{"id":1675,"date":"2021-08-07T20:48:51","date_gmt":"2021-08-08T03:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/?p=1675"},"modified":"2021-08-07T20:48:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-08T03:48:51","slug":"an-edc-hero-honored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/2021\/08\/07\/an-edc-hero-honored\/","title":{"rendered":"AN EDC HERO HONORED"},"content":{"rendered":"
WENDY THOMAS, Supervisor District 3<\/pre>\n
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Jacobs\"<\/td>\n<\/td>\nCaptain Paul H. Jacobs was most certainly an El Dorado County hero…<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
In July, a bronze plaque was installed on the wall of the EDC Veterans Monument to commemorate his significant legacy.\u00a0You need to know his story\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n
Captain Jacobs spent 26 years in the Navy, including five combat tours in Vietnam<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 Most notably, he was recognized for his heroism as the commanding officer of the USS Kirk during the fall of Saigon during Operation Frequent Wind.<\/p>\n
As communists swept through Southeast Asia, Jacobs and his crew steamed away from Saigon in their Knox-class destroyer escort<\/strong>.\u00a0 Shortly afterwards, Adm. Donald Whitmire ordered the Kirk to go back and rescue the Vietnamese Navy because\u00a0\u201cWe forgot \u2018em\u201d.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
On May 1, 1975, Jacobs returned to a small island off the coast<\/strong>\u00a0where the Kirk encountered hundreds of boats and ships anchored offshore where Defense Department attach\u00e9 Richard Armitage had gathered the fledgling fleet so they wouldn\u2019t fall into enemy hands.\u00a0 Jacobs and his crew escorted the 18 ships and a flotilla of small boats bearing tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees as they headed for the Philippines.<\/p>\n
During this evacuation, the USS Kirk also was called upon to serve as a landing pad for South Vietnamese helicopters carrying families and friends who were running for their lives<\/strong>.\u00a0 The only problem was, the Kirk was ill-equipped to serve in such a capacity and would have been soon overrun were it not for the creative response by Captain Jacobs.<\/p>\n
With only a small flight deck, Jacobs and his crew landed a helicopter, welcomed the passengers, then pushed the aircraft overboard to make room to land another.<\/strong>\u00a0 In all, roughly\u00a030,000 people were saved<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Captain Jacobs\u2019 efforts were lauded as one of the greatest humanitarian missions in military history.\u00a0 Those 30,000 rescued souls now number over 500,000 people who owe their lives to Captain Paul Jacobs<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
He passed away on December 8, 2020 at his son\u2019s home in Grizzly Flat.\u00a0 It was a great privilege to meet his son at our July 27 Board Meeting where the Board was able to extend our deepest gratitude to Captain Jacobs and finally commemorate his incredible legacy with a bronze plaque on our Veterans Monument.<\/strong><\/p>\n
The book, \u201cThe Lucky Few: The Fall of Saigon and the Rescue Mission of the USS Kirk<\/a>\u201d, written by Jan Herman, recants this incredible story.\u00a0\u00a0Ask for it at your local book store!<\/em><\/p>\n
\"v\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With only a small flight deck, Jacobs and his crew landed a helicopter, welcomed the passengers, then pushed the aircraft overboard to make room to land another.\u00a0 In all, roughly\u00a030,000 people were saved\u00a0and\u00a0Captain Jacobs\u2019 efforts were lauded as one of the greatest humanitarian missions in military history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,22,38,18,1],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs.jpg",602,481,false],"thumbnail":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs-300x240.jpg",300,240,true],"medium_large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs.jpg",602,481,false],"large":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs.jpg",602,481,false],"1536x1536":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs.jpg",602,481,false],"2048x2048":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs.jpg",602,481,false],"darknews-slider-full":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs.jpg",602,481,false],"darknews-featured":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs.jpg",602,481,false],"darknews-medium":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs.jpg",602,481,false],"darknews-medium-square":["http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/PHJocobs-350x350.jpg",350,350,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"News MoLo","author_link":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/author\/admin\/"},"category_info":"Events<\/a> Government<\/a> Kids<\/a> LifeStyle<\/a> News<\/a>","tag_info":"News","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1677,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions\/1677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.newsmolo.com\/EDC\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}