For Col. Randall Hoffman, the Vietnam War is a faded memory that he remembers watching on the television. He was only two years old, but the effects of the war had a lasting result on his family –his uncle, Cpl. Terry Hoffman, went missing in action in 1968 while flying a combat mission over Quang Tri Province.
It wasn’t for another 26 years that the Hoffman family would get closure. Terry’s remains were found in Vietnam and Hoffman, who was a Marine Corps Reserve 2nd Lieutenant at the time, escorted Terry’s remains to the United States and laid him to rest July 4, 1994.
It’s been nearly three decades and Hoffman is now passing the torch as the commanding officer of Weapons and Field Training Battalion on Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island. Hoffman and the Marine replacing him, Col. Timothy R. Dremann, share a special connection; Terry Hoffman and Dremann’s father, Timothy R., Sr. were both pilots in the same squadron, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 262 (VMM-262), “The Flying Tigers.”
To Hoffman, it seemed only fitting that the helicopter staged at Noonan’s Crossing on Parris Island’s Page Field commemorate the Marines’ families and honor Terry’s memory. Hoffman spent his Fourth of July weekend painting a “Flying Tiger” on the helicopter as a token of welcome and remembrance.
As Hoffman said, he couldn’t imagine a better Marine for the job than Dremann, a Marine whom he lovingly said “got to wake up to his ugly mug” when they were deployed on ship together as junior officers.
“I consider him a brother, and I’m very happy that these Marines will receive the quality of leadership illustrated by Dremann,” Hoffman said.