If I had a hammer ...

If I had a hammer ...

By LARRY HENDRICKS Assistant City Editor | Posted: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 5:00 am | (0) Comments

It was no ordinary hammer.

His brother Wayne, a Vietnam War veteran, gave it to him before dying of an illness attributed to exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange.
"It's all I had left of my brother," said Ash Fork resident Ron McElwain, who lost the hammer in the westside Flagstaff Home Depot parking lot last week.
He is hopeful somebody found it and can give it back to him.
McElwain said the hammer is a Craftsman framing hammer with an orange fiberglass handle and black rubber grip. The hammer came to McElwain 14 years ago while the two brothers, both carpenters who come from a long like of carpenters, were working on a job in Baltimore.

"At the end of the job, I put the hammer in the back of my truck by accident," McElwain said, adding that he called his older brother right away to tell him he had it.

"He said, 'Keep it.'"

McElwain had been using the hammer ever since.

Then, five years ago, his brother died just before Christmas.

"I always looked up to my older brother," McElwain said, adding that he went into the service just like his brother as soon as he graduated from high school.
His brother served a tour of duty in Vietnam and returned home in 1970 a changed man. Ron did not go to Vietnam while he was in the service. While in Vietnam, Wayne had been exposed to the defoliant Agent Orange, McElwain said.
According to information from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the herbicide was used between 1961 and 1971 to take the leaves off trees to prevent enemy forces from hiding under the canopies.

Several diseases are recognized by Veterans Affairs as being linked to the exposure of Agent Orange. Among them are respiratory cancers, prostate cancer and leukemia.
McElwain is asking whoever found the hammer to give him a call and return it.
"It would mean everything in the world to me," McElwain said. "Wayne was one of my heroes."

Larry Hendricks can be reached at 556-2262 or lhendricks@azdailysun.com .
Information, please

Anybody with information on the hammer can call Ron McElwain at 978-394-5314, or e-mail him at wtfo234@yahoo.com.

Posted in Local on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 5:00 am Updated: 10:39 pm. | Tags: