Lohmann: Where is Tommie Cole - the medic and Virginian once featured on the cover of Life magazine?

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Lohmann: Where is Tommie Cole - the medic and Virginian once featured on the cover of Life magazine?

BY BILL LOHMANN Richmond Times-Dispatch 4 hrs ago



The Feb. 11, 1966, cover of Life magazine featured medic Thomas “Tommie” Cole (right), who grew up in Richmond.

Henri Huet/LIFE Magazine

A few years ago, Clay Mountcastle’s father, Jack, a Vietnam veteran, showed him a copy of a 1966 issue of Life Magazine — a once wildly popular weekly publication — that he had saved. It featured a cover photograph of a young Army medic in Vietnam, a bandage covering his eyes, tending to a wounded comrade. ... The headline read: “The War Goes On.”

Besides the fact it was a most compelling, even haunting, image, the photo hit close to home: The medic was Richmonder Thomas (also known as Tommie) Cole, whose fleeting moment of fame — the picture by eminent Associated Press photographer Henri Huet also was published in newspapers around the country, including the Times-Dispatch — cast him in the spotlight briefly and then he was gone. His whereabouts after the war have been a mystery.

Clay Mountcastle, director of the Virginia War Memorial, got caught up in the mystery, poking around the Internet, seeking clues to what became of Cole. Despite coming up dry, Mountcastle hasn’t given up. ... On Thursday, Feb. 11 –- the 55th anniversary of the Life cover featuring Cole — Mountcastle is hosting a VWM Livestream program: “Where’s Tommie Cole?” ... The online-only program is free and open to the public, though registration is required.

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On Feb. 10, 1971, a day short of five years since his famous Life magazine cover shot of Cole, Huet and three other photojournalists died in a helicopter crash while accompanying a Republic of Vietnam general on an inspection tour of the battlefront. Huet was 43.

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