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VVA’s Convention in SpringfielD
BY MARC LEEPSON
The city of Springfield,
Illinois, rolled out the red carpet figuratively and literally
for VVA members and their guests at the 13th biennial National
Convention July 18-22. “I
don’t believe we’ve had a friendlier, warmer
reception anywhere,” said VVA President John Rowan. “The
entire downtown opened their arms up for us. It was a real
kick to see ‘Welcome VVA’ signs in just about
every business establishment, ‘Welcome to Springfield
VVA’ buttons everywhere, and just plain friendliness
from just about everyone you met. The city even renamed
the street in front of the hotel ‘Vietnam Vets Avenue’ for
the week we were in town. Not to mention the actual red
carpet they rolled out for us as we entered the Convention
Center for the Awards Banquet Saturday night.”
The
Convention’s Opening Ceremonies didn’t begin
until Wednesday morning, July 18, at nine, but VVA members
began streaming into Springfield late Sunday and early Monday.
VVA filled all the rooms in the Convention’s two hotels,
the Hilton and the Abraham Lincoln, which sit directly across
the street from each other. The Prairie Capital Convention
Center, adjacent to the Abraham Lincoln, was the site of
the Convention floor, meetings, and the Veterans Mall.
The
first event of the week was a solemn ceremony held Monday
evening at the Illinois Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a short
drive from the hotels. More than 60 VVA members joined Rowan,
National Secretary Barry Hagge, AVVA President Mary Miller,
and the Springfield VVA Chapter 534 Color Guard to lay a
wreath at the memorial, which is located near the Lincoln
Tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery. The ceremony paid tribute to
the 2,972 Illinois residents who served in the Vietnam War
and died or are listed as still missing.
“It’s
an honor for VVA to recognize the service and sacrifice of
those from Illinois who did not come back from Vietnam before
we begin the business of our National Convention in Illinois’ state
capital,” Rowan
said.
Following the ceremony, the Museum of Funeral Customs
hosted a reception for those interested in viewing its unique
exhibits, including one on the American Military Funeral.
Convention registration began at noon on Tuesday, as VVA
members continued to arrive in the Central Illinois capital
city from across the nation. A group of hearty early-birds
took part that morning in the annual VVA Golf Outing, a charity
event that supports the VVA national Scholarship Program.
Tuesday’s
event that made the front page of The State Journal-Register
the next day was not on the Convention agenda. It was a surprise
afternoon appearance by folk singer Arlo Guthrie, who entertained
VVA members with two tunes, including his signature song
which Guthrie rarely plays these days, “Alice’s
Restaurant.”
The mini-concert came about at the last
minute after VVA’s
Conference Planner ran into Guthrie’s manager, and
they agreed that he would perform, gratis. A large crowd
jammed the mezzanine level of the Hilton to greet Guthrie,
who was in Springfield getting ready to play a gig close
by. “I didn’t expect this to happen,” he
told the crowd as he strapped on his acoustic guitar and
harmonica harness. “I’m just passing through
town, but I’m delighted to be here.”
Guthrie said
it had “been a while,” since he’d
performed the “particular song” he was going
to sing, so he would “just try to get through one verse.” It “all
started,” he said, “about 42 Thanksgivings ago,” reminding
the audience of Vietnam veterans that the song was about
how he got out of the draft. “I know this is a long
song,” he said. “But as my father said, ‘If
you can’t be great, it’s better to be long.’” The
father in question would be the legendary Woody Guthrie.
Arlo
Guthrie got through that one verse, then did the entire tune
and had VVA members singing the last chorus along with him.
The second song, “When a Soldier Makes It Home,” he
said, was written during the Russian war in Afghanistan but
deals with issues familiar to Vietnam veterans. The chorus
resonated particularly well: “Halfway around the world
tonight/In a strange and foreign land/A soldier unpacks memories/That
he saved from Vietnam/Back home they didn’t know too
much/There was just no way to tell/I guess you had to be
there/For to know that war was hell”
The Opening Ceremonies,
for the first time in VVA Convention history, featured performances
by two big national acts: Big & Rich and Lee Greenwood.
Country rockers Big Kenny Alphin and John Rich opened the
show with a rousing acoustic rendition of their big hit, “Eighth
of November,” which
pays tribute to the 173rd Airborne troopers who fought in
a particularly vicious battle on November 8, 1965. Following
that, Niles Harris, the former 173rd trooper who inspired
the song, took to the stage to greet the delegates and emphasize
the commitment that Big & Rich have to honoring Vietnam
veterans.
After members of VVA Chapter 534 from Springfield
presented the colors, the St. Andrews Society of Central
Illinois Pipe and Drum Corps marched through the hall offering
a stirring rendition of “Amazing Grace” in honor
of Vietnam War POW/MIAs. Lee Greenwood then performed his
hit, “God
Bless the U.S.A.”
Other highlights of the Opening Ceremonies
included a video tribute to long-time VVA leader Randy Barnes;
VVA President John Rowan making his entrance inside a Vietnam
War era deuce- and-a-half; presentations of the President’s
Award for Excellence in the Arts to Big & Rich and to
Lee Greenwood; welcoming remarks from Springfield Mayor Timothy
J. Davlin; and a rousing Keynote Speech by two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning
Chicago Tribune syndicated columnist Clarence Page, who was
drafted into the Army in 1969 and served as an Army journalist
with the 212th Artillery Group at Fort Lewis.
