Maybe it doesn’t much matter.
After all, even if all the allegations are true, he doesn’t appear to have done anything illegal. He hasn’t done any real harm to anyone. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t reaped any tangible profit.
So why is Richard “Dick” Cantner, who moved to Vero Beach 11 years ago and enthusiastically served as both a member of the city’s Airport Advisory Board and ambassador for the county’s Chamber of Commerce, being vilified on websites and social media venues as a fraud, phony and imposter?
Why are so many of the men and women who proudly served our nation so upset with this 70-year-old Vietnam veteran – including one former Marine infantryman and Army chopper pilot who once counted Cantner among his closest friends but is now committed to exposing what he staunchly believes is more than a harmless hoax being perpetrated on our community?
“Because he’s a liar,” said T.J. Fagan, who lives in Vero Beach, “and he’s stealing valor.”
Those are damning words, but Fagan strongly believes Cantner has exaggerated his Army service and fabricated stories of his military career.
He also seems to have plenty of evidence to support his charge that Cantner was nothing more than a transportation sergeant, not the lieutenant colonel and decorated chopper pilot he says he is.
“I’ve done a lot of digging,” said Fagan, who was a Chief Warrant Officer (CW3) when he left the Army in 1997. “I made phone calls, read old newspaper clips and used the Freedom of Information Act to get documents from the government.
“There’s no record anywhere of him being a lieutenant colonel or flying choppers, or that he did most of what he claims he did.”
First, Fagan said, he confronted Cantner with his findings earlier this summer in a series of lengthy text messages, asking him to explain the discrepancies or admit to his dishonesty and stop telling tales.
When Cantner stuck to his claims of being an officer and pilot – but was unable to offer any proof to back them up – Fagan felt betrayed, even hurt. He also felt an obligation to end their friendship, which had endured for more than a decade, and embark on a mission to expose what he considers to be a disgraceful deception.
“I asked him to be honest with me, and he said some of what I said was true, but he wouldn’t say what I was correct and incorrect about,” Fagan said. “If he had just admitted he wasn’t telling the truth and had made it all up, I’d have let it go. But he wouldn’t fess up.
“He still maintained that he was an officer and chopper pilot.”
So, two months ago, Fagan took his case to the Internet, posting his first-person story and the accompanying documentation on military, veteran and stolen valor websites and social media pages.
And it seems to have had an impact: Cantner has resigned his voluntary, unpaid positions on the airport board and with the Chamber of Commerce, as well as his membership with the local chapter of the Military Officers Association of America.
He also took down his Facebook page, at least temporarily.
When I spoke with Cantner last week, he confirmed that Fagan’s crusade prompted those actions – but he did not back away from his claims that he was a chopper pilot during the Vietnam War and returned to military duty as an officer 30 years later, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Cantner said he left the airport board, Chamber and MOAA because he didn’t want Fagan’s allegations against him “to bring any negative attention” to those groups.
“I’m man enough to know that the odds are big enough against me,” he said. “I don’t need to be fired or kicked off. That’s not my style. So I’ve tried to stay low-key about this and quietly resign so nobody else would be hurt by this.”
For the record: Cantner’s August 2011 application for the airport board included claims that he was a “pilot in the U.S. Army,” went through flight training at Fort Rucker in Alabama in 1969 and “flew an AH1D Cobra attack helicopter” in Southeast Asia in 1969-70.
In his resignation letter, Cantner wrote that he was no longer able to serve on the board because of “recent medical conditions and other circumstances.” The resignation letter, which was “effective immediately,” was dated July 11 – the same day Fagan confronted him with his stolen valor allegations.
It was at about the same time, Cantner said, that Chamber of Commerce president Penny Chandler asked to speak to him after a breakfast event.
“I resigned that day,” he said.
Cantner said he removed his Facebook page because his family members and friends were getting messages from Fagan and other veterans who accused him of being a fraud.
“I’ve always tried to do the right thing,” Cantner said, “and then one person comes along and tries to change all that.”
Actually, it’s more than one.
Although Fagan’s suspicions mounted through the years as Cantner recalled different aspects of his military service, he didn’t confront his longtime friend until he connected via Facebook with Clint Atwell, a former Chief Warrant Officer who retired from the Army in 1998 and lives in Sebastian.
“I see you’re a friend of Dick Cantner,” Atwell wrote. “You do know he’s a phony, right?”
From there, the two CW3s exchanged stories and information, with Atwell providing much of the early documentation that convinced Fagan to investigate further.
Atwell said he first met Cantner in 2005, when both Army veterans were members of the Indian River Corvette Club. He recalled an outing at which Cantner “showed up in full flight gear” and “identified himself as ‘The Colonel.’ “
Before Atwell was called back to active duty in 2009 to fly missions in Afghanistan, Cantner told him he had a health issue and had fallen on hard times, so Atwell offered to help him find work.
“I told him to send me a resume and I’d see what I could do,” Atwell said. “He sent me a resume and it was bizarre. A lot of it didn’t make sense, so I Googled his name.
“It made for some interesting reading.”
Among the items he found were a couple of stories published in May 2002 by the Reading Eagle, which was Cantner’s hometown newspaper when he lived in Pennsylvania.
The first one, a front-page story that ran on May 5, was headlined: “Apache Warrior: A 55-year-old Army veteran returns to military action in Afghanistan.”
