Chattanooga honors Vietnam veterans with long-awaited 'welcome home' celebration

Mike Holden, right, helps Buck Cooper look Monday, March 27, 2017 during a Welcome Home celebration for Vietnam veterans at the First Tennessee Pavilion for the city where he served in the Vietnam War.
Mike Holden, right, helps Buck Cooper look Monday, March 27, 2017 during a Welcome Home celebration for Vietnam veterans at the First Tennessee Pavilion for the city where he served in the Vietnam War.

If you go

Welcome Home Celebration Honoring Vietnam Veterans Schedule› Tuesday, March 28, Tivoli Theatre, 709 Broad St. — Screenings of “We Were Soldiers” at 10 a.m., 1:30 and 4 p.m. Each showing will be followed by a panel discussion moderated by Joe Galloway, co-author of the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young,” and featuring soldiers from the movie.› Wednesday, March 29, Chattanooga National Cemetery, 1200 Bailey Ave. — A final welcome home featuring an address by Joe Galloway, 6-7 p.m.

Chattanooga kicked off a three-day jubilee to honor Vietnam War veterans with a long-awaited "welcome home" celebration Monday night at the First Tennessee Pavilion.

Vietnam veterans, joined by their families and friends, received welcome home pins, shared their stories and sat down to a massive picnic-style dinner when the 50th Anniversary Vietnam War Commemoration program began. In all, the event fed at least 1,000 people, organizers said.

Organizers, hosts and special guests made it clear: a nation rent by turmoil over a costly and unpopular war still owes a debt of gratitude to the men and women who served their country all those decades ago.

"Unfortunately, when you served, our American public was a little confused," Tennessee Commissioner of Veterans Affairs Many-Bears Grinder said. "They didn't know the difference between those who make the decisions about war and those who carried out their orders."

Grinder said the veterans served "in tumultuous times" and their long- unrecognized sacrifices finally turned the public's understanding around, so that when she came home from the war in Afghanistan she received the hero's welcome they should have received.

"Because of you, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs takes better care of our veterans today," Grinder said. "Because of you, our veterans come home today and receive a better screening of their physical and emotional health."

Grinder also thanked the families of the veterans, acknowledging the burden they carried while their loved ones served.

Linda Moss Mines, co-chairperson of the 50th anniversary Vietnam War Commemoration Committee, said the conflict in Southeast Asia lives as a distant memory for those who watched it unfold on the nightly news or were born after the war. For the veterans, it's not a forgotten experience, she said.

"For many of us, the events of the late 1960s and early 1970s often seem like yesterday," Mines said. "You remember combat situations that haunt you at night. You remember friends and comrades that did not come home. The memories that you carry of a nation that often did not recognize your service and welcome you home are very real."

Before the evening's program, Mines and fellow members of the Daughters of the American Revolution spoke to veterans and put "welcome back" pins on them. All around, veterans mixed, enjoying the camaraderie of the shared experience of the war.

Robert McCain, who served in a communications unit in Vietnam in 1967, said he came back alone when he returned to Fort Oglethorpe. He rarely talked about the war then, and nobody asked him about it, either. He said he had one friend who thought he had such a good tan because he had been in Florida.

Things are different now, he said.

"I'm beginning to see a whole lot of American spirit alive now, more so than it has been in the last 50 years," McCain said.

Contact staff writer Paul Leach at 423-757-6481 or pleach@times freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @pleach_tfp.

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