GAINESVILLE – A Gainesville Navy veteran has turned a Memorial Day moment into a 150-page tribute to the 48 men from Alachua County who gave their lives during the Vietnam War.
Author: Andrew Z. Adkins III
Andy Adkins, who served in the U.S. Navy from 1973 to 1977, self-published The ‘Nam “AC-48” after attending the annual Memorial Day ceremony at Forest Meadows Cemetery last May, hosted by Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 1092, whose members gather twice yearly to honor those lost in the war.
It was there that Adkins saw, for the first time, a poster created by Chapter 1092 President Forest Hope displaying the faces of the 48 Alachua County men killed during the conflict.
“Putting faces to names on a poster board was… well, it affected me,” Adkins said. Though he never served in Vietnam as the war had officially ended before he reported aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, his four years in the Navy, including duty as a crash firefighter at NAS Agana in Guam, gave him a frame of reference for loss.
“Those ‘images’ stay with you,” he said. “These shipmates weren’t just numbers on a report, they were men, boys, actually, and they had families.”
Adkins approached Hope about the project, and Hope shared the computer files he had assembled. What Adkins initially envisioned as a simple 50-page booklet of photos and facts grew into something far more substantial. “The more I researched and read, the more families and friends I communicated with, and the more I dug in, I wanted to write as much as I could about these men,” he said, “not necessarily what happened in Vietnam, but their growing up in Alachua County.”
The project kept expanding in unexpected ways. Many of the photos available came from old black-and-white newspaper clippings or other low-quality sources. Adkins used Google Gemini to restore them, ultimately recreating Hope’s original poster boards with cleaned-up images. He noted that Gemini did not even exist when he began the project in June 2025, a reminder of how much the book grew beyond its original scope.
The research also surfaced stories Adkins said he did not expect.
One was James Mikel (“Mike”) Runnels, an aircraft mechanic with an F-4 Phantom squadron aboard the USS Forrestal. Runnels was killed in the catastrophic Forrestal fire of July 29, 1967, a disaster that killed 134 sailors and has been used in Navy firefighting training ever since.
Adkins, himself a former crash firefighter and division training officer, had watched footage of that fire countless times. “When I worked on Mike’s story, it hit me hard that one of our County residents was killed in that fire,” he said. Runnels had been sleeping below decks, working the night shift, when the bombs went off.
Another was James Richard (“Dicky”) Golding, a Special Forces Green Beret on his third tour in Vietnam. “Because of the special circumstances surrounding his murder, the U.S. government covered up how he actually died,” Adkins said. Golding’s wife and daughter did not learn the truth for 32 years, until a childhood friend and fellow Green Beret uncovered the account from soldiers who had been present. Adkins wrote the full story in the book.
A third discovery came through a phone call with the son of Robert (“Bobby”) Lee Shorter. Hours later, while speaking with his sister, Adkins learned that she had gone to school with Bobby Shorter’s sister. “I don’t believe in coincidences,” Adkins said. “I believe that was the Good Lord nudging me on to tell these stories.”
The 48 men profiled in the book volunteered or were drafted, and Adkins said the distinction matters less than what they shared. “All gave some; some gave all,” he said. Many received awards posthumously for their actions. Others, he noted, were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The book’s broader message, Adkins said, is one of context and connection. “I want readers to not only know these men, but understand their growing up years were really no different from mine or the readers’,” he said. “They went to the same schools, played in the same parks, went to the same churches.”
All proceeds from sales of the book are donated to VVA Chapter 1092. A printed copy is available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GSMM2GDT/. A free PDF and eBook version can be downloaded from Adkins’ website at https://azadkinsiii.com/blog/the-nam-ac-48/. Copies may also be obtained through Forest Hope at 352-514-0270.
VVA Chapter 1092 can be reached at 1092VVA@gmail.com or at https://vva.org/chapter/vva-chapter-1092/.
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