Friends for over 50 years, military veterans Tom Eoff, Mike Heady see D.C. monuments
By Ben Cox
The Source Newspaper
Photos/Submitted to The Source
Two Jacksonville men who originally met on a basketball court in high school have now been friends for well over 50 years. Their bond has been cemented by their time spent in the military together at basic training before serving tours in the Vietnam War. When both men returned home, their friendship remained strong as they worked their jobs and raised families. Tom Eoff and Michael “Mike” Heady are well-known Jacksonville residents to many.
For Eoff, his first memories with Heady were as sports rivals on the basketball court. Both men are over six feet tall and excelled on the court — Heady with Jacksonville High School and Eoff with Routt Catholic High School. “I didn’t know Mike until we played each other in the regional finals my senior year at The Bowl,” Eoff says, “We had upset Virginia High School in the previous round and then ran into these big guys in the finals.”
Eoff says that their relationship didn’t really strike up until they met in basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood. Eoff says, “After two weeks of basic training, a captain came out in the field and we had lunch in the field every day at 11:30, and in the formation he said, anybody who wants to try for the brigade basketball team raise their hand. So, Bob Chumley and I from here [in Jacksonville], both 6’3”, we tried out. I made it, Bob didn’t. The next day I go to get my equipment and they’re looking at my address and they said, ‘You’re from Jacksonville, Illinois?’ I said, yeah. ‘Tom,’ the captain said, ‘You aren’t going to believe this. There’s a guy from your hometown on this team.’ It was Mike. So, that’s when we really got to know each other.” Heady says their team was fairly competitive and featured all guys from Central Illinois.
After the time in basic training, they split up as Heady went to officer’s school and Eoff was sent on to Vietnam. Heady became a decorated war veteran, earning the Silver Star as first lieutenant for heroic actions at Fire Base RITA in November 1968. Eoff says he was worried about his friend going to officer’s school and becoming a lieutenant because their life expectancy in Vietnam was around two weeks in-country. Heady says he ran into a number of other guys linked to Jacksonville and Central Illinois along the way during his time in Vietnam.
Both men have been involved in veterans’ service organizations in Jacksonville. Eoff’s son, former State Representative and veteran Jim Watson, got together with Heady’s son, Tim Heady, and started to plan to get their fathers together for an Honor Flight. The Land of Lincoln Honor Flight is now on its 75th mission out of Springfield. The mission of the Honor Flight is to provide round trip transportation from Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield for veterans in order of their service who wish to visit their memorials in Washington, D.C. This one-day trip includes air and ground transportation, meals and snacks, t-shirt and cap, and other items provided completely free of charge to the veteran, all in honor of their service to our country.
Mike Heady says he was hesitant at first to be a part of an Honor Flight, but sons Jim Watson and Tim Heady had already gotten the paperwork together. Mike Heady says he was glad he got to go in particular to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, commonly called “The Wall.” One name in particular stood out for Heady, “To me, the most important thing for me, I guess, was seeing the wall. I was there in ‘66 when I went to Fort Holbert, Maryland for extra training, and then while there we got on a bus and went to D.C. a couple of times and I got to see the other monuments, but of course the wall wasn’t there then. So, that was my real objective [during the Honor Flight], to see the wall … [to see the name of] another individual from Jacksonville, a guy named Larry Welch, who got killed over in Vietnam. He was in-country for three weeks. Him and I went through officer school together.”
Heady isn’t sure how many times he’s visited with Larry Welch’s family over the years, but says Welch’s family always invites them over to talk about him. He adds, “When we were at the wall where his name was at, that meant a lot to me. It really did.”
For both Eoff and Heady, the really touching moments were at the end of the Honor Flight during mail call and then arrival back home. Both said they didn’t get much mail while they were on tour in Vietnam. They even had some school children who visited with them in Washington D.C. and wrote them letters.
Eoff says he wasn’t able to get through all of his letters on the flight, “When we were back on the plane on our way back, they had the lights off. A lot of us were probably half asleep. They turn the lights back on and say, we forgot something called ‘mail call,’ because in Vietnam we didn’t get much mail. So my wife, she called all our friends and they sent me a letter and a really nice note thanking me for my service. I got a stack of letters like that [high] on the airplane in a plastic bag. Everybody got a plastic bag full of letters. That was kind of neat. So we got to look at those on the way home. I didn’t get through all of ‘em because I had too many.”
Eoff and Heady say they were both stunned when they stepped off the plane in Springfield to come back home after the long day. “I could not believe the number of people that were there, and that was our welcome home that we didn’t get back when we came back. Yeah, it was a tough experience to handle. I mean, when you’re a kid and you see these movies about the war and the ticker tape parades and all that for the soldiers coming home, that didn’t happen for us,” Eoff says. He says there were people spitting at him when he arrived home from Vietnam and the welcome home on the Honor Flight was a complete contrast.
Both men say that their experiences in Vietnam are still very tough to talk about, and Heady says only in recent years has he been able to discuss some details with his own family. Heady says he was in total shock when he got off the plane and stepped into the airport: “I was wondering what was taking people so long to get off the plane. When we went through that doorway, it was like, oh my Lord. That whole corridor was lined up with people clapping and hollering and carrying on, carrying signs, flags and bagpipes playing. Then we saw [Tom’s] family was in shock on one side, and then we got past his family, and then there was Jim Watson and Willie Zachary standing there, Terry English, Rodney Wellenkamp, Jerry Brewington, Dave Tribble and all kinds of Jacksonville people there. Roger Pratt from Winchester, another Vietnam veteran, was there. We got down past them and here’s my two granddaughters, and that’s when I lost it.”
Eoff says a lot of seniors were there to welcome them home in Springfield, including Deb Freesen and Pat Neff, widows of two fellow Honor Flight recipients — the late Bob Freesen and Bob Neff.
Both Eoff and Heady say it’s an experience they will never forget, and they are glad they got to go together — yet another bond they share after more than 50 years of being friends and servants to our nation.
