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2008 marks the thirtieth anniversary of Vietnam Veterans
of America. Originally conceived without thought to membership,
VVA was organized as a guerilla force to storm the halls
of Congress on behalf of the nation’s veterans of the
Vietnam War. But the intended targets repeatedly asked, “How
many people do you represent? How large is your membership?”
In this issue, we profile the first thirty chapters. Well,
make that the surviving thirteen chapters. The path of every
successful venture is littered with failures. Of the original
thirty VVA chapters, seventeen were stillborn, only existed
as a number, or met with a quick end.
But others prospered, sometimes struggled, and survived.
We asked those original survivors to recount their histories
and discuss their challenges.
These are their stories.
[read
complete article ]
By Mac Leepson
It’s not every day that a veterans’ service organization’s
national election results make headlines in the nation’s
top newspapers. But that’s what happened on August
3, 1987, when The New York Times and The Washington Post
trumpeted the fact that Mary Stout had been elected the second
president of Vietnam Veterans of America the day before by
an overwhelming majority of the four hundred delegates at
VVA’s Third National Convention in Washington.
“Woman Takes Command,” was the NYT headline. “Woman
to Lead Charge for Viet Veterans Group,” the Post said,
followed by the subhead: “Election Follows Tradition
of Non-Tradition.” The newspapers played up the fact
that Mary Stout, who had served as a U.S. Army nurse in Vietnam,
was the first woman chosen to lead an American VSO. At the
time, Stout felt that her election signified an important
step in the recognition of the role played by women in the
Vietnam War and as veterans’ advocates at home.
“I think this is really significant,” she told the reporters, “because
for the first time a national veterans’ association has acknowledged
that there are women who are veterans, and ‘veteran’ is no longer
a male word.”
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complete article]
BY GARY JONES AND BILL DUKER
The latest Veterans Initiative trip to Vietnam and Laos took
place in October and November 2007. The team members were
VVA Vice President Jack Devine; Gary Jones, the chair of
VVA’s POW/MIA Committee; Bill Duker, the director
of the committee’s Veterans Initiative Program; and
Bob Maras, the former chair of VVA’s Veterans Initiative
Task Force.
We took with us items that VVA members had sent to the national
office. We took an NVA uniform with associated field gear,
two color photos of Viet Cong prisoners in the Dong Tam area,
and a grave site location in the Cam Lo area said to contain
158 bodies. We also brought from VVA members the specifications
and map of a grave site in Dak To and some confiscated Vietnam
War documents in Vietnamese.
[read
complete article]
By Bruce McWilliams
On a quiet January afternoon in Lancashire, England, American
Vietnam veterans Mark Jackson, Fred Alvis, and Ron Paye
were surprised to hear a familiar whoomp-whoomp coming
over the trees. They looked up and saw a Huey UH-1H coming
in for a landing. The Huey, like Fred and Ron, was a veteran
of the 129th Helicopter Assault Company in Vietnam. This
was the first time the three veterans had seen a Huey in
30 years.
[read
complete article]
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©2006-
2008, Vietnam Veterans of America. All Rights Reserved. 8605 Cameron
Street, Silver Spring, MD 20910