Utah Congressman Blake Moore (center) shares a private moment with veteran Paul R. LaMont (left), while Doug Case (right), department commander of the American Legion, looks on. LaMont was honored with the Atomic Veterans Commemorative Service Medal during a well-attended ceremony at the Dan Gyllenskog Veterans Resource Center in North Logan on May 2.
NORTH LOGAN – Utah veteran Paul R. LaMont was honored with the award of the Atomic Veterans Commemorative Service Medal on Tuesday, May 2.
Paul LaMont received that award from Congressmen Blake Moore (R-UT) during an event attended by a crowd of nearly 200 family members and friends who jammed the limited space of the Dan Gyllenskog Veterans Resource Center.
In brief remarks, Paul LaMont said he felt “humbled” by the award and thanked the unexpectedly large audience for attending the ceremony.
Local elected officials were also on-hand for the event, including state Sen. Chris Wilson (R-Dist. 2), Rep. Mike Petersen (R-Dist. 2) and Cache County Executive David Zook.
Moore said that he felt honored to present the atomic service medal to Paul LaMont in the name of Lloyd Austin, the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
That medal recognizes Paul LaMont’s “faithful service aboard the USS Preston during Operation Dominic,” a series of nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1962.
Austin authorized the AVCSM in July 2022 to honor service members who were exposed to harmful radiation during nuclear tests conducted by the U.S. from 1945 to 1962. An estimated 195,000 former members of the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force fall into that category.
The Defense Department says that America’s long-standing nuclear deterrence capability resulted from the service and sacrifice of these atomic veterans who participated in the initial testing and development of the nuclear weapons programs – especially the dangerous and important work often done in secret due to national security requirements.
At Tuesday’s ceremony, Paul LaMont’s son Craig LaMont explained that his father, like many veterans of the early Cold War era, had battled Stage 4 cancer in recent years as a result of radiation exposure during his service in the Navy.
Paul LaMont was a petty officer third class aboard the USS Preston (DD-795) when that destroyer was assigned to a task force monitoring nuclear blasts off Christmas and Johnson islands in the Central Pacific in 1962.
Two years later, the Preston deployed to the U.S. 7th Fleet for operations in the Tonkin Gulf off the coast of Vietnam.
Paul R. LaMont is well-known in both veteran and law enforcement circles in Cache Valley.
A resident of Hyde Park, he was chief of the North Park Police Department, a public safety entity combining the law enforcement resources of North Logan and Hyde Park. Paul LaMont’s other experience as a peace officer included stints with the Utah Highway Patrol, the Cache County Sheriff’s Office and the Utah State University Police Department as a fire marshal.
Paul LaMont has been active in the Cache Valley Veterans Association and played a role in the establishment of the Dan Gyllenskog Veterans Resource Center here.
In 2022, he was part of an honor flight of veterans to the Washington, D.C. area.
In his remarks at the award ceremony, Moore called on the Cache Valley veterans’ community to also remember and support modern survivors of the War on Terror who are now facing an unprecedented epidemic of suicide.