Dad's Vietnam Collection on Display at the History Fair

Photo Credit: Jen Rickards

October is Family History Month, and it's been a busy month. On October 6, the Franklin County Historical Society held its Annual History Fair at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Union, Missouri. I've had the privilege of having a booth set up for a few years now, but this year's fair was very special.

I teased my display on Instagram for about a month before the fair to drum up interest. 

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Since my dad passed away back in 2021, I've been working hard going through his stuff to preserve it before Mom sold their house. I knew about some of my dad's Vietnam collection from when I was a kid. He allowed me to display a few items from his service in the military at a school event. But going through Dad's stuff led me to find more than I expected. When my Uncles cleaned out one of my dad's sheds in the backyard, they uncovered a box of Vietnam stuff including tools, pouches, clothing, and more. The box was falling apart from the rain that leaked into the shed through the years. I was excited to go through the items, but sad at the same time cause I wished Dad was still here so we could go through it together. Since he wasn't, I was left to go through it all alone. And when I did, I got a little surprise.

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Watch me get a surprise from a little friend

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It was so nice of him to drop by. Unfortunately, he left behind a mess that I had to clean up. And he destroyed a few items. But now it's all protected and safe. But that wasn't the last of the items that Dad had kept. Sometime later, My Dad's brother, Uncle Marty, contacted me and told me he found some of Dad's uniforms in his shed. WHAT?! So he brought that over for me to put with Dad's collection. But we still weren't done. Just this past year, my cousin had been cleaning out the lake house told me she found Dad's foot locker! Holy cow!! She asked if I still wanted it and you can guess my answer. OF COURSE! This would be the perfect way for me to display Dad's collection for the history fair. Now, having all this together, it was time to figure out how to display and label the items. Thanks to my wonderful hubby, he was able to get some plexiglass from work for me to lay over the top of the footlocker to keep items from being touched, taken, or damaged. Also, thanks to the Historical Society for lending me one of their mannequins for my dad's uniform. In the end, the display looked amazing.

Photo Credit: Jen Rickards

I wished Dad could have been here to see my display. But as I told my Aunt Patty, if Dad had been here, I wouldn't have had this opportunity to display his collection. Dad kept his collection to himself, and wouldn't even talk about Vietnam except on rare occasions. And on those occasions, I was able to record his voice. I put together a slide-show video to share.

I am so blessed I was able to put his collection on display for others to see. My favorite part of the day was when a young boy, about 12 maybe, came to the history fair specifically to see this display. He was really into the memorabilia from the period and was even dressed in a replica uniform. I pulled items out so he could hold them and touch them. He even wanted his picture taken with the display. Dad would have been so happy to see this.

Something that surprised me, although it shouldn't have, was how many people were surprised to see a Vietnam display. It's no shock to anyone how controversial the Vietnam Conflict was and still is to this day. The war was not supported by the American people and soldiers were treated like scum. When they came home, they were not given a Welcome Home celebration like other wars in the past. They were insulted, ridiculed, rejected, and more. So when you see a Vietnam veteran, thank them for their service and tell them, "Welcome Home."

With more recognition being given to the soldiers who fought in Vietnam, I hope we will start seeing more displays and more veterans who are willing to share their stories. Don't forget, that March 29 is National Vietnam War Veterans Day. Thank you to everyone who came out to the Franklin County History Fair. And to everyone who stopped by to see my display. I wish Dad could have been there. 

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Watch my Facebook Reel from the History Fair

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Sources:

https://vva.org/

http://vietnamgear.com/

https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2545524/nation-observes-vietnam-war-veterans-day/

Friday Find of the Week: Dad's Military Uniform from Vietnam

     Just when I thought I had everything that belonged to my dad accounted for, my Uncle Marty threw me a curve ball. They were cleaning out their storage shed when they came across a military uniform. At first, they thought it belonged to my Uncle Mike, who also served in Vietnam, but the rankings on the sleeve were higher than what Uncle Mike had been. So, they concluded it had to belong to my dad. The fact that my dad might have some of his stuff stored at Uncle Marty's is not that much of a surprise at all. Let me explain.

