DOB/DOD: October 25, 1936 (Flushing, NY) – December 17, 1968; 32 years old
RELIGION: Jewish (Orthodox)
MARITAL STATUS: Married Eva Fischmann (1945-2001) on August 11, 1963.
CHILDREN: Two daughters, Vera Singer Silberberg (1964-) and Karina (1967-).
COLLEGE: Attended Yeshiva Tiferet in Jerusalem; ordained in 1965.
SERVICE NUMBER: O-2334760
ENLISTMENT: Commissioned on September 24, 1967
MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY: 5310, Chaplain
TOUR START DATE: November 5, 1968
UNIT: Headquarters and Headquarters Company, XXIV Corps
CASUALTY LOCATION: Quang Tin Province, South Vietnam
ON THE WALL: Panel 36W, Line 37
FAMILY: Born to Benjamin (1897-1952) and Celia “Gladys” Zlot Singer [later, Landau] (1900-1998). Two sisters, Roslyn Singer Putzer (1924-2006) and Sylvia (1927-). Three brothers, Samuel (1929-2009), George N. (1934-1935), and Norman E. [also a Rabbi] (1941-).
OTHER: Collegiate weightlifting champion and captain of the Bronx Union YMCA weightlifting team.
CIRCUMSTANCES: On December 17, 1968, a USAF Fairchild C-123K Provider (#54-0708) from the 309th Special Operations Squadron with 44 persons onboard crashed shortly after takeoff from Chu Lai Air Base after reportedly encountering an engine failure following fuel transfer problems. Three crewmen and nine passengers were killed in the crash. The lost crewmen included aircraft commander Lt Col Richard A. Brown, co-pilot 1st Lt Roger H. Strout, and flight engineer SSgt Jesse J. Bradshaw. The lost passengers were U.S. Army personnel: 1st Lt John A. Blaco Jr., PFC Bradley J. Bourque, Sgt Ramon Castro-Morales, Capt Richard C. Drewes, Capt John K. Hayward, CWO John P. Koob, 1st Lt John D. Krouslis, SSgt Wallace F. Simpkin, and Capt Morton H. Singer. Five other passengers died subsequent to the injuries they received. They included two Marines, Sgt Mancol R. Clifton, who died the following day due to burns he suffered, and PVT George W. Brown, who passed away January 13, 1969, also from burns. The three other lost passengers were soldiers: SP4 Dennis G. Benson, who died December 23, 1968, from burns after being evacuated to a burn unit at the 106th Army General Hospital in Yokohama, Japan; SFC Richard H. Sweger, who died January 2, 1969, from bilateral pneumonia due to his injuries; and SP4 Henry E. Russell, who died May 7, 1969, after spending 135 days at Brooks Army General Hospital at Fort Sam Houston, TX, where he was being treated for burns he suffered over 35% of his body. [From coffeltdatabase.org and aviation-safety.net]
Yeshiva University High School for Boys, New York City, Class of 1955
From Newsday (New York) on January 3, 1969
RABBI WHO SERVED ON LONG ISLAND KILLED IN VIETNAM CRASH
A 32-year-old rabbi who had taught Hebrew school in Great Neck [New York] was killed in Vietnam last week while on his way to conduct Chanukah services for Jewish soldiers.
“He felt he could serve the religious needs of the boys and help them overcome the loneliness they would feel away from home,” a former colleague said yesterday of Rabbi Morton H. Singer of Kew Gardens Hills, Queens. Rabbi Singer, a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve, died December 18 near Da Nang in a plane crash while traveling to the scheduled services, according to a report by the Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy of the National Jewish Welfare Board. He had volunteered for chaplain duty in Vietnam and had been there since November 4. Details of the crash were not available. Rabbi Singer left the North Shore Hebrew Academy of Great Neck in October 1967 to train for the paratroopers, but a back injury forced him out of that service. He was a brown belt karate expert and taught judo and karate, as well as English and social studies, at the Hebrew Academy. “The children here worshiped him,” said Rabbi Ephraim Wolf, dean of the school. “When he taught them physical education, it was to instill in them the feeling of being men who would become upright citizens. He felt that if they couldn’t defend themselves and be physically alert, they couldn’t give their best to their country.” The rabbi’s brother, Rabbi Norman Singer of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, said last night of his brother’s decision to go to Vietnam, “He wanted to do something there. He felt that if Vietnam fell, all those countries would eventually fall.” In a letter to the National Jewish Welfare Board from Vietnam, Staff Sergeant Jerome A. Blumberg wrote concerning Rabbi Singer: “… he was a friend who brought that good feeling of being Jewish to us. He was a true giver, giving of himself, especially to the men in the field.” Rabbi Singer, who also had volunteered for non-combatant service in the six-day Israeli-Arab war in 1967, is survived by his wife, Eva, 23; two daughters, Vera, 4, and Karina, five months; his mother, Mrs. Gladys Landau, and his brother. Burial was on Wednesday in Jerusalem. A memorial service was conducted yesterday at the North Shore Hebrew Academy, following the news of his death. A second service is planned, according to Rabbi Wolf. Rabbi Singer’s wife and children are in Guatemala but plan to travel to Jerusalem later this month to visit the gravesite.
