Garfield Langhorne Avenue script

Maple Avenue and East Main Street

Narrator: Yvonne Langhorn Reid

This is Yvonne Langhorn Reid, the oldest sister of PFC Garfield M. Langhorn. In 2011, the Riverhead Town Board renamed Maple Avenue after my brother Garfield Langhorn. He was Riverhead’s only Medal of Honor recipient.

Garfield was born in Cumberland, Virginia, in 1948, but when he was 10, our parents moved north, like so many other African Americans in the Great Migration. Our father, also named Garfield, worked on the Wells-Evans farm on Sound Avenue and lived in an old schoolhouse that had been converted to a tenant house, but still lacked indoor plumbing or even running water. Garfield attended the Northville Elementary School about a mile down the street with his three sisters and graduated from Riverhead High School, where he was on the track and wrestling teams. After the farm ceased operating, the family moved to Maple Avenue here in downtown Riverhead and Garfield’s father became a tool supervisor for Brookhaven National Laboratory, from which he retired in1987.

After graduating from Riverhead High School in the class of 1967, Garfield was drafted into the U. S. Army. Leaving behind the woman he was engaged to marry; he was shipped off to Vietnam in November 1968 as a private first class. There he served as a radio operator with an airmobile squadron. On January 15, 1969, Garfield's unit attempted to rescue the crew of a downed Cobra helicopter in Pleiku Province. After finding the crash site and the bodies of the dead crewmen in dense jungle, the unit turned back, only to be attacked by entrenched North Vietnamese forces. Garfield was providing radio coordination with command-and-control aircraft overhead.

Darkness soon fell, making it impossible for the circling gunships to give accurate support. The Viet Cong began to probe the perimeter. An enemy hand grenade landed in front of Garfield and a few feet from some of his comrades who had become casualties. Choosing to protect these wounded, he unhesitatingly threw himself on the grenade, scooped it beneath his body and absorbed the blast. By sacrificing himself, he saved the lives of his comrades.

He was only 20. He is buried in the Riverhead Cemetery. For his extraordinary heroism at the cost of his life, President Nixon awarded him the Medal of Honor in 1970.