On Memorial Day, communities throughout the United States honor the service of people serving in the armed forces. Pine Plains is home to some 60 veterans and more than a dozen active service members. On May 29, local veterans will assemble at the Pine Plains firehouse and march to the clock tower for a speech before moving on to Evergreen Cemetery for a 21-gun salute and the raising of the American flag. Milan and Stanfordville also plan ceremonies.
The New Pine Plains Herald interviewed three war veterans about their experience overseas and how their time in the military has fueled a lasting commitment to public service.
Kelly Fancher
“It was a no-brainer for me to join,” says Kelly Fancher, who signed up with the New York Army National Guard right after 9/11. Fancher, who was born and raised in Pine Plains, said she felt the need to do something for her country. “My brother was already in the service. A cousin’s husband was killed in the South Tower,” she said. “So I had to do something.” She’s been on active duty ever since, now serving as a chief warrant officer.
In 2004, Fancher was deployed to the Iraqi city of Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. The city is infamous as the site of a violent power struggle between al-Qaida and ISIL militants. Her job? Processing U.S. war casualties. During that difficult time, she said a point of pride was her work helping oversee voting in the city during Iraq’s historic first free elections in 2005.
The experience left a powerful impression that stayed with Fancher after her return to the United States. “I gained a much greater appreciation of our freedoms,” she said. “I try to instill that in my three children and remind them that they have it so much better than children in countries that are not free. I’ve learned to be very, very grateful.”
On Memorial Day, her thoughts will be with her schoolmate Shannon Kent, a Navy cryptologist who was killed by a suicide bomber in northern Syria in 2019. “I went to school with her,” says Fancher. “She worked at the Pine Plains Pharmacy while going to high school, so everybody knew her. She was a friend to everyone.”
Kent graduated from Stissing Mountain High School in 2001 as an honors student who excelled in sports. She joined the Navy, learned to speak seven languages and rapidly rose in the ranks. Last year, the Pine Plains Post Office was renamed in her honor.
“Shannon is proof that most of America’s heroes come from small towns like Pine Plains,” said Fancher.
“For me, Memorial Day is a time to reflect on those who fell before us and what they died for,” she added. “It’s only after I served in places that don’t have our freedoms, that I truly understood the value of what Shannon and others died for.”
Don Bartles
Shortly after he volunteered for the U.S. Army at age 21, Don Bartles was sent to guard the Pentagon. It was 1967, the Vietnam War was raging, and some 50,000 anti-war protesters were descending on the building. “I was standing with my rifle on the Pentagon steps and these hippies kept putting flowers in our guns,” said Bartles. “It was the strangest thing.”
The following year, Bartles deployed to Vietnam. He served in the Army Corps of Engineers on a construction battalion, spending much of the time around Phuoc Vinh, where his brigade built roads and water systems and rebuilt a hospital. Today, one of the more dangerous roads he worked on leads to a casino frequented by American tourists.
While not engaged in active combat, Bartles and his fellow engineers came under frequent rockets and mortar fire aimed at their camp. Bartles played down the risk, saying only, “we would get harassed.”
In 1969, he and his battalion were sent to repair a bridge that had been blown up. Only later did he find out that a future Pine Plains neighbor, Lenny Liberta, was also guarding the same site only a few feet away. “We were standing shoulder to shoulder in Vietnam, and now we’re neighbors in Pine Plains,” Bartles said, laughing.
For many Vietnam veterans, the experience of the war and the homecoming that followed remains tinged with bitterness. “We went to Vietnam with a whole set of ideals,” said Bartles, “and they fell away. I was 21. We didn’t really know what we were doing there. I was given a helmet with no liner, and the most sophisticated rifle in the world, but there were no magazines for it.”
When Bartles was discharged and returned to the U.S., landing first in California, he and his fellow soldiers were greeted by young people holding signs that said “baby killers” – a reference to atrocities committed by U.S. troops.
“It was tough,” Bartles acknowledged. “Quickly as you could, you broke off relations with your comrades and tried to forget the whole thing.” Over the years, separating the soldier from the politics of the war proved difficult. “Only now, 50 years later, are we starting to see reunions of Vietnam vets,” he said.
