Word: gitelson
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Thank you so much for the article on David Gitelson [Feb. 9]. I went to school with Dave from ages eleven to 13, and we used to be driven to school in the same car pool. During those few years, we would talk, and his humility was so great that he thought nothing of once-at the expense of a fist fight-stopping two boys from kicking over anthills. After he was killed, I called two local papers and asked the editors why they hadn't done a column on , him, and one answer was, "Is that story really...
Though he was the son of a successful Los Angeles realtor, David Gitelson, 26, lived in Viet Nam like the lowliest peasant. His home was a palm-frond shack in Ba The, a tiny Mekong Delta village 25 miles from the nearest U.S. settlement. Carrying all his worldly possessions in a wheat sack, Gitelson traveled the back canals of the Delta in sandals and faded Levi's, entertaining peasants with his concertina and instructing them in the modern farming methods he had picked up as an honor student at the University of California at Davis. The peasants called...
Characteristically, Gitelson tried to refuse the award, instead recommended his team leader but warned Macalester to hurry. "He's come close to getting blown up a couple of times," he wrote, "so you'd better grab him while he's still available." But Macalester stuck by its choice of Gitelson, and decided to give it to him in absentia...
Fortnight ago, Gitelson left the Vietnamese library he was building in Ba The and headed for a nearby village that had accidentally been bombed by American planes. At almost the same moment that a friend was accepting the award for him at Macalester in St. Paul, Minn., 8,500 miles away, David Gitelson was killed by the Viet Cong...
Strength & Stamina. Despite firsthand exposure to Viet Cong terrorism, many I.V.S.ers retain their distaste for the war. "We're nothing more than sugar-coating for the genocide that's going on here," argues David Gitelson, 25, a U.C.L.A. graduate and ex-G.I. now stationed in the Delta. A lanky loner who lopes around in sandals and faded Levi's, Gitelson carries his worldly possessions with him in a wheat sack, is known to the Vietnamese as "my ngheo"-the poor American. U.S. officials consider him the most effective American of all the thousands involved in Delta...