Lost Zippo migrates closer to home
By SANDRA L. LEE of the Tribune | Posted: Monday, July 11,
2011 12:00 am
 The
mystery of the Vietnam-era Zippo cigarette lighter is solved. Or is it?
Joe LaBelle of Clarkston found the lighter, engraved with the
insignia of the Robin Hood's 173rd Assault Helicopter Co. and apparently
a souvenir of the outfit's service at Lai Khe in northern Vietnam, when
he was digging up some junipers he had planted 20 years earlier.
The name Al or A.L. Grafton also was etched into the metal.
Within a week of the story appearing in the Tribune, Marc Galbraith
of Deary emailed LaBelle, telling him to check out someone of that name
in
Salmon, Idaho.
Susan Lawson of Clarkston found an Al Grafton even closer, working at
the Clarkston Golf and Country Club.
LaBelle, 63, who served in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam, started calling
and leaving messages for both until finally his phone rang.
"I found the guy with the lighter," he said excitedly when he called
the Tribune. "Unbelievable. You'll never guess where either. Right next
door."
It's not how that sounds, however.
Allen and Kelsey Grafton were right next door, but looking at the
house as possible purchasers. Al Grafton, 36, just chose that moment as
being convenient to call LaBelle back because Kelsey had recognized
LaBelle from the newspaper and from running into him during prior visits
to the property.
It's still not as simple as it might have been.
He had never owned, or even seen, the lighter, Grafton said. And no
Grafton that he and his father, the Salmon Grafton, can recall ever
served in Vietnam.
But his grandfather, also named Allen Grafton, had two stepsons, Joe
and Fred Drew, who were helicopter pilots in Vietnam. And the Salmon
Grafton said he has a vague recollection of his father having a lighter
like the one LaBelle found.
But the older Grafton never came to this area as far as anyone knows.
He was a logger in northern California cutting down big trees, "not like
the ones you see here," his grandson said, and then he was a foreman for
an offshore drilling crew for Occidental Petroleum.
Of the two uncles, one is a career military man and the other a
rancher in California, neither with known connections to the area.
So how would the shiny old Zippo have gotten to Clarkston?
Right now, there is no answer.
LaBelle sticks to his theory that it fell into a bag used to wrap one
of the junipers he planted, possibly at a nursery in California.
Grafton, who is by profession a horticulturist, doesn't dispute that,
but he said he never worked anywhere that could have happened (even if
he had seen the lighter in earlier years), and he doesn't know how his
grandfather might have lost it in that manner.
So he's attempting to contact his uncles, whom he hasn't seen in 20
years, to see if one of them can provide at least the first step in the
trail that led to Clarkston.
In the meantime, LaBelle is satisfied he's found a family member and
has handed the lighter over to Grafton.
"I'm going to give him the lighter and hopefully he can get it to one
of the guys who sent it to their grandfather," LaBelle said.
"That's what I'm going to do with it," Grafton said. "It was never
mine. It's nice as a relic."
But if one of his uncles said to keep it, he definitely would,
Grafton said.
The two men shook hands. "I'll keep you posted," he told LaBelle.
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Lee may be contacted at slee@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2266.
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