VVA Chapter 96 - Free Fire Wire July 2007

I have lived in a large northern city for the past two years. I'm a Carolinian by birth, heritage AND choice, and soon our family will be moving back to NC - the SOUTH by God. But someone thought it might be interesting for me to tell about my life here in the North.

I live with my wife and stepdaughter. My wife is also from the SOUTH, but she has lived here in the north for almost 18 years. I am a Vietnam Vet, retired by PTSD from the practice of law. My wife is retired military (nurse) and now she works for the city government. I think our life is pretty normal.

Actually both of our families have military connections. My father fought in the Korean War, and my father-in-law did too. My father-in-law is very old fashioned, and I was a little worried the first time I met him. My wife and I married before I met her family. Her father had particular requirements for the husband of his oldest daughter, even though she is over 40. But he is a great guy, and we have good times together now when we visit the wife's home town.

My wife retired from the military as a Lt. Col. after putting in 20 years. She was nurse, and then hospital administrator. She still has a lot of friends in the military, and one of them took us fishing last month on a base not far from here. I didn't have the proper ID to get onto the base - you know about security these days - but he is the base commander and I was riding with him so the gate guards just saluted our car and poof, I was in. The fishing was great.

Yesterday afternoon I was watching a pretty boring ball game on the tube when the wife came home unexpectedly just after lunch. She had ditched work and wanted me to go shopping with her. I don't do shopping very well, but there is a cool bar and restaurant, Take Five, near where she wanted to go. Good beer and burgers. I relented.

Traffic is heavy here, especially on Friday when everyone wants to get out of town for the weekend. Parking downtown can be impossible, so we splurged on a Taxi. Usually we take the subway, especially on Friday.

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ABOUT THE FREE FIRE WIRE

"Things" at Chapter 96 are progressing, and this issue of the Free Fire Wire is being sent out via U.S. Mail. But "things" are progressing slowly. There will definitely be another Free Fire Wire in September; but whether it will be a mailed "hard copy" or just "web based" is uncertain at this time. If you have not been receiving it and would like to receive e-mailed notification when the next issue is published "online", please send your e-mail address to richard.white@vva96.org Our ultimate goal is to publish a "hard copy" Free Fire Wire every month. We just don't yet have a precise date that we expect to reach that goal. But even if we mail a "hard copy", there will still be an online version, and it should be available at http://vva96.org on or before the second Thursday of each month.

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

To all members... You are invited to our social this month at the Hootch. We will have a short board meeting and a guest speaker. Hope to see you Thursday the 16th at the Hootch.

We have negotiated a new lease for the Hootch for a ten year period. It is scheduled to be signed after the Post 13 membership meeting on August 9th. I feel that both parties will come away feeling good about what has happened in the past 20 years and what is about to happen in the next 10 years. At the end of our 10 year lease I would like to think that the Hootch could be turned over to Iraq and Afghanistan vets to serve them as it has Vietnam vets.

On July 12th a large limb fell from the large water oak on the west side of the Hootch. Since that occurred the tree has been removed. The decision was made by Commander Charles LeCroy and myself to remove it. It was an expensive removal. It was agreed to split the cost between VVA and the Legion. I have reported it to our insurance company, sent in the estimates they required, and we have received a check for the damages. The repairs will start this week and conclude by the end of next week.

Boe Boeve has had knee replacement therapy and is home recovering, doing therapy three times a week. Keep him in your thoughts in his recovery. Larry Ward is also having a pretty rough time with health issues. I would also ask that you put these and any other members in poor health in your thoughts. Hang in there guys.

Lest we forget. Rick Clevenger, President

HOMECOMING OR LAST ROUNDUP? by Mike Horan - Carrabelle, Florida

The calls started in April, and didn’t let up. Urgent Calls! They went to current and old members of VVA 96, some as far away Havana, Quincy, Carrabelle, and Jacksonville. The calls made by Rick Clevenger and others had a simple, but straightforward message; we need you to come to the annual membership meeting in June so you can help save VVA 96 and save the Hooch.” Rejoin VVA if you have to and make your presence known and heard.

The annual membership meeting was impressive; almost 50 old and renewing members flocked to the Hooch and joined together to vote out the current leadership. These were older Vietnam Vets, certainly not in the prime of their life but still willing to “stand in the Gap” as a group. Most everybody had grey hair, some walked with canes, many limped around or rode a wheelchair. But they all still had fire in their belly; no slackers at this meeting.

By a nearly unanimous vote, this charged up group of old “Nam Vets” made a statement! VVA 96’s 20+ years of dedicated service to veterans and the community must be restored. The Hooch must again reflect the will it’s members and all must feel welcome and their membership must stand for doing the right thing. As a result of this uprising, the long standing traditions and practices of VVA 96 will once again be honored. Rick Clevenger was elected President along with an entire slate of like-minded members. And this is definitely a good thing.

However, while many friendships were renewed, the Hooch saved, and everybody is feeling good about how well things turned out, there is still cause for serious concern, at least in my opinion. The fact is that VVA 96 is a dying organization and has been so since our national charter was approved. We are a time-limited membership organization with a very restricted membership potential. The plain fact is there aren’t any new Nam Vets to take our place. Who will carry on the traditions we have collectively instituted over the past decades? In lieu of not being able to bring in new members, we might as well buy a bottle of expensive booze and once a year celebrate the few remaining members still alive. The last man standing gets to open the bottle and drink a salute to all those who have gone before him. Don’t forget to turn off the lights!

