Operation Eagle Visit, Screaming Eagles

Operation Eagle Visit
May 15, 2012
By Bill Silverfarb
Daily Journal staff

In 1968, the San Mateo City Council voted to adopt the 101st Airborne Division, known as the Screaming Eagles after a letter from Sgt. Joe Artavia (bottom right) to his sister Linda asked the city to do so. San Mateo was the only city in the U.S. that held a welcome home parade in 1972. Howard Shepardson (center right) will be coming back to San Mateo for the 40th anniversary of the parade this Memorial Day weekend. He was given a key to the city after the Screaming Eagles were adopted in 1970.

In 1968, the San Mateo City Council voted to adopt an infantry regiment with the 101st Airborne to help improve morale among the fighting troops at war in Vietnam.

With the adoption, San Mateo residents and city staff started sending messages of love and support from home in care packages to members of Alpha Company, 1-327 Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, known as the “Screaming Eagles.”

The support came at a time when troops in Vietnam had very little contact with loved ones here in the United States and opponents of the conflict demonstrated across the country. Students boycotted class in solidarity with the anti-war movement.

In 1972, in response to renewed escalation of bombing in Vietnam, university students around the country broke into campus buildings and threatened strikes in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York.

But in San Mateo, the city held a welcome home parade in 1972 for its adopted sons, the only city in the entire United States to do so.

Forty years later, the city is set to honor the current members of the Screaming Eagles, recently returned from a 12-month tour of duty in Afghanistan and those alums of the group that fought in Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere in a series of events Memorial Day weekend.

San Mateo adopted the Screaming Eagles after a letter home from Sgt. Joe Artavia to his sister Linda in December 1967.

“Sis do you think you could get the City of San Mateo to “Adopt” us, for morale support? You see, many of the guys aren’t getting mail and maybe someone back home could write us and we would write back. I know it would bring their morale up AS HIGH AS THE CLOUDS, please try Sis.”

Three months later, the San Mateo City Council passed a resolution to adopt the company. Three weeks later, Artavia would become the first adopted son to die in action in Vietnam.
read more here