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January 2021 Member Luncheon

Dateline: 2/7/2021

Highlights of our January 28, 2021 Luncheon

Guest Speaker: Dr. Hal Kushner

Dr. Kushner was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in June 1941; His military experience includes active duty in the United States Army from 1965 to 1977,

and duty as an Army reserve officer from 1977 to 1986 when he retired with the rank of Colonel.

Dr. Kushner served with the 1st Squadron, 9th US Cavalry, 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam. He was captured on 2 December 1967 west of

Tam Ky, South Vietnam, during a dark and rainy evening when he was aboard a helicopter that crashed into the side of a mountain in, leaving

only himself, the copilot, and the crew chief as survivors.

Upon crashing Kushner had received a broken arm, collar bone, and multiple wounds from an M-60 that fired while the aircraft was engulfed, yet he managed to belt strap his arm to his side and walk down the mountain in search for help. Kushner was quickly picked up by enemy soldiers and although he showed them his Geneva Convention card declaring himself a noncombatant, they pulled him away shouting, “POW, POW, criminal”. Kushner spent the next few years in the jungles of South Vietnam, surviving with other POW’s on spoiled rice and incredibly desolate conditions. In 1971 Kushner and the other men in his jungle prison were moved 560 miles over 57 days to the POW camp called the Hanoi Hilton where he remained until released to American Control in Hanoi on 16 March 1973.