Bartles returned to Dutchess Community College and lived on a farm “so I could slowly recover.” Pine Plains natives thanked him for his service. Like many returning local veterans, he followed military service with public service, joining the town planning board in 1986. For 37 years now, he has served Pine Plains, including in his current role as a member of the Town Board.
“If there is one thing I regret,” he said, “it is the polarization in our country. For years in Pine Plains, you did not know who was a Democrat and who was a Republican. Now we have an undercurrent out there that’s pretty scary. It’s a shame, really.”
This November, Bartles will retire from the Town Board after eight years. Explaining his decision to participate in local government for so many years, he paused for thought and said, “It just seemed like the thing to do. The military taught us discipline. You are given a task and you stay with it.”
“Memorial Day is a way for us all to get together,” he added. “It’s very, very emotional for me to go to that cemetery. But I always do.”
Courtesy of Brian Coons
Brian Coons
Many Pine Plains residents served their country because their family members did so before them. In that regard, Brian Coons’ roots go deep. His great-grandfather, shortly after immigrating from Italy in 1915, joined the U.S. Army. Coons’ father and grandfather were in the military as well.
In 2004, Coons joined the Army’s Civil Affairs department, working in some of the world’s most difficult places, including 16 months in Iraq and 10 in Afghanistan. He attained the rank of master sergeant. “My job was to get destroyed infrastructure up and running,” he said. In Afghanistan in 2009, he helped rebuild a school, a maternity hospital that had been bombed, and built wells in rural areas. “I remember one town had 674 people,” he said. “I remember the number of people exactly. They were desperate, so we did a food drop there.”
The risk of violence was a constant. While Coons learned to avoid towns controlled by Taliban militants, it wasn’t enough to prevent American military casualties. “We lost seven out of 24 people from our training camp,” he said. More than a decade later, he still harbors concerns about the ordinary Afghans he met during his tour, who continue to suffer from Taliban extremism. He sends money every month to a former translator.
Coons said growing up in Pine Plains prepared him in many ways for life in the military. “Growing up in a small rural community you get to know everyone,” he said. “Everyone was in Cub Scouts or Girl Scouts, and many of us went into the military. There was a real sense of teamwork, and of helping each other through difficult times.”
That sense of small-town camaraderie, he said, helped him in Afghanistan and Iraq when he needed to find ways to earn the trust of people in the villages where he was working. Compassion was also key. “Many times when I was in Iraq, I could not believe how cruel people were to each other,” he said. “That troubled me the most. Iraq was a very hard place. Compassion got me through it and kept me going. I like to think we gave people hope.”
Following the Army, he again dedicated himself to public service, serving for six years as Pine Plains Town Supervisor. Currently he serves in the Army National Guard.
In the early 1990s, Coons coached Shannon Kent in Pee Wee basketball. “She wasn’t afraid to scrap,” he recalled. “She was a lion in her heart.”
“Here we are enjoying a wonderful and safe place to live,” he added. “But even in this small town, many paid the ultimate price. We owe them a huge debt.”
MEMORIAL DAY COMMEMORATIONS
Pine Plains:
Monday, May 29, from 10:30 a.m. to noon
Parade & Ceremony: Pine Plains Firehouse to Town Clock Memorial to Evergreen Cemetery and American Legion Post, where services will conclude.
Hosted by: American Legion Post 426 and Pine Plains VFW Post 5519
Contact: Robert Clinch (518) 821-7450 or Marie Stewart (845) 546-7349
Stanford:
Monday, May 29, at 9 a.m.
Parade & Ceremony: Bangall War Monument, Hunns Lake Road
Hosted by: Leroy Campell American Legion Post 1793
Contact: Charlie Shaw (845) 868-7457
Town of Milan:
Sunday, May 28, at noon
Parade: Town of Milan Town Hall – 20 Wilcox Circle
Hosted by: Town of Milan Veterans Committee
Contact: Alfred LoBrutto (845) 758-5133 ext. 2