By Lee Ann Sides Garrett
Salisbury Post
Rodney Cress is a fighter. A Vietnam vet and former police officer, he knows injustice when he sees it and does everything he can to fight it. Since retiring from law enforcement, Cress has become a volunteer veterans’ advocate.
“As a veteran, I find it my duty and responsibility to make sure that those who fought and died for our country, have the highest honor we can bestow on them,” says Cress. “My veins run red, white and blue. I am only one of many who try to show our veterans that we still care about them.”
Since 2002, Cress has given speeches at churches, schools, veteran’s groups and rallies to help local veterans get their benefits.
“I’m not a great speaker,” Cress says. “But I speak from the heart.”
During the Vietnam war, Cress was part of six-men teams called hunter/killer teams. They carried 100-pound packs in 110-plus-degree temperatures at 100 percent humidity.
“I weighed 200 pounds when we shipped out,” Cress says. “I weighed 160 pounds when I came back.”
Cress says time in the jungle was hard. “We had no GPS. We had no idea where we were. If it wasn’t for Texas Pete and Kool-Aid, I would never have survived the jungles of Vietnam.”
Having suffered these hardships helps Cress understand the kinds of hard times all veterans go through. But he doesn’t just feel for them. His kind heart drives him to do anything he can, including donating his time and money, to help other veterans.
Cress worked tirelessly to acquire federal HUD funding to house homeless veterans. There are 275,000 homeless veterans nationwide, he says. He received $232,609, enough to house 35 veterans for a year. “Thirty-five is a start,” he says. Cress has also collected books for soldiers in Iraq with the help of a local bank, paying for most of the boxes and shipping out of his pocket.
But Cress’ favorite project at the moment involves a Civil War soldier, a Union soldier from Connecticut and Medal of Honor winner buried in a mass grave at the Salisbury National Cemetery.
“I find it unacceptable that since 1865, there is no record that anyone has attempted to mark the grave of Lorenzo Deming as a Medal of Honor winner,” says Cress.
Cress says he stumbled on the story of Deming’s heroism while reading a Civil War history book. Deming was part of the crew of a torpedo boat or picket boat that rammed and sank the USS Albemarle, a Confederate ironclad ship. The ship had sunk or driven off several Union ships in the Roanoke River in Plymouth, NC. The commander of the picket boat, Lt. William Cushing and his 14-man crew brought their small boat within 20 feet of the Albemarle by jumping over 30 feet of logs and ramming a spar-torpedo, a long pole with a torpedo on the end into the Albemarle. The force knocked Cushing and another crewmember in the water. Two other crew members died and the other 10, including Deming, were captured and brought to Salisbury Prison, where they later died. President Lincoln awarded the Medal of Honor to the entire crew of the picket boat after Deming’s death. Deming died of pneumonia and was buried with 11,700 other soldiers who perished between October 1864 and February 1865, when the Salisbury prison population rose so high that instead of giving each dead soldier a headstone, soldiers were buried in one of 18 mass grave trenches about 24 feet long.
“I understand the fact that he did indeed fight for the North against the South in the worst war in our history for loss of American lives, over 600,000 died from 1861 to 1865,” Cress says. “But that does not take away from the fact that he was an American soldier.”
Since this discovery, Cress has fought to have a headstone erected for Deming at the Salisbury National Cemetery designating him as a Medal of Honor winner. After he contacted Sen. Richard Burr’s office, Mindi Walker, a representative from Burr’s office, hand-carried a request for Deming’s headstone to the under secretary of the Veterans Administration, William Tuerk. Tuerk is verifying that Deming is indeed buried at the Salisbury National Cemetery. Cress has also arranged for an honorable burial for Deming. Once the headstone is approved and placed, Cress is sure he’ll find another project to work on.
“There are unsung heroes everywhere,” says Cress. “Some of them are too proud to recognize themselves. I do it for them.”