Joseph Zengerle ’64 is one of 49 Vietnam veterans who received the Service Beyond Service Award, which recognizes veterans for service to their communities, their states and their country after their service in Vietnam. This is the first year the Service Beyond Service Award has been given by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF).
After graduating from West Point in 1964, Zengerle was an Airborne- and Ranger-qualified Infantry and Intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, assigned in late December 1967 to Saigon as General William Westmoreland’s Special Security Officer, responsible for receiving, editing and providing special intelligence briefings daily to Westmoreland and his deputy. He remained in a primary intelligence position throughout his time in Vietnam which included the capture of the Pueblo, the Tet Offensive, the siege at Hue, and the My Lai massacre. For his service in Vietnam, Zengerle was awarded a Bronze Star. (Read more about his service in Vietnam here.)
Upon returning to the United States he graduated from the University of Michigan Law School and served as clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger. He became a founding member of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial committee and in 1978 co-founder with Bobby Muller of the Council of Vietnam Veterans, which became the Vietnam Veterans of America. In 1979, Zengerle was nominated by President Carter and confirmed by the Senate as the first Vietnam veteran to serve in a civilian policymaking role as assistant secretary of the Air Force, where he served until 1981. Since that time, Zengerle has consistently put the needs of veterans front and center in his remarkable career in the practice of law and in legal education. Zengerle was elected by its members as National Commander of Disabled American Veterans, a position he served in from 1993-1994. As a professor at George Mason University Law School, in 2004 he founded the Mason Veterans and Service members Legal Clinic, the first clinic in American legal education for active-duty members and their families. In 2022, Zengerle was awarded the William Tudor Society Lifetime Achievement Award. Zengerle has never stopped advocating for veterans. He is a member of the Legal Advisory Committee of the National Security Leaders for America, and has published op-eds on veterans’ issues in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Star, and U.S. News and World Report.
Zengerle has also left his impact at West Point, his Rockbound Highland Home. The Zengerle Family Lecture Series in the Arts and Humanities, endowed by Joseph Zengerle ’64 in honor of his wife, Lynda, and their two sons, brings distinguished speakers to West Point. These lectures aim to enrich faculty and cadet intellectual development, foster interdisciplinary scholarship, and bridge the civil-military divide by inviting diverse voices in the arts and humanities to address a military audience.