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Our problem is far from unique. I am reminded of discussions that have taken place in the halls of the American Legion, VFW, AmVets and other veterans service organizations over the years. How do we attract new members? How do we sustain our organization for future generations? This is an active concern for many veterans organization. The USMC 3rd Recon Battalion, RVN Association, of which I am a current member is facing the same dilemma as VVA. This association is very small and restricts members to a specific time period. However, there is still a 3rd Recon Battalion, many of which are serving in Iraq. Our leadership is starting discussions to open up membership to all past and present 3rd Recon Battalion veterans, regardless of whether they were in combat or not. To me this is a step in the right direction. Just like all organizations, veterans or not, they require new blood to carry the torch of past generations if it is to survive and remain relevant.

Should VVA National, and VVA 96 in particular, revise their charters and solicit all veterans to join? This has already occurred in in one Vietnam veterans organization in Florida. The Vietnam Veterans Coalition has revised its charter and is now The Vietnam and All Veterans Coalition of Florida. Forward thinking has been a good thing on their part and their membership roster is expanding.

Expanding our membership and the ways to do it would be a good discussion to start with the membership of VVA 96. We must look at the pros and cons and plan accordingly for the future. Our membership has always sought active participation at the Hooch with other veteran and community service organizations. The DAV and Purple Heart groups come to mind. Is expanding the criteria for VVA membership a great idea for us? I’m not sure, but I do believe talking about it will be a good and healthy exercise for all of us. As for me, I don’t plan on being the last man standing.

Report from the North (continued from page 1)

She picked up a couple of blouses and made me look at shirts and ties. I hate ties. I wore them every day for 30 years, and I think it would be a good thing for men everywhere if we just rebelled and came to a universal agreement that a golf shirt and slacks is plenty formal enough for any occasion.

Last night we went to a Chinese restaurant with our best friends. There are four families that often get together - each family has one daughter. The kids get along great, and so do the adults. It was kind of a going away dinner for us. As there were 12 of us, the restaurant put us together in a "private room" because we have a history of making a lot of noise. One of the guys brought in some Chinese booze and insisted that we all drink a few shots during the meal. That stuff is deadly.

The food was great as always. We had spring rolls, ribs, fish, shrimp, and a couple of things I'm not clear about, all very good though.

I'm really going to miss these friends when we make the move to NC in a couple of weeks. I have lived here for a couple of years and have made some of the best friends of my life. But we will be back to visit, I'm sure. There is one restaurant here that serves grits and biscuits with country ham and eggs, and I'm glad I found it. Not as good as my grandma made, but pretty damn fine.

My wife is a little nervous about our move to North Carolina. She has never been there but she is a firm believer that the women in the South are prettier, smarter and better in every way. I'm not going to disagree with her. She loves the South, but has never been to Morehead City, NC. My stepdaughter is stoked about the move. She likes my son and his family a lot and we will live near them.

I think there is nothing unusual at all about our life here. But someone thought that the fact that the northern city I live in is Beijing, China might be interesting. Oh, and maybe that the military that my wife and her father were in was the People's Liberation Army. HER south is Anxiang County, Hunan province, just south of the Yangtze River. And yes, both of our fathers fought in the Korean War, just on opposite sides.

But people are people, wherever they are.

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I am a VVNC - Vietnam Veteran from North Carolina AND Vietnam Veteran in China. I have lived in Beijing for most of the last two years and someone (not me!) thought that you might be interested in my daily life in China, how to break a coon hound from sucking eggs, and understanding women. Well, OK, I lied. I don't know anything about the second two, but maybe I can tell you a bit about the first.

My wife is a more interesting person than I am. Just after the Cultural Revolution the Army needed some new officers. They came to her village and offered her schooling to become a nurse and an officer. So at age 13 she left home and at 17 she was a nurse 2d Lt. in the Navy, stationed on Hainan Island. Twenty years later, when she retired, she was a Lt. Col. and Administrator of the Naval Hospital here in Beijing. Since that time she has worked for the Beijing Municipal Government in the department that regulates advertising. She has a daughter - my stepdaughter who lives with us - who will turn 16 in a few short weeks.

Because of my wife I have met a lot of interesting people in China. People in the military, people in the government, and people in private enterprise. Most of them don't speak much English and I don't speak but three words of Chinese (one of them being "beer"), but that has not prevented me from talking with them, visiting with them in their homes, taking trips with them, and generally just hanging out. I have also met a lot of students, ordinary folks, family members, and whoever.

The people here are great. No matter where I go, how lost and confused I become, or just generally ignorant as I am liable to be, it has never failed that some person will come up to me and say in English "May I help you?" It is a whole lot like the South in the USA, even more so. If the person trying to help me can't speak enough English to understand me, they will quickly find someone who can. This is really amazing, and not at all like the typical big city aloofness often found in the USA.

The Chinese people admire the United States, and they like Americans. China may be the last place on earth where you don't have to pretend to be Canadian. The Chinese word for the USA, "Mei Guo", means "beautiful country".

Even the Chinese government has been good to me. I have a visa to live here with my family and come and go across the border as I please. This visa does not exist in the rules and regulations, but I have it anyway. And the USA government has been good to me too - offering me medical assistance through the VA overseas program, and expediting the immigration visas for my wife and stepdaughter.

I have a lot more to say about China, especially the people... later. (Editor's postscript: To see more VVNC's photos of life and scenery ancient and modern in China, read the online version of this issue.)