I recently reconnected with Beverly Dawson, the lady I met at Glenview History Center in 2007. This Starlifter picture is from her book, Images of America, Glenview Naval Air Station. (Page 108). Note the bus with the red cross backed up to the back of the medevac aircraft; that’s what we were loaded on to, …
22 August 2007: Revisiting the Past
Have you ever been troubled by an event in your past? Troubled enough to revisit it? I did. I needed to make sense of why antiwar protestors would attack a hospital bus carrying wounded troops. The discoveries I made have had far-reaching effects. Here is the story, published in Vietnam magazine about my 2007 visit. …
My Mother’s PTSD
I’ve prayed so much that her life would straighten itself out – the more I think of it the more I feel it is possible her war experience unconsciously to her was eating out her vitals – how tragic life is for the world. Henry O. Philips, January 23, 1943 Written by my grandfather, a …
Honoring a Veteran’s Memory
Oak Hills Bible Camp students help package ground beef for Bemidji Community Food Shelf Just a year ago this month while shopping at Luekens Village Foods in Bemidji, MN, I came upon Joe Lueken. I shared with Joe an idea that had been percolating for some time. He asked, “What will it take?” Four months …
Chickenhouse Chronicles—-Genesis
A few months after my mother, Barbara, died in 2010 I discovered a time capsule—including my grandparent’s urns— locked in the chickenhouse on our old homestead in northern Minnesota. (I stopped calling her Mom the spring of 1962. In 1960 she had been committed to Fergus Falls State Hospital—we children had been sent to foster …
Angie’s Story
“If it will save one widow from going through what I have experienced,” Angie told me recently, “People need to know.” Angie is a tiny, reserved lady. She speaks Ojibwa as a second language. Her goal is to pass traditional values on to her children and grandchildren. Angie and her family, 2014 Christmas. Two oldest …
Honoring a Vietnam Veteran’s Memory
http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/content/affield-donates-food-shelf The Mobile Riverine Force Museum visited Beltrami County Fair recently. 2014 marks the fiftieth anniversary of U.S. escalation in the Vietnam War, with the Tonkin Gulf incident on August 2, 1964. Over the course of five days, while signing books and helping at the Museum, I listened to hundreds of stories as men and …
Remembering Deland
It was a poignant moment this evening as I stood holding this infant girl. Her grandfather, Deland, has been gone fifteen years now. How I wish he could be holding this new life, proud of his youngest daughter’s child. Baby Deeonna, her mother, Shelia, and Me. Deland was a Vietnam Veteran who died from Agent …
Mobile Riverine Force Museum Visits Beltrami County Fair
Legion Escort Riders Wendell Affield and Legion Rider organizer, Ken Kephart Studying the Past Over the course of five days, while signing books and helping at the Museum, I listened to hundreds of stories as men and women reminisced about the Vietnam War and that era. I’ve come to realize that as we move into …
Legion Riders To Escort Mobile Riverine Force Museum to Bemidji
At 10:00 AM, Wednesday, July 30, 2014, American Legion Riders will gather at the Super 8 in Little Falls, MN to escort the Mobile Riverine Force Association Museum to Bemidji. All riders are welcome to join. The escort begins in Little Falls, travels west on Hwy 10 to Motley, then turns north on Hwy 64. …