Page urged the
delegates to continue to live up to VVA’s
motto “In service to America.” The Vietnam War,
he said, “did not have a defined end, as your service
does not have a defined end.” Arm “yourselves
with information,” he said, especially when dealing
with the VA. “I don’t care if you’re liberal
or conservative or somewhere in the wobbly middle,” Page
said. “Believe in something. It’s our right and
our privilege as Americans and also our duty.” He ended
his speech with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We
all have a task. Let us go out and do it with divine dissatisfaction.”
The
626 delegates got down to business on Wednesday afternoon,
debating a series of resolutions and proposed VVA Constitutional
Amendments. The most contentious issue was a proposal to
open full VVA membership to the newest generation of veterans.
Feelings ran strong on both sides of the issue. In the end,
the proposed Constitutional Amendment was soundly defeated
by voice vote. “I think,” one delegate said, “that
Iraq War veterans should cast their own shadow and not walk
in our shadow.”
On Friday, the delegates heard from
Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), the chair of the House Committee
on Veterans’ Affairs,
and from VA Deputy Secretary Gordon Mansfield. Filner promised
that his committee would work especially hard on Vietnam
veterans’ issues, in part to honor the work of recently
retired long-time VVA advocate Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.),
who made a brief appearance before the delegates.
The VVA
awards were presented during Convention business breaks on
Thursday and Friday. Washtenaw County, Michigan, Chapter
310 in Ann Arbor took home three honors: Member of the Year
(John Kinzinger), Chapter of the Year, and Chapter Newsletter
of the Year for chapters with under 200 members (The 310
Dispatch). The other VVA award winners were: Kenneth Seabron,
Incarcerated Member of the Year Cherie A. Steers, AVVA Member
of the Year The Florida Recon Report, State Council Newspaper
of the Year Shoulder to Shoulder, Eastern Iowa and Western
Illinois Quad Cities Chapter 299, Chapter Electronic Newsletter
of the Year Between The Lines, Chapter 20, Rochester, New
York, Chapter Newsletter of Year for chapters with more than
200 members Allen Manuel, VVA Region 7 Director, received
the organization’s highest honor, the VVA Commendation
Medal.
Several hundred attended a moving POW/MIA ceremony
in front of the Hilton on Friday morning at 7:00 when a VVA
plaque was unveiled on the hotel’s flagpole that flies
the POW/MIA flag. The ceremonies also included a solemn reading
of the names of all those Illinois residents listed as missing
at the end of the Vietnam War. Voting began at 8:00 in the
VVA national elections, which were once again supervised
by the League of Women Voters. John Rowan, Jack Devine, Barry
Hagge, and Alan Cook all were re-elected. Newly elected Board
member John Neuman of Oregon was the lucky winner of a vintage
white Corvette raffled off by the Illinois State Council.
The
Convention’s formal business ended with the retiring
of the flags on Saturday morning. At a little after noon,
hundreds of delegates and AVVA members (who were holding
their biennial meeting during the Convention) lined up on
the Hilton mezzanine for an autographing session. Each person
received gratis DVDs of two celebrated HBO documentaries,
Band of Brothers and Dear America. HBO Chairman and CEO Bill
Nelson, who fought with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam, donated
the DVDs and was on hand to meet and greet everyone who stood
in line. Nelson signed copies of the DVDs, along with VVA’s
Bernie Edelman, one of the producers of Dear America.
After
picking up their DVDs, nearly everyone in the line met Wanda
Bailey, Susie McIver, and Michelle DellaFave, three of the
original Ding-a-Lings, the singer/dancers from the old Dean
Martin TV show who would be performing for the first time
in 37 years at the Saturday night Awards Banquet. The next
stop in line: Nancy Sinatra, who signed photos, posed for
pictures, and talked to VVA and AVVA members for more than
four-and-a-half hours.
Nelson, a VVA life member, received
the Excellence in the Arts Award at the Awards Banquet. The
honor was bestowed in recognition of HBO’s extraordinary
record of producing top-flight documentaries, feature films,
and series that deal with America’s wars and its veterans.
Nelson accepted the award, he said, “in memory of the
more than 58,000 men and women who served with courage, integrity,
and devotion and made the ultimate sacrifice in the Vietnam
War,” and “on
behalf of HBO and our 2,000 employees, especially our artists
and talent—the people in front of and behind the HBO
cameras—because they best understand that it is through
the service and sacrifice of today’s American servicemen
and women, and the veterans who came before them, that freedom
of expression in America continues.”
Nancy Sinatra,
an AVVA member, also received the President’s
Award for Excellence in the Arts. “I’m looking
out at so many faces I kissed today,” she told the
huge banquet crowd when she came to the stage. “I kissed
half the people in this room today; I enjoyed it very much.” Honored
for her visits to Vietnam during the war to entertain the
troops and her continuing advocacy work for veterans, she
spoke emotionally of her visits to VA hospitals and praised
VVA members for the work they do. “From my heart to
yours,” she said, “thank you so much. You are
the ones who deserve [awards] like this because you are doing
the hard work every single day.”
After singing three
tunes before the awards were given out, the Ding-a-Lings
sat at a table and signed more autographs during the musical
portion of the evening. They also joined VVA and AVVA members
and guests in dancing to the rocking tunes of the Endless
Summer Band, which played till midnight. The band made many
friends in the audience that night, beginning with the first
bars of their opening number: a hard-rocking version of “We
Gotta Get Outta This Place.”
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2008, Vietnam Veterans of America. All Rights Reserved. 8605 Cameron
Street, Silver Spring, MD 20910