War hero honored at new pump track park
Friends, family gather as city names park for Carl Hughes Jr.
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Carl Hughes’ last act saved Jim Gibbons’ life over 50 years ago
Jim Gibbons still has facial paralysis from wounds he received in the Vietnam war in 1969. Shot in the head, Gibbons had survived the bullets, but was unconscious and face down in a water puddle, drowning. Next to him was his fellow soldier and friend, Carl Hughes Jr. Hughes’ last acts after being shot in the chest were to take out the two enemy soldiers and to pull Gibbons’ face out of the water.
Despite his war wounds, Gibbons today is a spry, 74-year-old who, along with his wife Sinuon, came from their Massachusetts home to pay tribute and to help dedicate Kokomo’s new pump track skate park to Hughes. A large group of veterans and local dignitaries gathered on the hot summer day along with Gibbons to remember their friend and relative.
“He impressed me,” said Gibbons, talking about Hughes. “I didn’t know anyone from the middle of the country; I was from Boston.”
But the connection between the two, one from the Midwest, the other from Boston’s metro area town of Quincy, seemed to be a familiar theme for an Indiana native: basketball.
“(Hughes) was impressed that I was from Boston … The Celtics,” said Gibbons.
He said that Hughes was a real fan of Bob Cousy, the famed Celtics point guard, and the two talked basketball frequently.
When talking about the day he was wounded and Hughes was killed, Gibbons remembers going out on a sweep for enemy combatants that day through the jungle where his patrol was ambushed, and he was shot in the head, rendering him unconscious.
“So, this machine gunner opened up on us, shot a sergeant, and then shot me,” said Gibbons.
He did not know the entire story for years afterward, but learned what happened by corresponding with Hughes’ widow, Karen. After hearing the whole story and reading the citations and commendations Hughes posthumously received, Gibbons said he was once again, “Impressed … he saved my life. He was a hero to me.”
Hughes has been immortalized by the City of Kokomo by having his name affixed to the new pump track park on the site of the former Northside Little League. A plaque commemorating the war hero is on display at the park, along with a patriotic mural, painted by Rhonda Eads.