{"id":55771,"date":"2014-10-12T13:03:07","date_gmt":"2014-10-12T17:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=55771"},"modified":"2014-10-13T08:03:18","modified_gmt":"2014-10-13T12:03:18","slug":"francis-graham-completely-legit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=55771","title":{"rendered":"Francis Graham; completely legit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?attachment_id=55772\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-55772\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Francis-Graham-276x300.jpg\" alt=\"Francis Graham\" width=\"276\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-55772\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Francis-Graham-276x300.jpg 276w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Francis-Graham-306x333.jpg 306w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Francis-Graham.jpg 1381w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 276px) 100vw, 276px\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Someone sent us this Francis Graham fellow to check on because the story that he told <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wacotrib.com\/news\/veterans_profiles\/voices-of-valor-francis-graham\/article_be7d05d5-e56a-5bc3-b688-26ce6644af24.html\">the local news <\/a>was implausible. He claimed to be a Navy diver during the Korean War and Special Forces during Vietnam. The article says that he joined the Army Air Corps in 1947, then the Navy when he was discharged from the fledgling Air Force;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> \u201cI didn\u2019t like the ship or the duty,\u201d he said. While on the LST, another seaman also wanted off the ship. He told Graham the military was taking volunteers for underwater demolition. They both applied for the specialty, which became the forerunner of the Navy Seals.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>In 1962, he joined the Green Berets, serving alternately with the 5th, 6th, 10th (and later, the 7th) Special Forces. On his first assignment in Vietnam in 1963, his team leader was none other than Ola Lee Mize, a Vietnam Medal of Honor recipient. Graham eventually retired from Special Forces in 1971.<\/p>\n<p>Even though Graham had dropped out of school to join the military, after his retirement, he went all the way through college, earning his Ph.D. in Psychology in 1976. He and his wife, Patricia (Bogard) moved to Waco in 1982; they have been married now for 30 years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, according to Don Shipley (Graham was in Class #1, UDT Team #1) and Mary, it&#8217;s all completely true. I&#8217;m so glad, actually. After dealing with the phonies, it&#8217;s refreshing to bump into a real hero who doesn&#8217;t have to embellish his story. I&#8217;m just hoping that you feel the same elation I did to accidentally brush up against the history of 84-year-old Francis Graham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Someone sent us this Francis Graham fellow to check on because the story that he told &hellip; <a title=\"Francis Graham; completely legit\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=55771\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Francis Graham; completely legit<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55771"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55771\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}