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Chris Noel |
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| Chris Noel, who as an up-and-coming young movie actress in 1965 gave up a promising Hollywood career to host her own radio show on the Armed Forces Network in Vietnam, will receive the President’s Award for Excellence in the Arts on Saturday night at the Awards Banquet and VVA 30th Anniversary celebration. Chris Noel will be honored for her morale-boosting radio show, her frequent visits to the troops in the war zone, and for her long post-war work as a Vietnam veterans’ advocate, including running homeless veterans shelters in Florida. Chris Noel will take part in the autographing session and book signing on Saturday beginning at 3:00. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Bobbie Keith |
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"Bobbie The Weather Girl" |
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| Bobbie Keith, known to Vietnam veterans as “Bobbie the Weather Girl,” will receive the President’s Award for Excellence in the Arts on Saturday night at the Awards Banquet and VVA 30th Anniversary celebration. While working for the USAID in Saigon from 1967-69, Bobbie Keith volunteered to do tongue-in-cheek weather forecasts on AFVN Television in Saigon. She became a big hit among the troops, and her TV work and many travels over three years to fire support bases, LZ’s, ships in the Gulf of Tokin, and to Brown Water Navy boats in the Delta were important morale boosters. While working in the State Department in 1989 in Washington, she began volunteering as a yellow hat at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Now retired, she travels to Washington every Memorial and Veterans Day to work at The Wall. Bobbie Keith will take part in the autographing session and book signing on Saturday beginning at 3:00. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Former Dean Martin's Golddiggers & Dingalings
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Blue Eyed Soul |
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| Michelle DellaFave and Lindsay Bloom, who performed with the Dingalings (from the old Dean Martin TV show), will take part in several events at the Leadership Conference. Performing together as Blue-Eyed Soul, Michelle and Lindsay will sing the National Anthem at the Wednesday morning Opening Ceremonies, participate in the Mike Nash Memorial Scholarship Golf Tournament on Thursday, and sing with the band at the Saturday night Awards Banquet and VVA 30th Anniversary Celebration. Michelle also was part of the Golddiggers, a group of twelve young female singer-dancers who performed as regulars in the late sixties and early seventies on Dean Martin’s very popular TV series, headlined their own program that was the summer replacement for Dean’s show, and were members of the Bob Hope USO tours in Vietnam. Michelle also played nightclubs and appeared on a wide range of other television shows, including The Mike Douglas Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Lindsay, known to millions as the vivacious Velda, Mike Hammer’s secretary on the popular CBS-TV show, is a former Miss USA who also had recurring roles on several other hit TV shows, including Dallas and the Dukes of Hazzard. She and Michelle recently were reunited to perform again after 35 years. |
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J. Craig Venter |
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| The visionary biologist and intellectual entrepreneur J. Craig Venter will receive VVA’s Excellence in the Sciences Award at on Saturday, July 19. The honor will be presented at the Awards Banquet and 30th Anniversary of VVA celebration. Craig Venter has been one of one of the world’s most accomplished—and famous—scientists since he pioneered the mapping of the human genome in 2000. He served as a Navy corpsman in the Vietnam War, an experience that he says has shaped much of his adult life, including his pioneering work decoded the human genome. Venter will take part in the author book signing and autographing session at 3:00 on Saturday afternoon, signing copies of his autobiography, A Life Decoded. “We are extremely proud to honor a fellow Vietnam veteran for his unmatched contributions to science in decoding the human genome,” Vietnam Veterans of America National President John Rowan said, “as well for his J. Craig Venter Institute, a world leader in genomic research.” |
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W.D. Ehrhart |
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| Former Marine W.D. Ehrhart, an award-winning poet and memoirist whose work has been strongly influenced by his 13-month tour of duty in the Vietnam War, will receive the Vietnam Veterans of America Excellence in the Arts Award on Saturday, July 19, at the Awards Banquet and 30th Anniversary celebration. Bill Ehrhart started writing when he was fifteen-years old, and has been writing more or less continuously ever since. His war poetry was included in 1972 in the pioneering anthology of Vietnam veterans’ poetry, Winning Hearts and Minds. Since then, he’s edited two exceptional volumes of Vietnam veteran poetry, has produced three first-rate memoirs, and continues to write world-class poetry, much of it derived from his experiences fighting in Vietnam. He will take part in a roundtable discussion on memoir writing on Saturday at 2:00 and the author book signing and autograph session at 3:00 |
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