Welcome Home South Texas Vietnam Veterans, slated for April 9 at McAllen Convention Center.
The 40-something year-old whose only memory of his father is from a photograph of himself as a young child standing in front of his papa’s flag-draped coffin; the mother who doesn’t find much comfort in the medals awarded her only son who was one of the 58,000 killed in action; the daughter who met her father for the first time as a name on the Vietnam memorial. We don’t often think of families as casualties of war, but their wounds are just as real.
Then there are those whose loved ones made it back home, but in the decades since the end of the war have lost their lives to suicide, illness, accidents or the effects of Agent Orange. Like the cousin of a man who “was never the same,” and one day gave up fighting his demons by taking his own life.
South Texas Vietnam veterans didn’t expect that the country they so love would one day attempt to make amends for what happened so long ago; neither did they expect the overwhelming show of support from their community. More than 40 proclamations from all five counties that comprise the Rio Grande Valley, cities, and school districts and two from the Texas House of Representatives and Senate have been made honoring April 9, 2011, as LZ-Operation Welcome Home South Texas Vietnam Veterans.
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