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Soldier: ‘Music is my saving grace’

Tracy man was assigned to communication platoon during Vietnam War

By Gary Kass


Army Private Ronn L. Morgan. Contributed photo

Ronn L. Morgan was born in Tracy, Minn. on 16 July 1950, the second of six children. Because of his mother’s severe disability, he and his siblings were raised by his maternal grandparents, Helen and Ted Lien of Tracy. Sadly, his mother died at age 34 from her disability. Morgan’s dad worked in California, but came home to visit his kids when he could. Morgan was a thoughtful child, saying “I always wanted to be helpful…I loved my grandparents, and I loved my mom and dad too.”


When he was 12, he told his grandmother he wanted a guitar. His grandmother worked at Cain’s Variety in Tracy and bought him a pressed cardboard toy guitar that was sold at the store. Morgan was disappointed and said, “I want a real guitar.” He had a paper route, and his grandparents agreed that when he earned enough money, they would help him buy a guitar. True to their word, they purchased him an Airline guitar from Montgomery Wards.


Morgan retreated into his bedroom and practiced for months until he had taught himself to play the guitar. He never had a single music lesson, yet taught himself to play by ear and with aplomb. As he said, “It was a lot of hard work, I didn’t develop it overnight.”


His musical skills got him noticed by a nascent local band called PJ and the Sleepers. Two members of that band, Gary Rue and Dennis Morgan, would go on to have successful national careers in music. Morgan was soon asked to join an established and successful band called the Black Ides. The band went on to perform venues in southern Minnesota during his high school years.


Ronn graduated in 1970, when he was 19. With the military draft then in effect, he said, “They were kind of waiting for me (to graduate), I had already taken my physical and everything.” Morgan said that in joining the Army, “I decided that I wanted to be in radio repair… (so) I enlisted for that extra year.” Two months after graduation, he found himself headed for Army Basic Training.


The Note Gallery’s owner Terry Schreir and Morgan repair a legacy guitar. Contributed photo

Weighing in at 92 pounds, Morgan found he was the smallest guy in his Basic Training unit. Many expected him to drop out and some bet that he wouldn’t make it. Morgan thought otherwise. He said, “Never give up, that was my mentality, just like playing my guitar, never give up…. If you give up, you have (already) been defeated.” With such grit and determination, Morgan watched as men much bigger than him dropped out, but he never quit. After graduation from Basic Training he was sent to Ft. Benning, GA for AIT (Advanced Individual Training) in radio repair. There he was trained to repair all the Army’s tactical radio and communications equipment. After successful completion of the school, he was soon on a plane heading for South Vietnam.


Morgan was assigned to the 23rd Division, HHT 1-1st Cavalry Battalion, Communications Platoon. The unit, stationed at Khe Sanh, was less than two miles from the DMZ (De-Militarized Zone) separating North and South Vietnam. Almost every night the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) assaulted the compound’s perimeter or fired rockets and mortars into the compound. While Morgan found his services as a radio repairman were critically needed, defending the compound was the first priority. At such times, Morgan was required to man a rifle or a machine gun. During this time Morgan said his home was “a hole in the ground.”


Morgan said his skills as a radio repairman were badly needed by his unit, and he was often on the move about the compound or “borrowed” to other units in the Central Highlands to repair their radios. Morgan said that his (communication) section was assigned a “Command Track” (M-577) a taller version of the M-113 APC (Armored Personnel Carrier) used by most in his unit. He said, “(That’s) where we repaired our radios.” Morgan recalled while in the nearby village of Quan Tre he bought a guitar. Thereafter, he played guitar in his spare time, finding solace in music.


After six months his unit, now assigned to the 196th Infantry Brigade, was sent to Danang, a coastal city further to the south. At Danang, Morgan continued his radio repairs but he was given another extremely important responsibility, managing the Army’s communications codes. All radio communications, frequencies and call signs of the hundreds of units in country are encoded and the codes were assigned to each unit by the Army. Called the Communications Electronic Operational Instructions (CEOI), these codes were changed frequently to assure that the enemy did not become knowledgeable of the codes and frequencies used.   Morgan was given a secret clearance with specialized crypto access. He was responsible to distribute the CEOI to units in central South Vietnam.  Morgan said, “I went out to the line units and delivered these codes to them…I got to fly out (almost) every day.”  He flew in supply and connecting flights in the Huey (CH-6) helicopters or as a passenger in the much smaller Loaches, (OH-6) command helicopter. Morgan said he even hopped rides in the huge Chinook (CH-47) helicopter.


The Black Ides, (L-R) Ronn Morgan, Bob Schmidt, Jim Novas, Rick Morgan, (hiding) Doug Johnson

While in Vietnam, Morgan noticed that large areas of land, especially around the military bases, were totally denuded of vegetation. The normally verdant land was now covered with dead, brown vegetation. When he inquired about it, he was told the vegetation was killed with a broad-spectrum herbicide called Agent Orange. The denuded land denied cover and concealment to the enemy. At the time, Morgan paid little heed to the whole issue.


With his year in Vietnam over, Morgan flew from Danang to Fort Lewis, Wash.   Morgan was then sent to Ft. Bragg, NC for his final year in the Army. Discharged from Ft. Bragg, he returned to Tracy.


Morgan found work at a local manufacture in Tracy, Poly-Bale that made twine for farm use. After two years he elected to move to California and work as a TV repairman in a small TV shop. Two years later, he returned to Tracy and started working at PPG’s Marshall plant making replacement windows. In 1999, he organized another band and called it Gracie’s Kids after the protective mother of the band’s drummer, Doug Dean. The band became a regional success and played many venues in southern Minnesota.


Ronn and Donna. Contributed photo

Morgan had noticed progressive health problems over the years. By the 1980s he had skin lesions of unknown origin, dizziness and disorientation. Hearing from other veterans on the health difficulties caused by Agent Orange and knowing he had been exposed to it, he felt it was likely that he had been affected by it. By 2007, He was too weak to perform with the band and had a series of heart attacks. Eventually Morgan was awarded disability compensation by the VA (Veterans Affairs).


Music remains the central theme in Morgan’s life. While no longer performing, he continues to play in his spare time. For the last nine years he has worked for The Note Gallery, a music store in Marshall as an independent contractor, repairing musical instruments. Morgan’s soulmate is a lady originally from Balaton, Donna Greenfield. They have now been together for 37 years. From childhood, Morgan’s life has largely been connected to music. Proudly, he stated, “Music is my saving grace.”

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