A Louisiana hero dies: "These people were looking at me for help and there was no way I could turn my back on them..."

Jessica Bujol, Associated Press, reports Hugh Thompson, a Louisiana hero, has died. It took almost 40 years for the world to notice his courage. I met him several times, but sadly I did not have the opportunity to sit and talk with him more. Because of Hugh Thompson innocent lives were saved. Because of Hugh Thompson our nation's honor was salvaged.

Louisiana will miss Hugh Thompson.

“NEW ORLEANS - Hugh Thompson Jr., a former Army helicopter pilot honored for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow GIs during the My Lai massacre, died early Friday. He was 62. Thompson, whose role in the 1968 massacre did not become widely known until decades later, died at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Alexandria, hospital spokesman Jay DeWorth said.

Trent Angers, Thompson's biographer and family friend, said Thompson died of cancer.

‘These people were looking at me for help and there was no way I could turn my back on them,’ Thompson recalled in a 1998 Associated Press interview.Early in the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson, door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My Lai….” Jessica Bujol, Associated Press.