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One of the "catch phrases" promulgated by our leaders in Saigon was the following statement: "We are here to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese People" This was quickly shortened to the derisive term "Hearts and Minds." This expression, along with the phrases "Xin Freaking Loi" - "Sorry about that", "Only xxx days and a wake up", and "Numbah Ten", was used quite frequently by almost all US military personnel in country whenever the circumstances of their daily life produced frustrating or unpleasant experiences. If you graduated between 1955 and 1975 and served in the military, you had a good chance of serving part of your tour of duty in Vietnam. Seven Shelby County graduates lost their lives in that conflict. The rest of us returned to the States to get on with our American lives and put our Vietnam experiences behind us, but we never forgot those days in the cities, hamlets, and jungles of Vietnam. Jon Stephen Theobald, 1960 SHS graduate, was one American who never forgot that experience and has kept those memories and connections alive.
Steve's story:
My assignment to the Republic of South Vietnam came in 1963, the last year of my four-year enlistment in the U. S. Air Force. After spending most of the previous three years as an instructor of aircraft fueling procedures and coordinator of fueling operations, I wound up in Vietnam with an advisory team to the South Vietnamese Air Force. Actually, it was on-the-job training as the U. S. A. F. was flying independent operations as well.
I left Vietnam in August of 1964 and entered civilian life again, but the fondness I felt for the country and its people stayed with me and grew as time went along. I've studied the Vietnamese language, history and culture ever since. I incorporated Asian Studies into as much of my university course work as possible in both my undergraduate and Masters degrees. By then, it was 1970, and things weren't looking good in Southeast Asia , and I had a family, so going back to Vietnam had to be deferred.
In 1996, Pat and I received Teacher Creativity Grants from the Eli Lilly Foundation to go to Vietnam to observe the changes in the country since the war and, in Pat 's case, the vestiges of French culture in the former colony. We spent our summer traveling the length and breadth of Vietnam from Saigon , the Mekong Delta, to the Central Highlands , to the coastal plains and all the way to Hanoi and Ha Long Bay near the Chinese border. We have been back to Vietnam several times since '96. Now I get to play some tennis with people we know and relax and travel off the beaten path. I try to get back there every two or three years to keep my connection to the land and the people. Hopefully, I'll do so until I can't bear or afford the twenty-four-hour flight. For those of you who read and look at the pictures of this photo essay, I hope it gives a more positive view of a country and its people that, in my opinion, have long been shortchanged. We were told in 1963 that our mission was to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. I'm still, in some way, trying to fulfill that mission.
For those of you who were once there, Vietnam has changed tremendously, mostly for the better. But, emotionally, as Thomas Wolfe wrote, " You can't go home again. " And that is a two-way street.
Jon Stephen Theobald
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