North Ridgeville Review The Community That Cares
Vietnam veteran and Silver Star recipient Rick Adler will be the guest at Mayor Kevin Corcoran’s Coffee and Conversation on Wednesday, November 18 at 8:30 a.m. in Council Chambers. He is not coming to talk about the medal. He is coming because too many veterans have earned benefits they never claimed, and he has made it his business to change that.
Adler lives in North Ridgeville with his wife Sharon.
How he got there
On August 29, 1969, Adler’s company walked into an ambush in the lowlands south of Chu Lai. He was wounded three times. He kept fighting. He received the Silver Star for it 47 years later.
Adler grew up in Olmsted Falls and graduated from Olmsted Falls High School in 1966. He was working at DairyPak when he was drafted, and was sworn into the Army in January 1969. By July he was in Vietnam, assigned to the Jungle Warriors of Delta Company, 4th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, patrolling the mountains and triple canopy jungle of I Corps.
He came home in July of 1970 after a one-year tour, with the Combat Infantryman Badge and the Purple Heart. The Silver Star came in a 2016 ceremony at Fort Lewis, Washington. He is a member of the Ohio Military Hall of Fame for Valor and the Olmsted Falls High School Hall of Fame.
Then he went back to DairyPak, where he worked for 25 years before building a career in real estate. He retired in 2009.
The war followed him home
Adler was exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. He has been treated for Stage 3 non-Hodgkin lymphoma, then Stage 4, and has undergone a stem cell transplant.
It is the part of his service that did not end when the plane landed in 1970, and it is a large part of why he does what he does now. Veterans exposed to Agent Orange are eligible for benefits tied to conditions like his. Many never find out.
What he does now
Adler spends his retirement helping other veterans get what they are owed. He talks to them, he listens, and when he finds someone who needs help, he points them toward the VA, the DAV, the VFW and other organizations that exist for that purpose.
He came to it through his own experience. Sharon pushed him to seek help for himself, and going through that process showed him how many veterans either do not know what is available or will not ask. For combat veterans especially, asking means talking, and talking means going back to places they have spent decades trying to leave behind.
He goes back anyway. He speaks to students before their trips to Washington, D.C., does radio and television interviews, and spoke at the Cleveland VA this past September 11. He also led the effort to get proper recognition for Gary Martell, a classmate from the Olmsted Falls Class of 1966 who was killed in Vietnam.
Ohio Serves
November is Veterans Day month, and this year America 250-Ohio has dedicated it to Ohioans who serve. Few people in North Ridgeville fit that better than Rick Adler. At the November 18 coffee he will talk about Vietnam and the 2.7 million Americans who served there.
Rick’s full story, told in his own words, is available through the Voices to Veterans podcast and written archive by David E. Grogan.
