JOHN WALTON

Yet, the man who died Monday when his ultra-light aircraft crashed in Grand Teton National Park, was the same, humble, caring man I first met 37 years ago in Phu Bai, South Vietnam.

In the early days of our friendship, we exchanged family notes: my dad was a milkman, his dad "had a five-and-dime store" in Bentonville, Ark., and we had strong, no-nonsense moms.

In May 1968, we were young Green Berets who had just entered the secret war that was fought during the Vietnam War. We were stationed at FOB 1 in Phu Bai as members of small reconnaissance teams that ran top-secret missions across the fence into Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam.

In August of '68, on one such mission, Walton's six-man recon team was surrounded and overrun by enemy soldiers. The attack was so fierce, the team leader called an airstrike on his team to break the enemy attack. That strike killed one team member, wounded the team leader and severed the right leg of the Green Beret radio operator Tom Cunningham Jr., of Durham, N.H. Another team member was wounded four times by AK-47 gunfire by an enemy soldier whom Walton killed.

A South Vietnamese helicopter pilot, Capt. Thinh Dinh, landed and picked up the five living members of the team while under heavy gunfire and barely extracted the team from its sure-death firefight with hundreds of enemy soldiers.

As '68 rolled along, our friendship grew as we became strong competitors in Scrabble, poker and impromptu football games.

He also shared his dreams: he said that if he lived, he would return to the U.S., buy a motorcycle and drive across country. Then, he'd get his pilot license, find a job and explore Mexico and Central and South America.

He pursued those dreams with vigor, eventually becoming a crop-duster for six months a year, while driving his VW bus south, into and through Mexico. During those years, I'd called his mom for John's latest phone number while my mom would get calls from John. By the '80s, as Wal-Mart became a force to be reckoned with, John went his own way, building several success businesses while living with his wife, Christy, on a trimaran before they bought a sailing captain's historic house in National City. They also had a beach in North County.

John Walton also cared about the environment. When we met for a recent breakfast in Oceanside, he drove a small Toyota hybrid.

And, he remembered his comrades from Vietnam. In 2003, he flew his executive jet to Fargo, N.D., to pick up now-Col. Thinh and family to fly them to a reunion in Las Vegas that honored the Vietnamese pilots who operated in the secret war.

That's the kind of guy he was ---- one who cared more about others than himself.

J. Stryker Meyer can be reached at (760) 901-4089.