Amityville dedicates plaque, will rename VFW post to honor Edward Asip, Marine killed in Vietnam

The only Amityville resident to be killed in action during the Vietnam War was honored Friday with a plaque in the center of his hometown 55 years after his death.

Edward Asip, a Marine, was killed on May 8, 1967, just 10 days before his 20th birthday. He had been in the country less than a month.

The bronze plaque will be placed on the memorial clock near the gazebo in the village triangle.

“It’s a long time coming,” said Mayor Dennis Siry.

Siry credited resident Don McVeety, 80, who served in the Marines from 1961 to 1964, for bringing Asip’s name to the forefront. With the help of Navy veteran Chuck Vinciulla, 74, commander of Amityville Sgt. John J. Kreyer VFW Post 7223, the post will be renamed Saturday to the Sgt. John J. Kreyer and Edward V. Asip VFW Post.

At the ceremony for the plaque, Asip’s brother, Mike, 69, of Powhatan, Virginia, was overcome with emotion.

“Amityville is our hometown, so for this to happen is phenomenal,” he said. “To honor him, to remember him 55 years later is even sweeter than if it had happened right away in a way. They don’t forget what the veterans, those killed in action, did for our country.”

His brother was the oldest son of a World War II Navy veteran in a family of five boys and a girl. Asip was adventurous and mischievous as a child, recalled his sister, Kathleen Scotti, 81, of West Hartford, Connecticut.

“He tried my parents’ patience, but he was a good kid,” she said in a phone interview.

Lean and energetic, Asip was versatile on the baseball and football fields throughout his life, his siblings said.

James Asip, 73, of Luquillo, Puerto Rico, was the closest in age to his older brother, whom he remembers as being gregarious and popular.

“He was the athlete, he had all the girls,” James Asip recalled in a phone interview. “He was good-looking and had a dynamic personality.”

Asip wanted to enlist in the Marines right after graduating Amityville High School. His sister’s husband tried to dissuade him due to the war, but he was undeterred, she said.

“He was excited, it was an adventure,” Scotti said.

While back in Amityville after boot camp, Asip taught James how to spit-shine his shoes, a skill that came in handy a year later when he enlisted in the Navy.

It was James Asip, then 17, who was home when an Amityville police sergeant came looking for his father, saying there was a Marine who needed to speak with him. After news of Asip’s death came out, it was also James who, trying to shield his parents, fielded a half-dozen hate-filled phone calls to the family’s home castigating his brother’s participation in the war.

Weeks after Asip’s death, the family received a letter he had written postmarked the day he died. He talked about how his unit had been under heavy fire, asked about how family members were doing and requested they send candy and books for his birthday.

The honors being given to his brother are touching, but bittersweet even 55 years later, James Asip said.

“It’s tough,” he said. “They say time heals all wounds, but it doesn’t.”  

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.