The story said Cantner was called back to active duty in March 2002 and was ordered to a military base about 45 kilometers from Afghanistan, where he flew a dozen missions in an Apache attack helicopter equipped with guns and missiles.
His assignment, he told the newspaper, was to provide support to the troops by flying 200 to 300 feet above the ground and fire on enemy forces. He also said he was fired upon in the deserts of Afghanistan.
“I’ve often wondered why I am alive today,” the Eagle quoted Cantner as saying.
He then provided the answer, inferring that he believes God kept him alive to carry out combat missions others might not have the gumption to do: “If I don’t do it,” he said, “who will?”
The story also refers to Cantner’s claim that he flew Cobra attack helicopters in Vietnam and was shot down three times. He said he returned to duty decades later because the Army needed pilots with combat experience.
Two weeks after that story was published, however, the newspaper ran a follow-up – which was essentially a red-faced retraction.
Under the headline, “Man admits fabricating Afghanistan military tale,” the Eagle reported that Cantner admitted he concocted the entire story, saying he has not been involved in an official military capacity since the early 1970s, during the Vietnam War.
Canter said he was on a business trip in Florida during the period he claimed to have been in Afghanistan, returning to Pennsylvania in April, the Eagle reported.
“It was not my intent to mislead anyone,” Cantner told the newspaper, adding that he made up the story because he sensed patriotism in the country had faded since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
“On Sept. 11, everyone had their wake-up call, but after a couple of months, no one wanted anything to do with it,” he said then. “I was just trying to stir some patriotism.”
Last week, Cantner told me the Army Reserve came to him back in 2002 and, despite his age, inquired about his availability and interest. He said he had been recently divorced and jumped at the chance to serve his country again.
“My unit was scheduled to go to Afghanistan, but the equipment wasn’t ready and we didn’t go,” Cantner said. “Somewhere along the line, however, some people got the impression that I went.”
Apparently, he forgot what he had told the Eagle, because when I mentioned his confession, he replied: “I admitted that I made up the story that people said I was going to Afghanistan.”
The Eagle reported that Cantner also admitted he wasn’t a lieutenant colonel.
“He’s the phony baloney colonel,” Atwell said. “I confronted him about it and he apologized. But when I returned from Afghanistan, he was still at it. So every chance I had, I stuck it to him. The last time I saw him was in a parking lot, and I told him he was full of crap.”
Cantner hired a local attorney to warn Fagan that he could be sued for libel, but Fagan said he has no intention of backing off. In fact, when Fagan mentioned the legal threat to another area veteran, he found another ally.
Dave Miller, a Palm Bay resident who served in Vietnam and is the director of the Brevard Veterans Memorial Center, responded by firing off a letter to Cantner’s attorney.
In the letter, Miller offers Cantner three options: produce documentation of his military service, meet with several Vietnam era chopper pilots who served in the same unit he claims to have been a member of, or “provide a written apology to veterans everywhere, confess his lies and promise not to use his stolen valor for personal gain in the future.”
He wrote that a “tsunami of shame” is headed Cantner’s way if he fails to take one of the three options.
“The Supreme Court struck down the ‘Stolen Valor Act’ on protected-speech grounds, so he has a right to wear a bogus uniform decorated with medals he didn’t earn, and he has a right to embellish and make up stories about his military service – as long as he doesn’t profit financially, which would make it fraud,” Miller said.
“Legally, there’s nothing we can do to stop him,” he added. “But if he persists, we would like to make him the most well-known veteran in the state of Florida.”
Despite his statements to the newspaper in Pennsylvania in 2002, Cantner said he is being falsely accused of exaggerating his military service, but he cannot produce the records necessary to verify that he was a chopper pilot in Vietnam and later became a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve.
Cantner said he served in the Army Reserve “from the late 1990s until about 2007” and was initially given the rank of captain. He said he then “moved up the ranks” to lieutenant colonel.
However, the Army has records only of his active duty from 1969-72, which included spending a year in Vietnam as a transportation specialist. He left the service as a sergeant (E-5). There is no mention of Cantner completing flight training or serving as a pilot.
As for Cantner’s reserve duty, there is no record of that, either – which calls into question his claim to have been a lieutenant colonel.
“I’m unable to prove my reserve status, only my active duty,” Cantner said. “I tried to pull the records of my reserve duty, but they’re not there, so I can’t produce the information I need to defend myself.
“I’ve heard there was a fire at the Reserve Records Center many years ago and that some records were lost,” he added. “Were my records in there? I don’t know. But as far as the Reserve is concerned, it’s like I didn’t exist for those years.”
What does exist are hard feelings.
Cantner attacked Fagan personally, accusing him of being unstable, unreliable and jealous. But he said he has no plans to fight back.
“It’s very frustrating to me,” said Cantner, who is a certified business consultant with Indian River State College’s Small Business Development Center. “If people want to do this type of stuff, I guess there’s not much I can do. I don’t need this garbage in my life, but, at this point, I don’t have to prove myself to anybody.
“I’m just going to go on with my life.”
And Fagan, with the support of a growing number of veterans, plans to continue his mission.
“You’d think after what happened in Pennsylvania that he would’ve stopped doing this, but he just brought his act to Vero Beach,” Fagan said. “And it’s a shame, really.
“He’s actually a very nice man who served his country and went to Vietnam, and even got a Bronze Star for meritorious service,” he added. “There was no reason for him to do this, other than to get a level of respect he didn’t earn and make himself look better.”