From the Philadelphia Daily News on February 4, 1970
Chaplains’ Award Goes to Rabbi Killed in Vietnam
The Chapel of Four Chaplains last night awarded the Hall of Heroes Gold Medal posthumously to Rabbi Morton H. Singer, who was killed in Vietnam on November 17, 1968. The medal was accepted by Rabbi Singer’s widow during the annual awards banquet held at the Bellevue Stratford. Mrs. Singer journeyed from Guatemala to accept the award. Also present was Rabbi Norman E. Singer, of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, brother of Rabbi Singer, who is buried on a hillside overlooking Jerusalem in the cemetery for heroes of the 6-day Mideast war. The banquet was also the occasion for the creation of a formal organization of relatives of men who lost their lives when the USS Dorchester, a troopship, was torpedoed and sunk in the icy waters off Greenland on February 3, 1943. Officers elected by more than 300 persons present were Donald J. Fiedler, of Liberal, Kan., and Mrs. Dorris Clark Fludd, of Philadelphia, a secretary. The Chapel of Four Chaplains was founded to commemorate the heroic action of four Army chaplains aboard the Dorchester when she went down. They were First Lieutenants Clark V. Poling, Reformed Church in America; Alexander D. Goode, Jewish; John P. Washington, Catholic, and George L. Fox, Methodist. The men helped save more than 200 of the 900 men aboard the ship by remaining calm and passing out life jackets, finally removing their own and giving them to others. The last anyone saw of them, they were standing on the starting deck, their arms linked in prayer.
From vvmf.org, posted February 7, 2001, by Jay Hirsch, 1st Cav, 1968
Captain, Chaplain Morton Singer was a volunteer. He did not have to be in the Army or in Vietnam. He volunteered for the Army and then for service in Vietnam as a Chaplain. He was an Olympic-class weight lifter with the soul of an angel. He is one of 16 Chaplains who lost their lives in Vietnam. He was a nice Jewish boy from New York City who grew up to be a great man serving all people.
From The Record (Hackensack, NJ) on August 4, 2011
By Eric Tucker | Associated Press
ARLINGTON, Virginia – Vera Silberberg was almost 4 when her father, a military chaplain, was killed in a plane crash in Vietnam while flying to observe Hanukkah with Jewish soldiers. She grew up reveling in stories about him: Morton Singer, the weight-lifting Orthodox rabbi who
Loved cars, rock-and-roll, and his faith. He was serious in his commitment to help American soldiers worship in wartime. Yet his name — and those of 12 other Jewish clergymen — is absent from monuments at Arlington National Cemetery that honor more than 240 other fallen military chaplains. A new congressional effort backed by Jewish groups and survivors of the chaplains will change that, perhaps as early as this fall. “From his daughter’s perspective, I think it would have been important for him — not really for his own namesake but so everyone who has perished and passed away, they should all have their names equally there,” said Silberberg, a dentist who lives in Sherman Oaks, California. Arlington already is home to three monuments for chaplains: one for those killed in World War I and one each for Roman Catholic and Protestant chaplains who died in various 20th-century conflicts, including Korea and Vietnam. The three sit side by side in an area known as Chaplains Hill, not far from President John F.
Kennedy’s burial site. They were built and dedicated by different groups of benefactors, so no one blames Arlington for the absence of a Jewish monument. A joint resolution sponsored by
former Representative Anthony Weiner and Senator Charles Schumer, both New York Democrats, called for a new plaque similar in size and style to the existing three to honor the late Jewish chaplains. It passed both houses of Congress in late May, just in time for Memorial Day. The 13 Jewish chaplains died from 1943 to 1974, though not all were killed in overseas combat. They include Rabbi Alexander Goode, one of four chaplains who died aboard the Dorchester, a troop ship that was torpedoed by a German U-boat as it carried hundreds of American soldiers across the frigid North Atlantic in 1943. The chaplains, as the story goes, gave up their life preservers and gloves to the shivering soldiers and offered comforting hymns even as the ship went down. More than 600 died. The names of the three other chaplains are all memorialized at Arlington. Then there are Irving Tepper, who died in action in France in 1944 after seeing combat in Tunisia, Morocco, and Sicily; Louis Werfel, known as the Flying Rabbi, who died in a plane crash in North Africa; and Herman Rosen and his son, Solomon, who died in a drowning accident and air disaster, respectively, five years apart. Ken Kraetzer, a bank marketing consultant and the son of a World War I Army officer, noticed the lack of a monument for Jewish chaplains while researching the stories of late chaplains from his alma mater, Providence College. Though not Jewish himself, Kraetzer was startled by the apparent oversight. He alerted the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America and the Jewish Welfare Board Jewish Chaplains Council, which has helped lead the effort. “I don’t consider it a Jewish cause per se,” Kraetzer said. “This is a chance to honor chaplains, past and present. This group just happens to be Jewish.” Cemetery officials told the organizers they could move forward with a monument provided they raised the money themselves and could produce a complete, accurate list of the fallen Jewish chaplains. They did that by cross-checking research from the Jewish Historical Society with records from the chaplain corps of each branch of service. Sol Moglen, who conceived the idea for a September 11 memorial in Brooklyn and helped develop plans for the Arlington monument, helped lead fundraising. Organizers say they have raised about $50,000 — more than enough, they say, to cover the costs of the work. The monument will stand about 7 feet tall, with a bronze plaque mounted on a granite slab listing the 13 names as well as a Jewish proverb: I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders. It will also carry an inscription with the Star of David. There would be space at the bottom for future chaplains, if needed. The plans encountered a hurdle after a leadership change at Arlington, when organizers said they learned for the first time that a new monument at the cemetery would require a resolution from Congress. The resolution had widespread bipartisan support, officials say, but getting it through Congress was arduous. “For the last decade or so, there’s been a feeling by Congress that we shouldn’t just put up a memorial to everything that there is, that there should be some deliberations and thought, so there have been hurdles that we’ve had to jump over, generally speaking,” said William Daroff, vice president for public policy and director of the Washington office of the Jewish Federations of North America, which lobbied Congress.
