'Forgotten' soldier remembered at Wall that Heals

'Forgotten' soldier remembered at Wall that Heals

BY LAURA LEGERE (STAFF WRITER)
Published: October 10, 2011

Charlie Boylan worked for years to bring Jimmy Reddington back from obscurity.

A solider killed at 19 in Vietnam, Marine Lance Cpl. James T. Reddington seemed lost to history decades after his death except for the pair of fellow Marines who visited his grave at Cathedral Cemetery. Then Mr. Boylan tirelessly tracked down a constellation of friends and brought them together to remember him, first in 2009 and again in the years since.

On Sunday, at the Wall That Heals, a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial visiting Nay Aug Park, Mr. Boylan's efforts were rewarded by the several people who stopped by Cpl. Reddington's name and paused to think of him.

"Did you know Jimmy?" Vince Fitch, a former schoolmate, asked when he saw Andy and Sharon Kitch looking at Cpl. Reddington as a boy in a Central City Little League photo propped by his name.

They did. Both Mr. and Mrs. Kitch went to school with him in Scranton and remembered his swagger and charm. Cpl. Reddington's sister had stitched together the halves of two pairs of pants for her brother, so the front of the new pair was green and the back blue, Mr. Kitch remembered.
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