Vietnam Veteran/Paramedic finally receiving Silver Star

Vietnam veteran from Rye Brook to get long-overdue Silver Star
Jul 31, 2012
Written by
Richard Liebson

RYE BROOK — Thomas Giorgi spent his career saving lives as a New York City paramedic, but it was the first one he ever tried to save, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, that has finally earned him the Silver Star.

The 67-year-old Port Chester native got word last week from Rep. Nita Lowey’s office that he’d been approved for the nation’s third-highest award for military valor, which will be presented during a ceremony early in August.

“I started to cry when they told me, it was so overwhelming,” he said. “I felt it would never happen. It’s just lifted me up so much.”

Giorgi, a 1963 graduate of Port Chester High School, was making good money as an X-ray technician, driving a Corvette and playing drums in a local rock ’n’roll band when he was drafted in August 1965.

Less than a year later, on July 3, 1966, Pfc. Giorgi and 17 other members of his squad from the Army’s 25th Infantry Division were on a patrol near the Cambodian border when they came across a deserted enemy base camp. Already hot, sticky and wet from the monsoon rains, the squad was made more uneasy by the eerie silence.
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