When I began this page I didn't know where it was going to go. Then I began to think about growing up with the Viet Nam war as a background to my childhood.

Viet Nam was there every night on the evening news, it was ugly and deadly, but it was in a place I really didn't know where it was or why there was a war there. For a half hour or so the 'war' visited our house and then it went away.

Then the war became a personal thing. My third grade teacher's son was killed somewhere in Southeast Asia. Viet Nam was suddenly very real and someone I knew was never coming back.

Through the years I chanted and marched against the war - as much as an elementary and middle schooler could. However, the music had a major effect on my life (I didn't know how much for many more years.)

The photographs in LIFE Magazine really had more of an impact on me than the sanitized news reports on TV. As I got older I understood more and I knew that we shouldn't be in Viet Nam, Laos or Cambodia. We bought Nixon's promise to get our boys out of Southeast Asia ~ which did finally happen when troops from the North entered Saigon.


In high school I became fascinated with past wars - the Revolutionary War, World War I and World War II, and just about any war fought in Europe. The Civil War turned me off and to this day the way brother turned against brother makes me ill. The Korean Conflict wasn't taught in school, and all I really knew of that came from M*A*S*H.

The war in Southeast Asia was too fresh and far from really being over - not as long as I wore that POW/MIA bracelet. I couldn't see the movies ~ the first Viet Nam era show I could stomach was China Beach and even that sometimes was a little too close for comfort.

Gradually I have been able to see the movies, read the stories and watch the TV programs. Some of that came with help from a high school history teacher who would occasionally bring in slides from his tour in Nam. We saw not only the war and the poverty and strife, but also a very beautiful country which we were systematically destroying. He showed us the human side of the war and brought to me the realization that "but for the grace of God....."


(When the Traveling Wall visited Delaware, I searched for my third grade teacher's son's name on the Wall, but it is not there. I was devastated to discover this, but I know Billy died somewhere in or near Southeast Asia.)

On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, the unthinkable happened. Terrorists struck - not once - but 3 times in the space of an hour - on US soil. Along with fear - emerged a rebirth of the spirit that this country was built upon and a rededication to the UNITED States of America.

Please visit the pages from these links which pay tribute to those who paid the ultimate price for freedom on that September morning.

Thank you Bill!
8-16-2000

Thank you George!
1-22-03