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thedrifter
08-03-09, 07:42 AM
Gone but never forgotten: Iwo Jima veteran passes away at 87

7/31/2009 By Cpl. Ryan Rholes , Marine Corps Air Station Miramar
SAN DIEGO, Calif., - —

“Every man there knew they would have to go forward and that some of them would be killed,” said 1st Lt. Tedd Thomey to his friend Tom Hennesy. “But every man there did go forward, and, yes, some of them were killed.”

That was the attitude of the men who lived and died on the black sands of Iwo Jima, the setting of the Marine Corps’ bloodiest battle. Although the warriors who fought on that small island are passing away, their memory and legacy remains, ingrained thoroughly into the heart and mind of every Marine.

So, although Thomey, wounded on Iwo Jima, passed away Dec. 1, 2008, he is not completely gone. And as long as there are Marines, he and his peers will remain legends and heroes to at least a few.

Thomey landed on Iwo Jima Feb. 19, 1945, in the third wave of the assault with the 5th Marine Division, and was wounded before night fell. His companions eventually extracted him from the beach and took him to a medical ship. Thomey ate ice cream that night, nursing his heel, pierced by a bullet from a Japanese defender.

“He cried the first time he told me of eating ice cream while his buddies fought for a toehold on the beach,” said Hennesy, a long-time friend of Thomey’s. “He cried the second time, too.”

Thomey eventually recovered and returned home to his wife, who he had met while attending San Diego State College, which is now San Diego State University.

“He was a writer, you know, and he was working for the school paper,” said, Patricia Thomey, Tedd’s wife of 65 years. “Hitler was already burning books then, so he stacked a pile of books Hitler would have burned and had me sit on them so he could take a picture for the paper.”

It was around the time Tedd first met Patricia that he decided to join the military. He first visited the Navy, who turned him away because of medical issues. However, the Marine Corps accepted him, allowing him to finish his senior year of college. Tedd and his wife married on Dec. 11, 1943.

“I knew he was going overseas, but everyone had to do their part,” said Patricia. “That’s just how it was.”

After his service, Tedd returned to Southern California where he worked as a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, whose photo staff included Joe Rosenthal; the two remained friends until Rosenthal passed away. Later, he worked as a restaurant critic, writing reviews for the Long Beach Independent and Press Telegram.

“I really admired how seriously he took his responsibility,” said Tedd’s daughter Jill. “He was always so fair in his reviews. He’d go in incognito; walk in with his hand over his face or he’d hide behind his menu. And he never identified himself until he was finished eating.”

But Tedd’s proudest accomplishment, aside from serving as a Marine, was setting the record straight about Joe Rosenthal and Marine combat photographer Sgt. Bill Genaust in his book, Immortal Images, according to his family. Critics widely accused the photographers of staging their famous shots, which Tedd found deeply offensive, since Genaust gave his life for his country nine days after recording the flag raising atop Mt. Suribachi.

Tedd’s ambition to disprove the idea that his friends had staged the famous images did not stop with his book; he also hand-carried a bronze plaque honoring Genaust to Iwo Jima. He returned with a film canister filled with the island’s sand.

“He never talked about the war with me because I was working for the Navy and knew what was happening there,” said Patricia. “He never felt the need to go into the details with me. The only thing he ever said about the island was how he remembered the sand and how hard it was to move through.”

Tedd was a poet, a writer, a critic, a husband, father and friend. But, above all he was Marine, a warrior willing to give everything to protect the ones he loved and the freedoms that Americans enjoy and value. Semper Fidelis.

Ellie