Wayland Patch 5/25/23: Wayland Purple Heart Winner Preps For Memorial Day Leadership Role. In the early 1960s, Richard Turner knew he had bigger things to do than cut grass in his hometown.

After graduating from Wayland High School in 1962, Turner took a job in the parks department as a laborer. But as the nation’s investment in the conflict in Vietnam grew, Turner decided to enlist in the Navy — the start of a career that would take him from the naval shipyards at home to the waterways of Vietnam, where he piloted a gunboat and earned a Purple Heart.