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Assistant Managing Editor EAST LONGMEADOW The last time Anthony Mortillaro set eyes on Lewis Wilborn was 1968. It was quite a year. The United States was at war in Vietnam, famed singer Frankie Lymon died, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and James Earl Ray was arrested for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. It was also the year the dear friendship between Mortillaro and Wilborn, both deployed as a part of the United States Army's 11th Armored Calvary in Vietnam, was lost. Vietnam, 1968 It was the late '60s and Wilborn, a native of Minnesota, and Mortillaro, of New York, had grown rather close serving on the same tank. "I watched his back and he watched mine," Mortillaro recalled. But it was far more than that. Wilborn was set to be Mortillaro's best man at his upcoming nuptials and when they weren't working, they passed the time singing "Oh Donna" as an ode to Wilborn's then-girlfriend who had the same moniker. Spending most of their time together 11 of 12 months out in the field, the two bonded quickly. But one fateful day toward the end of his tour, while Wilborn was serving on another tank, a gas fire blew Mortillaro from the tank giving him second degree burns on his arm and face. He was immediately moved to a hospital in Cam Ranh Bay where he stayed for 20-22 days recovering from his burns. Upon his release he went to base camp and was sent home the next day, never to see Wilborn again. On July 20, 1969, the same day Neil Armstrong took man's first step on the moon, Mortillaro exchanged vows with his wife, Elizabeth, sans Wilborn. In 1975 he relocated from New York and began raising his two children in Western Massachusetts, planting roots in East Longmeadow and founding World Wide Auto Repair in the early '90s. Better late than never As a member of the 11th Armored Cavalry's Veterans of Vietnam & Cambodia, Mortillaro receives their "Thunder Run" quarterly newsletter. Six months ago on the page welcoming new members, there in the list was the name Lewis V. Wilborn. "I started calling the people that were running the paper," Mortillaro said, of his hope with suddenly reconnecting with his lost pal. "They never got back to me. I was getting frustrated because I couldn't find him." The only small detail he had about Wilborn was that he had been from Minnesota. It wasn't much to go on in the scheme of things, but he did have a Springfield private investigator, Jim Simmons, as an acquaintance. One day he mentioned it to him in passing. "We were talking about it and I said 'give me his name and I'll run him for you,'" Simmons told Reminder Publications. "I used several national databases and in using them narrowed down [the persons]. There's no one that can not be found. If you have a starting point as to where someone was, they go back 20-30 years." A week later Simmons came back with some startling news: he'd found Wilborn. And no, he was not living in Minnesota, but in Blackstone, Mass., less than an hour away from Mortillaro's home. "I said 'are you sure you sure you have the right guy?'" Mortillaro said. "He didn't believe me at first," Simmons explained. "I went over to his establishment and I said I'm going to call the house. I spoke to [Wilborn's] wife Barbara and said I've been asked to try to locate him and she said, 'well, hold on a minute' and I put the two of them on the phone." "It was the experience of my life," Mortillaro shared. "I kept thinking I found him, I found him. When I heard his voice ... his voice was distinctive." When Wilborn's tour had ended he eventually moved from Minnesota to Texas and later to Massachusetts. Two weeks after their telephone conversation, Mortillaro, along with his wife, was off to reunite with his long-lost comrade after 38 years. Emotion swept over Mortillaro's face and through his voice as he described coming face-to-face with Wilborn. "The last turn [on the road] to his house, I didn't know what to expect," he said, but one look at his old buddy and everything fell into place. "We have a bond. It was still there. It was almost like we never left," he said. During the span of Mortillaro's absence, Wilborn's brother passed away and at their reunion Mortillaro told him, "I know you lost a brother, but you got one now." There was so much to catch up on that the day-trip turned into a sleepover. Since then the two chat on the telephone every week and Wilborn was scheduled to come down to East Longmeadow on Feb. 2 to meet the Mortillaro clan. "I would have flew out to Minnesota to see him," Mortillaro said, noting that he's glad he never gave up hope of reuniting with Wilborn. "Perseverance," he added. "That's what it was." | ||||||
