Today marks forty years since the fall of Saigon and the "official" end of the Vietnam War, and I'm glad to have had a mother who openly talked about it. We were taught nothing about it in school; the most it was mentioned was in a junior high science class, when our teacher described why soldiers in Vietnam were careful to take such good care of their feet (we were learning about fungus).
But in a way I'm glad my school didn't bother to teach us about the Vietnam War - my mother brought to life this ominous thing that would have been dull history otherwise.
I heard what her friends and family went through, both in Vietnam, and when they came back. Men who were spat on and called "baby killers," her cousin, Bob Wayne Ford whose helicopter went down in Cambodia, her uncle Glen Oliver Lane who was declared missing in action, but was later proven to be alive, unable to return to the States presumably due to the mental effects of all he did and saw in Southeast Asia.
Because of her, I had a deeper desire to know the motives behind heroes and villains like Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, William Westmoreland, Michael Davis O'Donnell, John McCain, Ernest Medina, Michael Bernhardt, and Jane Fonda
I understood what songs like "Fortunate Son" and "Born in the USA" really meant. I understood the weight of movies like Hamburger Hill and Good Morning, Vietnam.
Because of my mother, I understood a little more about this thing I didn't have to care about. It could have been distant history, despite ending only eleven years before I was born, but my mother carried a certain sorrow from her generation that others forgot when they founded Microsoft or became yuppies on Wall Street.
Because of her, I know it's important.
"You have left too much of yourself in this land for it not to be yours. I, too, will always be yours, for you have left too much of yourself with me for it to be otherwise." -Nicholas Proffitt
But in a way I'm glad my school didn't bother to teach us about the Vietnam War - my mother brought to life this ominous thing that would have been dull history otherwise.
I heard what her friends and family went through, both in Vietnam, and when they came back. Men who were spat on and called "baby killers," her cousin, Bob Wayne Ford whose helicopter went down in Cambodia, her uncle Glen Oliver Lane who was declared missing in action, but was later proven to be alive, unable to return to the States presumably due to the mental effects of all he did and saw in Southeast Asia.
Because of her, I had a deeper desire to know the motives behind heroes and villains like Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, William Westmoreland, Michael Davis O'Donnell, John McCain, Ernest Medina, Michael Bernhardt, and Jane Fonda
I understood what songs like "Fortunate Son" and "Born in the USA" really meant. I understood the weight of movies like Hamburger Hill and Good Morning, Vietnam.
Because of my mother, I understood a little more about this thing I didn't have to care about. It could have been distant history, despite ending only eleven years before I was born, but my mother carried a certain sorrow from her generation that others forgot when they founded Microsoft or became yuppies on Wall Street.
Because of her, I know it's important.
"You have left too much of yourself in this land for it not to be yours. I, too, will always be yours, for you have left too much of yourself with me for it to be otherwise." -Nicholas Proffitt
