written by Todd DePastino In November and December, 21 of us—including five veterans who had served in-country during the war—traveled to Vietnam, from Hanoi and Halong Bay in the North to Saigon and the Mekong Delta in the South. Vietnam is a beautiful and often bewildering place, ancient in history and now yoked to
written by Todd DePastino Welcome sign at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi Vietnam is about as far as you can travel from the United States. It's literally half-way round the world. So, most of us who landed in Hanoi on November 28 for our two-week tour of Vietnam put in 24-hours
written by Chuck Myers Back in 2021, we welcomed Navy veteran Chuck Myers to our VBC Greatest Generation Live to give a virtual tour of the USS Hornet (CV-12). Chuck served as a junior officer on USS Yorktown (CVS-10) in the 1960s. Today, he volunteers as a docent with the USS Hornet Sea, Air,
written by Mary Klepper In Rogersville, Tennessee, is the Persia General Store, the kind of place where “if they don’t have it, you don’t need it.” It’s also the domain of Vicki Seay, who founded the store and has run it for almost 50 years. I walked in looking for Diet Peach Snapple (I
written by Carole Wagener A veteran’s letters are a rich source that can be mined for gold when writing their stories. Using these first-person accounts, the events of the time when they were written should be reasonably historically accurate. Many veterans wrote letters home to their sweethearts or their parents who saved them. Some
written by Todd DePastino Paul Mihalic (Paul & Karen Mihalic) On our September 18 VBC Happy Hour with Joshua Jacobs, Under Secretary of the VA for Benefits, VBC Member Karen Mihalic shared the troubling story of her husband Paul, who served two tours in Vietnam as a USAF Air Commando with MACV-SOG—“Military
