Remember William Forbes Eisenbraun. He was from Santa Ana and his friends called him “Ike.”
Remember Roland Troyano from Newport Beach.
And Victor Reyes Hernandez and Stephen Gravrock from Fullerton.
Remember Steven Michael Larrabee from Irvine and Laguna Beach and James Calvin McKenzie from Yorba Linda.
Eisenbraun, Troyano, Hernandez, Gravrock, Larrabee and McKenzie are six of the 320 Orange County U.S. service members who died in the Vietnam War. The remains of seven, including Eisenbraun, never were recovered.
Altogether, 58,220 members of the U.S. military died in Vietnam, including 5,575 from California, according to the National Archives. Most of those who served and died were 18 to roughly 27 years old.
Voice of OC used the National Archives database to create a list of the Orange County casualties.
For some VOC readers, those who died may have been family, classmates or neighbors. Please feel free to add your memories to our comments page.
For the rest of us, Memorial Day is a way to remember all service members who died so we can live in freedom.
And please visit the Orange County Register’s 14-page Gold Star edition published in September 1945 with photos and some family information about the men from Orange County who fought and died in World War II.