    You see, Uncle Marty and his family currently live on the property that used to belong to my grandparents. The barn that used to be on the property is no longer there, but some of the sheds are. When dad went off to Vietnam, he stored some of his stuff on that property since he didn't have a place of his own. And when he came back, he stayed with family for a bit before bouncing around from place to place until he settled in a little house in Eureka. He only rented the house; he did not own it. So he kept his main address listed as his parents' in High Ridge. And he also continued to keep some of his stuff there as well. Just ask my family about the car that sat there for about 20 years. Haha! As you can see, it's not unlikely that Uncle Marty would come across some items that would still be stored at his house. 

    My cousin, Jess, gave me the heads-up that he was bringing in over. For which I'm glad. I was able to keep my composure when he walked in with it. I took it home with me to show my husband. When I pulled it out, he about cried cause he knew exactly what it was without me having to say anything. After I showed him, I looked it over thoroughly and cautiously checked each pocket. If you saw my short on YouTube where I'm going through my dad's other Vietnam stuff, you would know why. Click to watch the YouTube Short. 

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    The uniform itself is in good condition after being stored in a shed for--how many years now?--more than 50 years? Goodness! It has a few stains, a few tears, and could use a good ironing, but it doesn't smell nor is it moldy. I think I should consult with a textile expert on how to clean and care for it. That's out of my wheelhouse. 

    Something I took notice of though. The patch on the arm is his rank. The rank on the uniform is Sergeant. Which made me think back to the story he told me about his friend Lonnie Merchant. Lonnie was the Staff Sergeant is a step above Sergeant and is in charge of certain duties pertaining to the lower-ranked soldiers. 

                                  E5-Sergeant             E6-Staff Sergeant                             

    Dad and Lonnie were good friends. They spent a lot of time together in Vietnam. Well, on the night of September 9, 1969, Lonnie asked dad to switch his rotation and go out and he would stay behind. Dad obliged. They were doing Mine Sweeps; clearing the roads of land mines so trucks and equipment could get through. When dad came back, he learned that their bunker was hit and a sergeant was killed. His heart sank. And when they read off the name, he about collapsed. Just like that, his best friend was gone. 

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Lonnie Merchant Find a Grave Memorial

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    This affected dad throughout his whole life. If he wouldn't have switched, he would have been there too and could have possibly been killed. I wonder if Dad had a bit of survivor's guilt. He talked about it with me on multiple occasions. See the video below.

    The reason that patch on his uniform got my attention was as a result of Lonnie's death, dad was promoted right on the spot. He was the next best qualified to take Lonnie's position. He was always his second in command, dad would say. So, since the uniform had the Sergeant insignia patch instead of the Staff Sergeant insignia, this uniform was from before Lonnie was killed. It's amazing the things you think about. I know if Dad would have been here to see it, he would have thought the same thing. It could have been why he kept it over at his parents' house. It was probably too much to bear to look at it. Dad wouldn't talk about Vietnam for decades after he came home, so it wouldn't be a stretch of the mind to think that. 

    But I'm glad I have it now. And once I get everything cleaned up, I will store it all together. I would love to display it, but I have no clue how I would display it or where I would put it. But I have it and it's safe. Yeah, it's true, my family never throws anything away.  And there are days I am glad about that. 

This is why I did this - Fort Leonard Wood Yearbooks

    Guys, listen. I recently received an email that just blew me away and made all the work I've been doing on this project worth it. I'm crying right now. I did not expect this to happen as soon as did. Heck, I wasn't sure if it would happen at all.

A gentleman by the name of Ed Janota sent me this wonderful email:

"Hello Auntie Jen,

"This is amazing that you have a copy of the year book from my 1960 basic training, I was on 4 Battalion, 3rd Reg, Co B. 

