photo by: Derek Redd

Steve Jasko talks about his cousin John Duplaga, who was killed in action in the Vietnam War in 1967 and was honored Monday as part of Wheeling’s Military Banner Program.

WHEELING — The late John Stanley Duplaga was nicknamed “Germ” growing up, because of his small size. Yet his family members said his heart towered over his stature.

Family and friends gathered Monday at Generations Restaurant on National Road to honor Duplaga with the latest banner in the City of Wheeling’s Military Banner Program. Duplaga’s visage has been placed along National Road in front of the restaurant.

Mayor Denny Magruder said there are now 258 banners around the city honoring local veterans. Duplaga — a seaman on the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin — was just 22 years old when he was killed in action during the Vietnam War.

“One of the most honored things I’ve been able to do in 15 months as mayor is to stand with groups like this and honor our real heroes,” he said.

The Forrestal was in the midst of combat on July 29, 1967, when an electrical surge triggered a Zuni rocket with the safety pin missing to fire. It struck and ruptured the external gas tank of a Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, which caused a chain reaction of explosions that rocked the aircraft carrier.

In the end, 134, including Duplaga, were killed and another 161 were injured.

John Duplaga’s younger brother Stanley Duplaga said Monday that around the time of the explosion, his mother came downstairs on a Saturday and said she had a nightmare and that her legs felt like “they were burning all night long.” Not long after, they received word that John Duplaga had been killed.

John Duplaga loved being a seaman on the Forrestal, Stanley Duplaga said.

“He thought it was the greatest thing he ever was a part of,” he said.

And while his time on Earth was short, the mark John Duplaga made on his younger brother’s life was deep and meaningful, Stanley Duplaga said.

“He was my mentor,” he said. “He was everything to me. He pushed me beyond recognition. You wouldn’t believe how he pushed me to be a better person, better in sports, better in everything. He was a one-of-a-kind person.”

He was a person who had a special bond with his mother. John Larch, the Military Banner Program’s volunteer coordinator, read a letter from John Duplaga to his mother that had been published in the Wheeling Intelligencer following his death.

“I’ll take anything and everything they put in front of me,” he wrote. “I’ll show them I can take anything and, Mom, I’ll be proud to do it.

“If I would get killed, it will be for you, Mom, so you can live free,” he continued. “Mom, you’re the kind of person that deserves to live free and happy because you appreciate what you have.”

John Duplaga’s cousin Steve Jasko, himself a Vietnam veteran, said John Duplaga often thought of others before himself. Right before the two departed for their deployments — Duplaga in the Navy and Jasko in the Army — they bid each other farewell and Jasko noticed tears in Duplaga’s eyes. He asked his cousin why he was crying.

“And he said, ‘Chief, you’re going in country. I’m going to be safe aboard a big ship,'” Jasko said. “Well, the fortunes of war, God, I don’t know why … I’m standing here and he’s not. Everything that has made me the man I am today is because of he and I growing up together and doing so many things together.”

City officials provided John Duplaga’s siblings — Stanley Duplaga, Michael Duplaga Jr. and Rosemary Roth — with copies of the banner. The ceremony also included the playing of “Taps” and a three-volley gun salute by the Moundsville Honor Guard, which also presented the family with a United States flag.