said. “No North Vietnamese regulars yet. Mostly local insurgents. If you had to be there, that was the time to go.”

Jim traveled by ship, 21 days of rice and beans, sailing into Cam Ranh Bay where the temperature hit 117 degrees.

“If it smelled bad, I couldn’t tell,” he joked. “After 21 days on that ship, we smelled worse.”

Jim was also a gifted gymnast who once placed sixth in the nation on the horizontal bar. “I don’t think I can do a chin-up now,” he laughed.

He lost a close friend there, but he survived firefights, ambushes, and the long waits that defined early Vietnam. He also served alongside Captain Bill Carpenter, the legendary “Lonesome End” from West Point, who earned the Distinguished Service Cross after calling an airstrike on his own position when his platoon was being overrun.

One of Jim’s funnier stories involved a Korean soldier stealing his hat. Jimmy asked nicely. The soldier refused. Jim pulled his .45.

“He handed the hat back real peaceful after that.”

A Patchwork Quilt of Memory

Between all four men, the studio was thick with stories:

• Typhoons so fierce you slept with both boots on

.• Kids who ran beside convoys trying to steal watches.

• Helicopter jumps with rucksacks that felt like anvils

.• Courtroom days where one lawyer wore all three hats

.• The quiet grief of friends whose names now rest on polished black granite.

There were funny memories, painful ones, and a few they chose to leave unspoken.

But the common thread was simple: they served because their country asked them to.

Honoring Veterans Close to Home

During the show, the men also shared information about Goodland’s Main Street Veterans Banner Project, organized by the High Plains Museum. For $150, families can sponsor a banner featuring the photo, name, and service details of a veteran. Banners will hang along Main Street for three years.

“It’s a fine way to honor somebody,” Jerry said. “And it makes a town look proud.”

A Final Reflection

As Rollie wrapped the show, all four thanked other veterans, thanked their families, and reminded listeners how much service still matters.

“We’ve got a high-class military,” Ron said. “Smart people. Good people. And when you get called, you go.”

On this Veterans Day, NWKS Radio salutes Mike Elliott, Ron Vignery, Jerry Franklin, Jim Mull, and every veteran who has ever stood a post, raised a hand, or stepped onto foreign soil not knowing what waited on the other side.

Thank you. Today and every day.

This article was taken from information from an on-air interview done on the Good Neighbor Hour on KLOE 730 Nov 10, 2025. To listen to the full show go here: https://streamdb6web.securenetsystems.net/cirruscontent/index.cfm?stationcallsign=KLOE&autoStartApp=on-demand&autoStartPodcast=2948203