BY DARCY DOUGHERTY MAULSBY
The passage of time is a strange thing, isn’t it?
This was on my mind when I heard a podcast guest say the time is coming soon when a ’69 Chevy will no longer be a cool classic. To some younger people, it’s just an old car, as boring as a Model T. Ouch.
A similar realization hit me on Sept. 12, when I helped bring Jeremy Glazier’s documentary film “From Iowa & Back: The Vietnam Era” to the Capri Theatre in Lake City. AsaI reviewed photographs I took at the event, one thing struck me. The 63 people in the audience were not young.
This “revelation” might sound silly. After all, the Vietnam War officially ended more than 50 years ago. The generations who lived through that era are now in their 70s, 80s and 90s.
It’s one more reminder of how fast life’s daily moments fade into memories. Those evaporate, too, if we don’t preserve the stories.
The stories of Vietnam used to permeate American culture. When Gen Xers like Jeremy and I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, Vietnam themes inspired TV shows like “The A Team” and blockbuster films like “Rambo,” “Good Morning, Vietnam” and “Forrest Gump.”
But that was decades ago. Today, a third of Americans are too young to have any personal memories of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, much less memories of the Vietnam era.
That’s why “From Iowa & Back” is so important. This award-winning film tells some of the stories of the 115,000 Iowans who served during the Vietnam War (1964-1975). Many of the Iowa veterans in the film were 19 or 20 years old when they entered the military.
“We were just kids, doing what we were told to do,” said Steve Streeter, a 1963 Lake City High School graduate. This Lanesboro-area farmer was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965.
While Steve isn’t featured in the documentary, he and his wife watched it in Lake City. “It was quite a film,” he said when I asked for his assessment. “Everything was pretty accurate.”
A difficult homecoming
Like many veterans, Steve didn’t talk much about Vietnam for decades. Few people asked, either.
“I worked for years to block it all out of my memory,” noted one veteran in the film. Another put it this way: “We came back changed. You looked at the world differently.”
For some, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., still raises troubling questions with no answers. “My name wasn’t on The Wall. Why was I one of the lucky ones?”
“There are a lot of triggers for me, like the derecho,” added another veteran in the film, who commented about the massive destruction from the 2020 storm. “The war never really ends for us.”
Honoring those who served
Many Vietnam vets rarely spoke about their military service until the last decade. “I never wore my Vietnam veteran hat until about 10 years ago,” Steve noted.
A lot of the credit for these changes goes to the Honor Flights, which started in 2005. These all-expenses-paid trips allow U.S. military veterans to visit the war memorials in Washington, D.C. Steve joined an Honor Flight out of Fort Dodge about 10 years ago.
“That day was one of the best days of my life. We felt like dignitaries. We never had that kind of welcome when we came home from Vietnam,” he shared.
I’m grateful the Honor Flights and the film “From Iowa & Back” are providing some much-needed healing for Vietnam vets. It matters, Steve said. “We shouldn’t forget what these people went through for freedom.”
Darcy Dougherty Maulsby lives near her family’s Century Farm northwest of Lake City. Visit her at www.darcymaulsby.com.