"I am listed as E. Janota, Jr. I was 17 yrs old and fresh out of high school then headed to MP school at Ft Gordon. Eventually wound up in Vietnam in 1966.

"I lost my year book around 1978 after moving to Texas. I have also lost almost all of my old service buddies. I would dearly love to have pdf pics of anything you have from my year book. I am going to your donation site and do what I can.

You are a Godsend, Bless You. "

    This is why I did this. From the first moment that I saw the yearbooks in the antique store, I decided to purchase those books & put them online. For Free! I knew there had to be graduates that had lost their yearbooks or never received them. And there had to be families of these servicemen who had never seen these yearbooks. My dad never discussed his service in Vietnam unless prompted, and even then sometimes he wouldn't talk about it. 

    So receiving this email has just reassured me that I am doing the right thing. It has lit a fire under me to try to track down more yearbooks. I already got two more recently. One I found online and the other was donated by Lynn Wagner from the Franklin County Historical Society. We are going to grow this collection as large as we can. And keep this collection for free. 

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FtLeonardWoodYearbooks.com

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    I need your help, guys. Talk to friends and family. Look at yard sales. Search antique stores. Help me track down as many yearbooks as we can. If you are ever curious if I have a particular yearbook or not, just check my website. Keep it bookmarked. Now is the time to be looking for these. Servicemen from this time period are passing away and their belongings are being donated. Let's save these yearbooks. Together. I don't even need to have the book in hand. If you can photograph or scan the yearbooks, that will be just as good. 

    If you are unable to find yearbooks but want to help, you can send me donations that go directly toward purchasing yearbooks. Here is the link specifically for this: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/AuntieJens?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US

Together we can connect servicemen and their families to these yearbooks.

Week 21: Yearbooks - Fort Leonard Wood Army Training Center

      Yearbooks are a fantastic source for locating pictures of your ancestors and learning more about a particular time in their lives. I have all my yearbooks from when I was in school from my Elementary years up to High School. I also have my parents' yearbooks in my collection now. Ancestry.com has been growing its yearbook collection as well and, thanks to them, I've been able to download many copies of ancestors' yearbooks. But there is a collection that I haven't found anywhere else as of yet. And this prompt is giving me the perfect opportunity to announce a project I've been working on as well.

    One yearbook I inherited that was in my dad's collection was his Fort Leonard Wood Army Training Center Yearbook from when he attended. He went through the training center in preparation for Vietnam. I remembered going through it with him one time before he had passed. He said they were stock yearbooks in which a section was added that included their photos. It still gave me an insight into the training he went through while attending the Army Training Center.

    Fast forward to last year when I went to the South County Antique Mall. I had a specific item I was looking for in the book sections when I came across the cover of a yearbook I was very familiar with. It was a Fort Leonard Wood Army Training Center yearbook. Granted it was from a different year, but it still resembled my dad's yearbook. I was so shocked anyone would sell their relative's yearbook. Soon after, I found more yearbooks from Fort Leonard Wood. My mind just couldn't process this. Do you know how many people I've seen post on the internet wishing they had their Father's yearbook or even just a photograph? That's when I came up with an idea.

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Read my blog post

Antique Malls and Fort Leonard Wood Yearbooks

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    After searching online, I have yet to find a Fort Leonard Wood Training Center Yearbook collection on websites like Fold 3 and Ancestry. I know every day more and more collections are being digitized and added to their sites, but they are usually behind a paywall. I wanted to make these yearbooks available to anyone and everyone. So that's why I would like to share the website I created just for these yearbooks.

www.FtLeonardWoodYearbooks.com

    This website is a collection of yearbook pages containing graduates from Fort Leonard Wood Army Training Center in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The years included will be 1959-1967. The focus will mainly be on the Vietnam War era. Please visit my site to learn more about this project.

