Vietnam is the background of my youth. Growing up in a military family during the 60s and 70s, the Vietnam War was a daily part of our lives. All of the adult males living on our Air Force bases were focused on the war. My dad required the whole family to watch the news every night and bring questions and answers to the dinner table. Walter Cronkite, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Nguyen Van Thieu are names still branded deep into my cerebral cortex. I can still recall the black and white videos and pictures of bombing campaigns, guerrilla warfare fought by the Vietcong, the Tet Offensive, the Mekong Delta, China Beach, Da Nang, and Saigon. Under the backdrop of US civil unrest, the Kent State Massacre, and Jane Fonda, over 1,000,0000 Vietnamese and 58,000 US troops lost their lives. And what did we gain or learn? As a young Marine Corps officer in the early 1980’s, I served with many Vietnam War veterans, many of them scarred for life. Going to Vietnam was a sad and humbling experience.

These old pictures from our old website were taken in December 2002