For a 'Marine's Marine' like John Ripley, Iwo Jima memorialized courage and sacrifice. ASSOCIATED PRESS Visit the Photo Place

John Ripley: USMC through and through

Date published: 11/25/2008

RICHMOND--

John Ripley was a man's man, a Marine's Marine, an American's American. Well prior to his death he was a Marine legend, one of its most decorated heroes. They named a building for him and wrote a hymn ("Uncommon Valor"). He was a distinguished graduate of the Naval Academy, and one of just two Marines depicted (he in a diorama) in the academy's holiest of holies--Memorial Hall. He was the only Marine ever inducted into the Army Ranger Hall of Fame.

A book ("The Bridge at Dong Ha," by John Grider Miller, Naval Institute Press, 1989) and numerous articles document his astounding exploits in singlehandedly bringing down an American-built bridge in Vietnam--thereby delaying North Vietnam's invasion of South Vietnam by years and saving many thousands of lives.

During his numerous combat tours he had been (his words) "shot, stabbed, blown up, poisoned, and snake-bitten." Two liver transplants extended his life earlier this decade, but the surgeons had to extract--even then--Vietnam-era shrapnel and bullet fragments to get the livers in.

Passionate about history, Ripley was an instrumental force behind the Marine Corps Museum at Quantico --complete with its paramount spire paralleling the angle of the pole in Joe Rosenthal's famous photograph of the 1945 flag-raising on Suribachi. (He also selected many of the quotations engraved in the walls of the museum's main hall.)

The Marines do just about everything better. For John, at his Naval Academy funeral and burial, they outdid themselves. Permeating the attending throng were tears, chills, laughs, some old-boy lies that--in his case--were not lies at all, and abundant true stories about the thrills his many gallantries have given the faithful.

Ever the warrior

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Date published: 11/25/2008