Michael Sakacs stands by various military photos and items on display in his Austintown home. Sakacs spent four years in the Air Force, including one stationed in Vietnam during the war. Staff photo / David Skolnick

Michael Sakacs

FAMILY: Wife, Jeanne; daughter, Leah; two sons, Michael and Kyle; stepdaughter, Jean Marie; two grandsons.

AUSTINTOWN — Michael Sakacs said his time in the Air Force, particularly a year in Vietnam during the war there helping units with supply services, changed him.

“It matured me,” said Sakacs, 76, of Austintown. “It opened up my eyes. I have things I experienced that I haven’t told my family and I’ll keep it to myself.”

Sakacs said he contracted pneumonia and ended up in a hospital in Vietnam for nine days.

“I saw guys coming in moaning because they were badly wounded,” he said.

One time, he and other American troops visited an orphanage for those who were half-Vietnamese and half-American who were left behind when their fathers went home.

“I gave a kid a piece of gum and it was like he got $1 million,” Sakacs said. “They slept on springs with no mattresses. One thing I feel strongly about is you don’t waste food. These kids were starving. I saw how the other half lived.”

Sakacs said when he came home, anti-war protesters spit on him, upset about what was happening in Vietnam.

“It made me a little bitter,” he said. “I fought in a war that wasn’t popular. Getting spit on will stay with me until the day I die. The Vietnam veterans received no respect, and that really ticked me off.”

Sakacs was working at Schwebel’s when he was drafted in 1969. Because his father was in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Sakacs said he asked to join the Air Force. His daughter, Leah, years later was in the Air Force Reserve.

After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, Sakacs spent a year handling supplies at a base in Niagara Falls, New York.

A year into his service, Sakacs said he was told he was being shipped to Vietnam to provide supplies for combat soldiers. That included uniforms, parts for dining halls, boots and “anything to help the soldier.”

“It scared the hell out of me,” he said. “It was a surprise.”

But Sakacs said he “was very proud of my work. I was an Airman 1st Class, and I took over supply duties from a tech sergeant. I had two blimp-type hangars to stock and restock. I was proud as a two-striper to replace a tech sergeant and they never ran out of supplies.”

While Sakacs didn’t see field combat, Sakacs said his outfit was attacked a few times, particularly on holidays, with missiles.

“You learned quickly to pay attention to your surroundings all the time,” he said. “I’m very adaptable. You had to be aware of the danger, but still go about your business. It was six months of monsoons and water up to your behind and then six months of it being so hot you could fry an egg on the road.”

After his year in Vietnam was up, Sakacs was transferred to the Air Force Satellite Control Facility in Sunnyvale, California.

“I never found out what they did there,” he said. “It was very secretive.”

Spy satellites were built at the base, which closed in 1995, according to the Sunnyvale Heritage Park Museum. The reconnaissance satellites built there kept track of Soviet ballistic missiles and complexes, submarines, bombers and fighters and atomic weapon storage installations as well as identify the missile launching sites in China, according to the museum.

The Air Force wanted Sakacs to sign up to remain in the military when his four years ended in August 1973.

“I’m very organized,” he said. “You do your job and stay out of trouble and you’re good for the military. But I said ‘no.'”

When he returned home, he went back to work at Schwebel’s and then eventually Polaris Windows & Doors Inc. He’s retired.