From TheChaplainKit.com
From The Jewish Veterans Newsletter, Volume 72, Number 4, Winter 2018
By Anna Selman
On the Jewish plaque at Chaplain’s Hill, there reads a name: Rabbi Morton H. Singer, USA, 17 December 1968. Weeks later, an article appeared in the Jewish Telegraph Agency titled, “NY Chaplain Killed in Vietnam, Buried in Israel”. Those eight words encapsulated the death of Rabbi Morton Singer. However, the story of his service and his life is much more remarkable.
Rabbi Morton Singer was born in New York City in 1936. Little is known about his childhood growing up in Manhattan, but we do know that he was an avid weight lifter in his youth – he was recognized as the Eastern Intercollegiate Weight Lifting Champion of 1959. He was also very active in Judo, and he would later serve on the Armed Forces Judo Team.
He went to City College of New York for his undergrad, and he later attended Yeshiva University. After obtaining his rabbinical degree, Rabbi Singer taught at a Jewish Day School for 3 years. However, according to his nephew, Jeffrey Singer, “Rabbi Singer felt a strong obligation to serve. He believed that if there were Jews somewhere, he was going to help.
So, during the outbreak of the 6 Day War in Israel, it was only natural that Rabbi Singer signed right up. During the war, he served as a volunteer in the Bikkur Holim general hospital in Jerusalem. He would often volunteer to drive the ambulance to evacuate soldiers from the front lines in the West Bank. It was there that Rabbi Singer found a deep love for Israel, and he promised himself that he would move himself and his family there one day.
After coming back to the States, Rabbi Singer signed up for the US Army, and he went to Chaplain School at Fort Hamilton and basic training at Fort Benning. From there, he went to Fort Sill shortly before deploying the Vietnam in November of 1968.
After arriving in Vietnam, Rabbi Singer was busy conducting Shabbat Services, meeting Jewish soldiers, and preparing for Hanukkah. It was there that Alan Potkin met Rabbi Singer again: “I had seen him only a few days earlier when he tracked me down at the 95th Evac Hospital in Da Nang, where I had been MEDEVACed in with a severed jugular vein from a frag wound.”
On December 17th, Rabbi Singer geared up to conduct Hanukkah services for Marines stationed at Chu Lai Air Base in the Quang Nam Province. The flight there was quick and easy. Rabbi Singer sang songs, ate latkes, and played dreidels with a few Jewish marines. He packed up his gear, and he went to board his C-123 Fairchild to go home. Seconds after takeoff, there was an explosion in the plane that left 14 dead, caused by the crew placing the wrong type of fuel in the aircraft.
Marine Corps veteran Tracy Diffin was one of the first responders to the scene. “I was on the Fire & Rescue Crash Crew, and was the first one there. A chopper flew overhead to keep the flames down. It was allegedly bad gas in the craft that took it down. Almost everyone died. I tried like hell to save everyone I could.”
“Growing up, I was always bothered hearing that my Uncle was killed while going to do a mitzvah (conducting Hanukkah ceremonies), because when a person is going to do a mitzvah, they have extra protection from God. I received some form of comfort upon learning that it was only after completing the lighting on take-off from Chu Lai that this tragic event occurred,” said Jeffrey Singer, Rabbi Morton Singer’s nephew.
On January 2, 1968, Rabbi Morton Singer was buried on a hillside near Jerusalem today in accordance with his last wish. His body was laid to rest at Har Hamenuchot, a cemetery for the fallen of the Six-Day War. Funeral services were attended by the chief chaplain of the Israel Army’s Jerusalem area command, the military attache of the U.S. Embassy, and relatives who live in Cholon, near Tel Aviv.
Buried at Har Ha Menechot Cemetery, also known as Givat Shaul Cemetery, a hilltop burial ground at the western edge of Jerusalem, adjacent to the neighborhood of Givat Shaul, with commanding views of Mevaseret Zion to the north, Motza to the west, and Har Nof to the south. General Hevra Kadisha section, Block Prushim 8, Area 1, Row 15, Plot 10.
END