Jay M. Sedlik’s daughter shares a story from her dad

By Sheri Sedlik Margolis

Something interesting happened when someone reached out to me recently and I thought you would want to share this story about my dad and someone who served with him in Vietnam.

My Dad, USAF Lt. Col. Jay Sedlik, was a pretty amazing guy.  Recently, Richard Ouzts, a son of a man (Leon Ouzts) who served in Vietnam with my dad in the Air Force Combat Photo Squadron contacted me.  Both of our fathers passed away at early ages due to exposure to the chemical Agent Orange.  

Going through his father’s belongings, Richard found an essay my dad wrote about his time in Vietnam. I’m not sure if the essay was ever published or if it was an assignment or if it was just a way for my dad to express himself during wartime. 

Somehow, Richard had the original typed copy on onion paper.  His father saved it all of these years and Richard found me online through my father’s obituary. We exchanged many emails and shared stories about our fathers over a few short weeks.  He mailed me the hard copy and I cried while holding it in my hands and reading it to my husband.  It was so special to have something like that after all of these years. 

His son remembers his dad reading it to him when he was a boy and his father came home from Vietnam. He told me that even though is father served under my dad and was older than my dad, he looked up to my dad and admired him. That made me smile. 

It’s no coincidence to me that the essay was found a few weeks before my dad’s 7th anniversary of his death.  It’s a sign that my dad is here watching over all of us.  When my dad wrote the essay, he was a young Captain in his twenties with a young wife and three small children who lived thousands of miles away.  When he retired, he was a Lieutenant Colonel.  My dad was always proud of the many years he spent in the US Air Force.  In fact, he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery because it was really important to him.  His funeral service was like nothing you have ever seen before.  Incredibly beautiful, moving, breathtaking and unforgettable in every way. -SSM-

Freedom, My Heritage, My Responsibility

by Capt. Jay M. Sedlik, USAF

Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry.  Gettysburg, Normandy, the 38^th parallel.  All part of freedom’s heritage.  But there’s a new heritage of freedom in the making today.  Not learned from history books, but experienced individually.  Not going back to 1829, 1865 or 1950, but to yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Its bylines are DaNang, Con Thien, Bein Hoa and the Tonkin Gulf.  From a rice paddy in the Delta to the skies over Hanoi, today’s heritage of freedom is being etched into the hearts of Americans in the world.  It’s a personal heritage which many of us had not known before.

It begins with a good-bye embrace at a hometown airport.  Soon, it’s a helicopter skimming along at tree top level over a village hamlet.  A jeep on a dirt road.  Sweat on a hot day.  The damp, humid clinging of fatigues after a monsoon rain.

The heritage is made up of dog tags, survival vests and 38 revolvers.  Dense jungles and beautiful white sand beaches.  The constant din and vibration of generator power.  The aluminum caskets stacked three deep on a flat bed trailer.  Flares in the night sky.  The Colonel talking of his bomber pilot days over German twenty-three years ago.  A young Marine goes home with two oak leaf clusters on his Purple Heart.

It’s the face of a child in a land at war for twenty years. Water buffalo in a rice paddy.  The taste of unfamiliar foods.  The desire for a cold glass of fresh milk.  Tears in your eyes as you sing “God Bless America” at a USO show.

A day.  A week.  Months.

The heritage of freedom is personal.  The disappointment of an empty mailbox.  Then, two letters in a row.  From the other side of the world and with seven months before you are due to return, your five year old son asks on tape: “Daddy, when are you coming home?”  To your wife of eight years you say, “I love you,” and understand for the first time what love really is.

The anxiety of a mission briefing.  Twenty-four F-105s take-off in rapid succession for North Vietnam, the blast of their afterburners echoing off the concrete runway.  Noise. Quiet. MIGS, flak, SAMS. Bombs on target.  A buddy of a downed pilot gathers up personal effects then sits down to write a letter. The heritage of freedom is all this and more.  It is feeling, seeing, listening, experiencing, wanting, explaining, doing, discovering.  Today this heritage is as much a part of me as I am a part of it. Now I can understand freedom as never before.  My responsibility to freedom is also clear – to insure that others will not have to learn their heritage of freedom out of war, as I, but rather out of a free society built on the foundations of freedom’s heritage. -JS-