This is Bob LaPointe PJ Class 71-1. I was a PJ 1970-1995 and I need your help.
I am the historian for the USAF PJ Association (PJA) and I am in the process of creating a PJ history website for the association. The beginnings of it are online at www.pjhistory.org
The assistance I need is in
three areas:
1. Pictures of PJs killed in action or line of duty (list at end of email)
2. Copies of medals received for SAR missions
3. A volunteer to work on the websites search bar function
I have made good progress on publishing many of the medals received by PJs. You can view the medals completed at https://pjhistory.org/Medals/Index.htm If you have medals awarded for specific missions and want them added to the site email me copies of those medals. We are not publishing end of tour medals; just SAR medals. Does not matter if it is a Commendation Medal or a Silver Star. If you received
a SAR award, the association would like to add it to our listing. If you also have newspaper/magazine articles concerning your award, send that also. The reasons for putting this information into the PJA’s database is that they show what PJs offer the Air Force when we are not in war. As usual the Air Force is more interested in funding hardware than personnel they perceive as not needed in peacetime. We have seen this many times over the years; cutbacks in PJ funding between conflicts. The
medals we collect add justification to retention of PJs in peacetime.
I am presently working on a section titled PJs killed in action or in the line of duty. You can view what has been completed at https://pjhistory.org/KLOD/KLOD.htm This section is proceeding very slowly because I don’t have a lot of information on most of the killed in the line of duty. I do have at least 1 picture of those PJs killed in action during the Vietnam and GWOT. If you have pictures, newspaper/magazine articles, or unit memorial handouts, I really could use them for the site. Our goal is to
show several pictures of each KIA and a few of his family. People who visit the memorial page hopefully will leave with a greater understanding of the sacrifices the deceased AND his family have made for our country. The families’ sacrifices are frequently overlooked and we do not want that to happen to our PJ families.
Last, I could use some technical help on the search feature of our website. The goal is for a visitor to insert key words into the search bar and then get results from ALL the documents on the website. I’ve been able to insert a search bar on the homepage of the website. You can try it out at https://pjhistory.org/ then on the right side of the homepage you will see the search option. But it does not work and gives me the error code 404: Page not found. I have not worked on a website since I left Alaska for the Philippines in 2001. My website design knowledge is 23 years old and I am learning how to do it all over again. If you know how to implement a search function into a website, I could use
the help. After that, I would like to add the Vietnam SAR database. This MS-Access database contains over 3000 SARs, who flew on them, who was rescued, where it happened and much more. This database will have it’s own site page. Visitors will be able to put the name of a PJ who served in the Vietnam War and then get a list of all the missions that PJ had flown. A survivor could put his name in the search box and find out who rescued him. Rescue pilots could put their name and find out who flew
with them on that mission, etc. etc.
When I had this working on my 2001 website (pjsinnam.com), I remember it was a complicated process and I suspect it will again be a technically hard process again. So, if you know how to do this and have some time to spare, your history website could use your help.
I can be contacted at rlapointe@gci.net Will provide a phone number via email but don’t want to send it out to hundreds of persons in a mass email.
I am also on Facebook messenger with user name
Robert Lapointe. I do not use Facebook for anything but Messenger. My wife manages the regular Facebook page but I rarely look at it. Too many things to do and too little time to do them all.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. This is your history site and it needs your help.
