Lenote M. Vigare
Barrancas National Cemetery
Section 54, Site 809
Pensacola, Florida
Pictures and text below are excerpted from the book
|
|
There are many Pararescue “notables” in the recovery business. One of them is Technical Sergeant Lenote M. Vigare, a Californian who made headlines during his Pacific tours. It was he who rescued an injured man from the bottom of a 400-foot precipice in Guam, despite the fact that he had broken his own ankle in dropping from the Rescue helicopter. Vigare, a common-sense Pararescueman, later demonstrated his ingenuity during a search, near Guam, for a missing Flying Tiger Constellation. A Navy minesweeper involved in the search notified authorities that it was two days out of Guam and that its water supply was critical. It was three in the morning when Joint Rescue Control Center checked with Vigare and requested the use of jerry cans from the Pararescueman’s gear. Unfortunately, none was available on the island, but at daybreak, following a plan evolved entirely by Vigare, aircraft dropped 50-pound blocks of ice, wrapped in blankets and tied with line, beside the minesweeper. The sailors had water.
As for Vigare’s work in the recovery business, he effected three successful open sea recoveries of Discoverer XXV, XXIX, and XXXVI during 1961. On two occasions, Sergeant Vigare and his teammates jumped from an HC-54 Rescuemaster wearing 175 pounds of equipment and without outside assistance retrieved the Discoverer reentry vehicles and secured them to a twenty-man raft. Each “save” was made hundreds of miles from land, and Vigare was fully aware that he would have to spend the night on the open sea with minimum survival gear until he could be picked up by a Navy destroyer.
The Northwest Florida Daily News, May 25, 2011 Lenote M. “Joe” Vigare (1930-2011) Chief Master Sgt. (Ret.) Lenote M. (Joe) Vigare, 80, of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., passed away at the Fort Walton Beach Hospital on May 20, 2011. Joe was born Aug. 22, 1930, in Monterey Park, Calif. He was preceded in death by his mother, Anita Wells, and father, James Joseph Vigare.
|