Orrington family has VFW tradition

ORRINGTON – A United States flag that flew over the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was presented recently by Maj. Jeremy Perkins to Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4527 in Orrington.

Perkins presented the flag, which flew in Baghdad while he was serving his second tour in Iraq, to VFW Commander Kenneth Gilbert.

Three generations of the Perkins family are U.S. Army veterans of foreign wars.

Raymond Perkins served in a local National Guard artillery unit during World War II in the South Pacific.

His son, Peter Perkins, served with the 20th Preventive Medicine Unit in Vietnam.

Grandson Jeremy Perkins, a 1993 graduate of West Point, has just completed his second tour in Iraq as a medical doctor.

During Jeremy’s first tour in Iraq, July 2004 through January 2005, he was an internist-intensivist with the 31st Combat Support Hospital.

His second tour, October 2005 through April 2006, found him as director of a Deployed Combat Casualty Research Team with the 28th Combat Support Hospital, again in Baghdad.

Jeremy’s role during the second tour was to facilitate trauma research in order to bring back “lessons learned” from caring for casualties in this war. He received a Bronze Star.

All three Perkins men are life members of VFW Post 4527 in Orrington, where Raymond was the first commander in 1946 – the year Peter was born.

Twenty-five years later, while Peter was on orders for Vietnam, Jeremy was born.

All three are proud of their opportunities to serve in the Armed Forces.

Peter retired from the Army in 1995 as a medical entomologist after attaining the rank of colonel.

Jeremy, a board-certified doctor in oncology and hematology, is assigned to the Department of Oncology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.