Zippo Lighter From Wheeling Found In Vietnam War Reunited With Veteran Who Found It

ST. CLAIRSVILLE - With The Wall That Heals at the Belmont County Fairgrounds, countless veterans throughout the region will make their stop for a chance to view it.

One Army Maricopa Division, 1966 Infantry Vietnam veteran Carl "Tony" Ramella Jr. took to the wall to see the names of the veterans he served with. Ramella is from Huntington but his ties to the Ohio Valley run deeper than imagined.

While fighting in the Vietnam War, Ramella reached into the pocket of a dead Viet Cong sniper's pocket and retrieved a Zippo lighter. He then discovered that the lighter had an engraving that read Tri-State Amusement Co. INC. Wheeling W.Va. It also had an engraving of the initials L.W.Y.

"He sent this home to his father, and his father worked for a company in Wheeling, and somehow it made its way to Wheeling to me as a young reporter with a newspaper,” said John S. Marshall, a member of the Belmont County Wall That Heals Committee and a former reporter for the Wheeling News-Register.

That story was published in the News-Register on May 14, 1970.

"Fast forward 56 years, the Wall That Heals came into being, and in talking to my roommate at the time, Michael Pivik, he said, ‘John, I still have that lighter. He’d held onto this lighter for 56 years. Apparently, I’d given it to him when I got married, and he kept it. So today we are here because it’s lost and found in Vietnam."

He added that he and Belmont County Wall That Heals committee member Curtis Kyer tried to track down Ramella as well as discover whose initials were on the lighter.

"We tried to track that person down, but we couldn’t. Curtis is a bulldog when it comes to research, and we thought we had it tracked down, but we didn’t," Marshall said. "But we tracked down Tony in Huntington. So today we are here to reunite Tony with this lighter from the mid-60s that was found in Vietnam."

Ramella said that taking lighters from dead Viet Cong soldiers was not uncommon during the war.

"I pulled the lighter out and it said Tri-State Amusement Company Wheeling, West Virginia. I got goosebumps. I mean, what are the odds? So immediately, I kept it for a couple months and I sent it to my father who worked for Shulick-Taylor Company in Wheeling," Ramella said. "He took it to Tri-State Amusement Company and they could not find out who it belonged to."

Ramella has thought about the lighter every so often and will sometimes read the newspaper article that Marshall wrote.

"I would think about it from time to time. But I never thought I’d get a phone call from Curtis asking if I still had the lighter," Ramella said.

Kyer added that during one of the committee's meetings in preparation for the Wall That Heals it was trying to come up with an idea of what the committee would give to veterans who visited. Kyer is a captain at Cumberland Trail Fire District and he said that fire departments frequently give its fire fighters metal “challenge coins.”

He thought that it would be a good idea to make something similar to the challenge coins to hand out to veterans who visit the wall. Committee member Larry Barnes suggested the committee hand out Zippo lighters due to its significance in the Vietnam War.

After the meeting, Kyer was informed about Marshall's old newspaper article and thought that it would be fitting to make a Zippo lighter challenge coin.

Ramella joked that there weren't any Bic lighters during the Vietnam War, so all of the soldiers used Zippos. Zippo lighters became a significant symbol during the war due to many soldiers carrying them due to its durability and the ability to customize each lighter.

Now that Ramella has been reunited with the lighter, he said that it is planned to go into a museum locally where it can be preserved.

He added that being at The Wall That Heals was incredibly emotional for him personally. Ramella has spent the better half of five years battling cancer. He said that he wanted to volunteer, but unfortunately is too weak to.

"I would volunteer all day long, but I’m just too weak to do it. But to see the names of my buddies that we lost is just tiring. We'll leave it there because I don’t want to start crying," Ramella said.