John Ripley, who grew up in Radford and later became a war hero in Vietnam will soon receive the Medal of Honor -- the highest military decoration.
In the eyes of many, this award is long overdue.
Grainy black and white network film footage from Vietnam shows then-Captain John Ripley speaking to network correspondents in Dong Ha, Vietnam in 1972. He was advising the South Vietnamese 3rd Marine Battalion on one side of the Cua Viet River, while enemy troops prepared to invade from the other.
It would come down to Ripley himself to prevent the invasion.
“By the last couple of days of March, it’s evident that this is a major invasion. All of the ground sensors are going off, there’s troop sightings, there are armored battalion and regiment sightings,” said Ripley’s son Tom, who has been working behind the scenes for years to get his father the recognition he believes he deserves.
As tanks and troops on the friendly side began to dig in, they knew they had little chance against the much larger North Vietnamese force.
“The Vietnamese Marine Battalion’s orders from the Vietnamese chain of command was to hold and die. And my father’s the advisor to this,” Ripley said.
The only way to hold off the enemy was to blow up the bridge. So, Ripley -- a trained demolitions expert climbs onto the steel beneath the bridge, rigging charges. Depicted in a diorama at the U.S. Naval Academy, He is seen hanging by his hands, explosive charges on his back while the enemy is shooting at him.
He had been ordered to do it by an officer who thought all was lost.
“He gives my father the order to blow the bridge, puts the handset down, and says, I’ve just sent John Ripley to his death,” Ripley recounted.
The orders like something from Mission Impossible.
“He put 500 pounds of explosives across nine girders, staggered them so that they would blow and twist the bridge between the caissons and make the bridge impassable,” Ripley said.
Capt. Ripley made multiple trips under the bridge. Crimping explosive blasting caps onto the time fuses with his teeth. It’s a dangerous exercise usually done with a specific tool. If a blasting cap is crimped too hard, it will explode immediately. If it is not crimped enough, it will not trigger the desired explosion once the charges are set.
“They’re shooting him with small arms fire. You know, medium and heavy machine guns and tank rounds are impacting the bridge trying to stop him from doing this,” Ripley said. He explained that his father was partially protected by the girders under the bridge. He said that his father would face the greatest exposure to enemy fire when he would swing down to maneuver to a different girder, to set the next charge.
“It took a lot of courage just to take that first hand grip and carrying all that equipment, all the explosives that you had to set. That alone would have scared off most people. And yet, he kept going,” said Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith the representative for Virginia’s Ninth District.
Miraculously, Ripley survived. The explosives detonated. And the invasion was stopped in its tracks.
Ripley Grew up in the New River Valley
Ripley had grown up in Radford in a house where the Dedmon Center now stands. The bridge to the Radford University athletic complex named for the war hero.
Ripley’s son said it was his family that drove him to survive.
“Part of the reason why men go overseas, men and women go overseas to do this is because they know they have something to come back to. And in my father’s case, he had three children at the ages of two, three, and six. And my mom, living in Blacksburg, that’s who he was thinking about undoubtedly when he was under that bridge,” Tom Ripley said.
“It means that you went not only above and beyond, but you went above the “above and beyond,” Griffith said.
Ripley’s heroic efforts were captured in a book -- The Bridge at Dong Ha, written by fellow Marine John Grider Miller.
Ripley received the Navy Cross for his efforts -- but the heroism was worthy of more -- The Medal of Honor.
But with the U.S. trying to hand the war over to the South Vietnamese in 1972, it seemed the wrong time to draw attention to American heroics. The optics were just wrong for the time.
But 2026 appears to be the right time. Tom Ripley had never given up trying to secure the proper honor for his father. Recently, Representative Morgan Griffith carried a bill calling for the Medal of Honor for Ripley to Congress, where it passed. Griffith was tapped because Ripley had grown up in his district. He says he was happy to carry the bill.
“There was live fire going on while this operation was occurring and he got it done - and came back home and lived an amazing life,” Griffith said.
Ripley would stay in the Marines, retiring with the rank of Colonel. In the late ’80’s, he headed the Navy-Marine Corps ROTC at VMI.
In 1992, he became president of Southern Virginia College in Buena Vista.
Later, president of Hargrave Military Academy.
In 2002, Col. Ripley became the very first Marine officer to receive the “Distinguished Graduate Award,” the highest and most prestigious award given by the Naval Academy. In June 2008, four months before his passing, he also became the only Marine to be inducted into the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame.
There were many, many other accolades along the way -- but soon, in a White House ceremony, he will receive the highest honor of all. The family will accept the Medal of Honor at the White House.
“When the president calls, we’ll be waiting and ready,” Tom Ripley said.