04/26/2000

Tusculum Alumnus Featured In MSNBC Program To Air April 30

Charles Joseph 'Chic' Schoener '67

A 1967 Tusculum graduate will be featured this Sunday, April 30, in a special MSNBC program that focuses on the fall of Saigon during the war in Vietnam.

Charles Joseph 'Chic' Schoener, who majored in mathematics at Tusculum, is featured as an on-camera interview subject in the program. The two-hour program, titled "No Way Out: The Fall of Saigon," is hosted by correspondent Forrest Sawyer.

Local program listings should be consulted to determine the exact time the program airs in various locales. In Greeneville, the program is as of this writing scheduled to air Sunday at 8 p.m., followed immediately by a rebroadcast at 10 p.m.

After his graduation from Tusculum College, Schoener was commissioned and went through the Marine Basic School in Quantico, Va., and naval aviator training in Texas, Georgia, Florida and California. Schoener became a highly decorated pilot who flew more than 800 hours in combat, received three Distinguished Flying Crosses for heroism, and accumulated 49 Air Medals. He accumulated almost 5,000 hours in helicopters, including the Marines' CH-46 helicopter, and jet aircraft during his flying career.

During the Vietnam conflict, Schoener participated in both Operation Eagle Pull and Operation Frequent Wind. Operation Eagle Pull took place on April 12, 1975, and involved the evacuation of 287 U.S. and foreign nationals from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Operation Frequent Wind, a helicopter evacuation effort that removed U.S. personnel from Saigon, began on April 29, 1975, and ended 20 hours later on April 30. Photographs and film of that evacuation have yielded some of the most famous images from the Vietnam era.

According to Schoener's wife, Carol (Schuttner) Schoener '67, the television special "deals with the civilian and military experiences" during the Saigon evacuation and the days preceding it. She went on, "Chic ended up flying 13 hours that day, with 10 hours of night flight time under extreme conditions of weather and enemy ground fire." His participation in the effort earned him the Single Mission Air Medal with the Combat V.

In 1977, while assigned to the Marine Helicopter Squadron 262 in Hawaii, Schoener was awarded the Navy/Marine Corps Medal for life-saving after pulling his badly burned copilot through the flames engulfing their crashed CH-46 helicopter. Schoener himself suffered facial burns. "In the years that followed," Carol Schoener wrote, "he was eventually promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel."

Schoener finished his career as a Colonel in the Pentagon and in the Washington, D.C., area, where he served as the USMC assistant for two assistant secretaries of the Navy, and was the USMC liaison officer for the Federal Aviation Administration, for which he was awarded two Legion of Merit Medals and the Defense Superior Service Medal, both being the second-highest peacetime awards for the Department of the Navy and the Department of Defense, respectively.

"We moved to our current address in Florida following his retirement after 30 years of service," Carol Schoener wrote. Schoener's military career saw him stationed at various times in Hawaii, California, Mississippi, and Virginia. His list of military experience and achievement is extensive. Today, Carol Schoener teaches elementary school in Pierson, Fla. The Schoeners have one son, Jason, a 1997 graduate of Virginia Tech.

According to Carol, her husband was not initially inclined to be interviewed for the television special. "Chic is very modest about his accomplishments and had to be coaxed into the on-camera interview," she wrote.