“About two or three years ago I went on the military website powered by Ancestry to test and see what it said for myself,” Goggin said. “I didn’t find anything, even though I had been in the service myself so I thought the site was kind of worthless. I decided to look up an old (Clymer Central School) classmate of mine and then the website exploded with stuff.”

Goggin would later find out there was a website in Louisiana run by a few guys who were working to track down fellow Vietnam soldiers, including those who died.

Goggin had done a search on Dennis Hogenboom, who was killed in Vietnam in June 1970. He would come to find out that Hogenboom had been awarded a Bronze Star.

“I found the Bronze Star certificate among the stuff, but all I could read on it was his name,” Goggin said. “No one else I talked to in our class, that being the class of 1962 (at Clymer), knew anything about it. I tracked down his widow, Patsy Lane, and this led to the ceremony.”

Members of the Clymer Central School Class of 1962 and Dennis Hogenboom’s family are pictured. Submitted photo

Goggin and two other classmates of his met with Lane when she came up to Clymer about a year and a half ago, and they showed her the things from the website and the Bronze Star certificate. They asked her how she would feel about putting everything they found on the website together in a correct manner.

Ribbons on some of the medals had to be replaced, but they were able to keep the original medals themselves, along with also replacing some of the emblems that were meant to be part of his honors but were not there. This also includes a medal given to casualties in Vietnam given by the New York state government.

“We had a small presentation for the class of 1962 and some of the teachers and the ones they invited,” Goggin said. “We were also assisted by the VFW and color guard.”

The Bronze Star ceremony took place Sept. 2 in the Clymer Central School elementary gym. Lt. Col. William Koehle was the presenter, with the assistant being Gunnery Sgt. Steve Johnson; Goggin — who was a warrant officer — as the adjutant; the chaplain being Spec 4 Rodney White, and the Color Guard, VFW, and Mayville also being there and logistics being done by Wayne Norcross of the class of 1962.

Goggin said they wanted the ceremony to be something dignified and representative of the honor that Hogenboom was given.

“Our class paid for the whole thing, and I think it went off without a hitch,” Goggin said. “It was respectable and dignified, just like we wanted.”