Open Letter to Vietnam Military Police Sentry Dog Handlers Alumni Members

From Gary Smith

Yesterday I went to Fort Leonard-Wood and Springfield Hotels, Ramada Oasis and Lamplighter Inn. I wanted to see what Fort Leonard-Wood had to offer us. I am pleased to tell you we could spend a whole day at the Fort without trying. I started with visiting the Military Police Museum. The MP Museum is housed in a central building with Transportation, Chemical and Engineer Museums. Each branch has its own wing. The MP Museum encompasses the full history of our Corps. There are static displays for each war/conflict with a brief description of what we are seeing. Unfortunately there is not much about dog handling during the Vietnam War. They do have a new display showing the equipment used by modern dog handlers. Boy things have changed. The only thing I saw for our era of dog handling was a manikin in an agitation suit. I fully enjoyed the museum. I am looking forward to viewing the other museums at a later date. I also saw several static displays outside, vehicles and WW II era wooden buildings that we were all so fond of in basic and AIT.

I went into the museum curator’s office and met with Rick Harne. He is very interested in having our group come to and visit our museum. He introduced me to the museum director Jim Rogers. Mr. Rogers and I discussed several historical things about dog handling. One of the things is they are interested in getting any uniforms, patches, equipment used during our tours, and pictures. Mr. Rogers told me they have a very highly sensitive scanner that they can make copies of pictures and digitalize the pictures for filing.They would return the original pictures as soon as they were scanned. I am going to give them my pictures so they can scan them.

Mr. Rogers then told me that the Military Police Regimental Association publishes a magazine by the same title quarterly. The last magazine was exclusively for dog handling. The front cover shows a dog and his handler at attention possibly in the early years of Vietnam. Mr. Rogers gave me a copy of the magazine. I wish I had asked for a couple more copies so I could send one to David Keeton so he could take excerpts out to put in our newsletter. I am going to join the Regimental Association so maybe I can get an extra copy. By the way, the museum is interested in all eras not just Vietnam, so pictures I have during other times in my career will also be scanned. Mr. Rogers showed me a file on the computer titled 212th. It was pictures scanned from the beginning of the 212th in the states to Vietnam. They were scanned from slides, so they can even scan slides.

I checked out the museum shop and the little shops at the PX. I swear I do not believe there is anything an old MP could want and could not buy. The museum shop had every type of hat, and shirt you can imagine and all with catchy phrases. The PX shops sell shirts, hats and plaques. I bought a full scale MP badge there. There are also all kinds of pieces of jewelry and Zippo lighters there that can be engraved. The Museum gift shop has its own website. The site displays all their merchandise.
I had a chance to talk to a post rep about things we could do at Fort Leonard-Wood. The things I asked about were to tour the kennels and maybe see a couple dogs and handlers in action. That sounded promising. I also heard they offer other tours to include eating at a dining facility for lunch.

After I left Fort Leonard-Wood I went to Springfield to check out a couple hotels. The first one I went to was the Ramada Oasis Convention Center. I had a very nice lunch there with Springfield’s Visitor Bureau representative. The Ramada is up to date hotel. The rooms are very well done. If we stay there I cannot imagine anyone having any problems. There are rooms with sliding door access to the pool and hot tub area. On the other side of the hallway are rooms that have sliding door access to an individual deck. The hospitality room that I liked has a view of the pool and hot tub area. The ballroom is adequate for our group they can accommodate our special needs i.e. Table of Honor for our Fallen Comrades and a DJ area. We discussed a bar for the banquet. I think we could use the regular bar for our drinks before and during the banquet since it is close to our banquet area. I also discovered that every room gets access to a complimentary breakfast bar that includes eggs potatoes, cereal and juices and meat served near the pool. I am thinking for our Sunday breakfast banquet/farewell, we get our food from the complimentary breakfast bar and then bring it up to the hospitality room where we can sit around to say our good-byes.

The other hotel Lamplighter Inn is nice. They are in the remodeling mode. The facility is smaller. The rooms are nice. The hospitality room is well located with other facilities in the hotel. There prices and amenities are comparable to the Ramada. They also offer complimentary breakfast bar and are willing to allow us to get our food and take it back to the hospitality room Sunday. I have not made a decision yet because I am waiting to see what our members think about Springfield.

Another money saver I would like to use is we receive a complimentary room night for each 30 nights reserved from either hotel. In other words if we have ten rooms reserved for three nights that equates to 30 nights. I would like to offer up the complimentary rooms perks to the 50/50 drawing. A winner would get one night or more depending on how many times he/she wins and how many complimentary room nights are available.


webmaster on 09.29.11 @ 07:43 PM CST [link] [No Comments]