Bee Staff Reports
August 1, 2014 Updated 1 hour ago
U.S. Army Sgt. Major Jon Cavaiani, Medal of Honor holder from Merced and Vietnam veteran, center, was warmly greeted by fellow vets upon his arrival at the new Modesto Vet Center on Thursday, July 3, 2008. Cavaiani delivered the keynote address at the new Department of Veterans Affairs facility on Carpenter Road.
TED BENSON — Modesto Bee file
Jon Cavaiani liked to make one thing very clear: He didn’t “win” the Medal of Honor.
“I was a recipient,” the Columbia resident and Vietnam War hero told The Modesto Bee’s Ron DeLacy in 2003.
Cavaiani died Tuesday at Stanford Medical Center. He would have been 71 today. Cavaiani was born in England on Aug. 2, 1943, and moved to the United States four years later.
Gaining U.S. citizenship in 1968, Cavaiani exuded a soldier’s toughness throughout his life. He joined the Army despite a 4-F classification (he was allergic to bee stings) by learning of a doctor who had falsified 4-F excuses for healthy men wanting to avoid military service. Cavaiani said he blackmailed the doctor into doing just the opposite for him, and in 1969 began training as a paratrooper and went into Special Forces training.
Soon he was in Vietnam, and when his year’s tour of duty ended, he refused to come home.
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