Vietnam Veterans Day From Coast to Coast

Massachusetts

Taunton Vietnam veterans group holds POW/MIA ceremony
Wicked Local
Marc Larocque
March 29, 2015

Members of the POW/MIA awareness movement, including a faithful group of Vietnam veterans in the Taunton area, have helped foster governmental and societal responsibility toward families of U.S. service members who go missing during war, said the president of the Massachusetts Vigil Society.

Dan Golden was the keynote speaker at the 33rd annual POW/MIA Remembrance Day Ceremony on Sunday at the Vietnam Memorial Fountain downtown on Church Green. The event has been organized each year by the Taunton Area Vietnam Veterans Association to remember the 39 Massachusetts servicemen and 1,637 others nationwide whose remains were never returned from the battlefields of Southeast Asia.
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Springfield ceremonies remember Vietnam veterans 
The first salute at the Vietnam Veterans’ monument at Mason Square
WWLP 22 News
By Sy Becker
Published: March 29, 2015

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – April will mark the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam. 

Two solemn ceremonies were held in Springfield Sunday as Vietnam veterans honored their fallen comrades.

The first salute at the Vietnam Veterans’ monument at Mason Square, where African American veterans of the Winchester Square Vietnam Era Veterans honored the soldiers who never came home, many they had known all their lives.
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Springfield commemorates Vietnam Veterans Day 2015
MassLive
Elizabeth Roman
March 29, 2015

Springfield- Local leaders including Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno and U.S. Rep. Richard Neal commemorate the Vietnam Veterans Day in Springfield.
(ELIZABETH ROMAN/ THE REPUBLICAN)

SPRINGFIELD — For more than 25 years local leaders and veterans have gathered at Court Square in honor of those who served and those who died during the Vietnam War.

A ceremony was held Sunday afternoon featuring the reading of the names of those killed or missing in action as well as laying a wreath at the Vietnam Memorial. The event included various speakers including newly appointed Massachusetts Secretary of Veterans Affairs Francisco Urena who is a Purple Heart Marine, Springfield Veteran of the Year Ronald Krupke, U.S. Rep Richard E. Neal, Dr. Samuel J. Mazza, who served as a trauma surgeon during the Vietnam War, and more.
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Delaware
There are a lot of great videos on this page for Vietnam veterans.

Vietnam veterans honored at ceremony in Bristol Twp.
Bucks County Courier Times
Elizabeth Fisher
March 30, 2015

Chloe Elmer/Staff Photographer
Vietnam vets
America, Hose, Hook, and Ladder Company No. 2 Fire n Bristol Borough Chief and Desert Storm veteran David Pearl shares a moment with Jesse Hill, treasurer of the Delaware Valley Vietnam Veterans, after he thanked him in a speech during The Delaware Valley Vietnam Veterans event from 2 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 29, 2015 at their Bristol Township Headquarters to honor veterans on the March 29, 1973 anniversary of the last U.S. troops to leave Vietnam. The group will also celebrate their 8th anniversary at the headquarters. Attendees were also given a K-9 demonstration from Falls and Bristol Township police officers, in honor of the K-9 Working Dogs Veterans Day, which was March 13.

Veterans from all service branches saluted as the American flag and the black-and-white POW-MIA flag were hoisted. A three-gun salute followed at a ceremony Sunday at the headquarters of the Delaware Valley Vietnam Veterans in Bristol Township.

The occasion was a ceremony to mark the 42nd anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, signaling the end of a 10-year conflict and North Vietnam’s release of what it claimed were the last of its American prisoners of war. It would be four more years before the last of the American troops came home.

Among the attendees was Dennis Parr, a Bristol resident who served in the U.S. Navy from 1969-1973. The ceremony was particularly poignant for him because of the many friends he lost in battle, and the fact that his son, Riccardo, served two tours in Iraq as a Marine hospital corpsman.
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Virginia

Vietnam veterans honored for courage, service at Lynchburg commemoration
News Advance
Katrina Dix
March 28, 2015

The first U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam 50 years ago this month, but the conflict claimed one of Lynchburg’s own more than a year earlier, when Lt. Kenneth Shannon died after his helicopter was shot down over South Vietnam on March 15, 1964, just five days after his arrival overseas.

At a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War at the American Legion Post 16 Saturday afternoon, veterans who served with him or even went to college with him greeted his widow, Ginger Shannon-Young, who moved back to Lynchburg about four years ago.

Some were saying hello for the first time in almost 50 years; others, for the first time ever.
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Tennessee

Vietnam Veterans Day
WDEF News
March 29, 2015

Knoxville, TN (WDEF)- Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and Department of Veterans Affairs Commissioner Many-Bears Grinder announced March 29th will now be known as Vietnam Veterans Day.

The day is to recognize the courage, service and sacrifice of the men and women who served during the Vietnam War.
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Missouri

Missouri honors Vietnam veterans today
KMA Land
Special to KMA -- Mona Shand
March 30, 2015

(Jefferson City) -- It's been nearly 40 years since the official end of the Vietnam War and today Missouri honors the sacrifices of all those who served in the conflict. Many Vietnam veterans came home to find the country in the midst of the anti-establishment, anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Daniel Bell, public information officer with the Missouri Veterans Commission, says today's observance of Vietnam Veterans Day gives Missourians a chance to make up for the past.

"Vietnam veterans were not welcomed home in the same manner that your World War II, Korea, and your current returning veterans were treated," says Bell. "This is just a way of recognizing their sacrifices and their service to our country."
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Alaska

Vietnam Veterans Day honors Alaskans who served
News Miner
By Weston Morrow
March 30, 2015

ERIN CORNELIUSSEN/FAIRBANKS DAILY NEWS-MINER
Vietnam Veterans Day
Veterans and audience members listen to a panel discussion during a Vietnam Veterans Day program at Randy Smith Middle School on Sunday, March 29, 2015.

FAIRBANKS — Veterans, active-duty military members and community members gathered in the gymnasium at Randy Smith Middle School on Sunday to honor the service of Alaska’s many Vietnam veterans.

The event Sunday was timed purposefully to fall on March 29 — a date that commemorates the withdrawal of the last United States troops from Vietnam in 1973. Forty years later, in 2013, the Alaska Legislature declared March 29 to serve from then on as Vietnam Veterans Day, “to acknowledge and commemorate the military service of American men and women in Vietnam.”
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