JOHN McKENNA - VIETNAM WAR
John McKenna, 80
Gloucester, MA
Born/Raised: 2/23/45, Winthrop/Revere
Rank: Major (ret.)
Unit: 41st Signal Battalion, 21st Signal Group,
138th Aviation Company RR
Service: US Army
Da Nang, Quy Nhon, Nha Trang
Dates of Service: 1965-69, 1969-2005 (Army Reserves)
Recipient: Bronze Star
John McKenna’s father, John Sr., was a sea captain who commanded a Liberty ship in the Merchant Marines during WWII, but John Jr. wanted to fly. He signed up, in 1962, for the high school Naval Air Reserve program because he wanted to go to the Navy flight school. Instead, after a short stint at Mass Bay Community College, he ended up in the Army in 1965, still wanting to fly. The Army gave him his chance. Flight school at Fort Wolters, TX and then Ft. Rucker in Alabama prepared him to fly Hueys, “an incredibly wonderful machine to fly” which he would do in the Central Highlands from 1966-67. He received the Bronze Star for a litany of acts of bravery.
He returned to Ft. Wolters in 1967 as an instructor which really wasn’t his cup of tea. He picked up his fixed-wing qualifications and answered an ad for the Army Security Agency looking for pilots, a job that required him to get top-secret clearance, a process that would take nearly four months. As luck would have it, during those four months, he would meet Louise Tikkanen of Annisquam, at The Outside Inn, a folk music bar in Boston. “We dated by correspondence.” Sixty-nine days later, on Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7, 1968, they wed. They would share 53 years together before her passing in 2021.
In the following January 1969, John would return to Vietnam as part of the 138th Aviation Company RR flying fixed wing RU-8D Beechcrafts doing Aerial Radio Direction Finding, seeking out enemy locations by triangulating radio signals. He would do this until November when he left Vietnam for good. He and Louise would end up buying her family’s cottage in Annisquam and there they would have and raise three daughters, Meredith, Kathryn and Gretchen, “they led kind of a Huck Finn existence.” He has three grandchildren.
From 1969-1972 John held various jobs in the private sector, but the pull of aviation proved too strong and he took a civilian position with the aircraft maintenance office at Fort Devens as well as maintaining his position with the Army Reserves, a job that had him working with FEMA and other organizations. In 1983, and for a decade beyond, he flew helicopters for news and radio station reporting on traffic and weather as an “eye in the sky.” He retired from the Army Reserves in 2005 as a Major.