I hope people remember Max Yabes today

He was a Medal of Honor winner from Oakridge, Ore., a little timber town I covered for the Eugene Register-Guard newspaper a million years ago.

This is a rubbing from the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C. If you ever get the opportunity, you should go walk that V shape and see the names. Max is there.

I wanted to say something about this before Memorial Day ends. The Max Yabes story is one of my favorites from 37 years in Oregon journalism because of how it came to mind and how it turned out. Max got the attention and distinction he deserved, and a little town that had been economically gut punched by the timber wars stood up and welcomed him home. They’re taking care of him still, I’m glad to say.

I won’t go through the whole story here, just the highlights. I found Max’s name in this booklet, which was one of the many source and directory books we had in the newsroom library (pre-Internet) at the Register-Guard newspaper in Eugene, Ore.

Rules of Journalism reminder: Rule #7 Somebody, Somewhere, Wrote it Down. (So read everything)

Here are the complete rules.

I found Max’s name in the state Vietnam memorial booklet, saw he was from a town I covered, and that he’d won the Medal of Honor. I’m a native Oregonian but I’d never heard of him, and Oregon was small enough then that I would have been familiar with his story if anyone had told it. And I thought, what the hell? Which is always a good story prompt, in journalism.

It turned out at least one of Max’s old friends from high school — part of the “Java Joes” buddies group, as they called themselves — was still around Oakridge. I went to see him and the wonderful story unfolded from there.

The man showed me a scrapbook and told me about his friend Max and about their days in Oakridge. He was a rough old timberman and I could see the memories and the loss take hold of him as he turned the pages in the scrapbook. “Look at me,” he said, “60 years old and almost a-bawlin’.”

In the newspaper story, I said Max was like the prophet who is not without honor “save in his own country.” Which was the truth. At the time, Oakridge High School had a hallway lined with photos of accomplished alumni, but Max Yabes — a Medal of Honor winner — wasn’t among them because he’d dropped out of school in 1950 to join the Army. Because he didn’t graduate, he wasn’t eligible for inclusion in the school’s Hall of Fame. He’d been killed in combat in Vietnam in 1967, and over the course of 30 years or so, I guess people forgot about him. We all wanted to move on from the mess of Vietnam, I guess.

But I found some of Max’s friends and family, interviewed them and wrote about him for the R-G. The story seemed to spark something: People in town got together and agreed, in effect, to do right by Max Yabes. They organized, exchanged ideas, raised money and hired a sculptor to create a bust of Max. They set it in a beautiful park in town and it’s there to this day.

The Oregon Department of Veterans’ Affairs has a nice link to Max's story.

All these years later, I contacted George Custer, the editor of the Highway 58 Herald, the fine news outlet in town, and asked how Max was doing.

George replied: “Not only am I the editor here at The Herald, I'm also a member of the American Legion Post 64, Max Yabes Chapter. 

“During our last meeting, a detail was selected to check the status of the memorial, as we do a couple of times a year. Our Post is responsible for its care and maintenance. It's doing fine. We sometimes have a veterans' event at the monument and read aloud Maximo's citation.”

George kindly sent along some photos of the memorial. Here’s one:

Happy Memorial Day, First Sgt. Maximo Yabes. Thank you.