    I am still working on getting the yearbook pages added that I have in my collection. It is very time-consuming typing all the names into the site and scanning the pages for viewing. My goal is to make this site searchable for anyone who visits which is why I am typing each name individually into the site. That way the search engine will pick up the names. That will be the last task I will work on, but for now, you can go to each yearbook and use Ctrl + F to search for a name. 

    If you have any suggestions, please let me know. I want this site to be as user-friendly as possible. I am also hoping to grow my collection very soon. I will be on the lookout for more yearbooks when I start going to yard sales, estate sales, and antique malls. 

This project is dedicated to my Dad and all those soldiers who fought in Vietnam. May their sacrifices never be forgotten.

SSG Dennis G. Fuchs

Fort Leonard Wood Yearbooks and Copyright 🍂

     If you've been following my blog, you will know I picked up a couple of Fort Leonard Wood US Army Training Center Yearbooks from the antique store a few weeks back. I couldn't bear to see them stay there and not be preserved and shared. My dad attended there for his training before Vietnam, so these books have a special place in my heart.

U.S. Army Training Center
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri
Company C, First Battalion, Second Brigade
23 February 1967

    I shared the books I had in some of the genealogy groups and told them I would do look-ups for people. So far I haven't found anyone people were looking for, but it's possible that could turn up later. I was asked if I was going to upload the pages to the internet so people could view them on their own. I had briefly thought about it but wasn't sure if I would be able to. For one main reason: Copyright.
    Most of you probably didn't know that most yearbooks, especially today, are copyrighted. And not just one copyright, but many levels of copyright. I have attended a few webinars that talk about copyright so I'm familiar with the topic. I honestly didn't realize how much is actually copyrighted. Especially yearbooks.
    Judy G. Russell has a wonderful blog called The Legal Genealogist. She is a Genealogist with a law degree and she dedicates her time to helping people understand the law, especially when it comes to family history research. It's actually her webinars I've attended. So I searched her blog for answers regarding yearbooks and copyrights. 

Read what she wrote on her blog
Copyright and The School Yearbook

    Definitely helpful, but I still had a few more questions. So I contacted Judy directly to get some more help and answer my questions. I just wanted to be sure that legally I wouldn't get into trouble. I had thoroughly checked through the books for any mention of a copyright notice or mention of a photographer and I found nothing. So I would assume that means it would be in the public domain. I contacted Judy on the 18th and responded on the 19th.

Judy G. Russell on October 19, 2021 at 10:51 am
From a purely copyright perspective, something published in the US without a copyright notice before 1977 is in the public domain. (See https://copyright.cornell.edu/publicdomain) But do consider privacy issues… Not everybody wants their yearbook pictures online.

    I was so glad to hear that they should be in the public domain. That clears up that concern. But privacy... yes this is something I had thought about. How would these men feel having their pictures online? The truth is we are coming to a time where a lot of these men are no longer living or are passing away. And some of the men that are still living may want to see pictures of their old comrades; the old friends they served with. So at this point, I am willing to risk it to share these photos for family and friends to be able to view these pictures.

    So coming up soon, these yearbooks will be available online for anyone to view. I am still researching the best place to upload these yearbooks for viewing. I'm also considering creating a database. I'm not sure yet. Still have to work out the details. But I do know I want to upload these. So stay tuned for that.

    So let me end this blog post by putting this out here. I have mentioned this already in another post, but going to share it again. If you have a Fort Leonard Wood yearbook that you don't want anymore, I will take it. OR if you wish to scan the pages and contribute your yearbook to this collection, please feel free to send them to me. I will happily include them. Instructions on how to do this will come later in another blog post once I figure out where I am going to host this. But I wanted to put it out there now to hopefully draw attention. 

Anyway, thank you, and stay tuned!! 

Antique Malls and Fort Leonard Wood Yearbooks 🍂

     Sometimes my hubby and I like to go to Antique Malls on the weekends and just look around. Sometimes we are looking for specific items, but most of the time we are just browsing. One of our favorite Antique Malls we like to visit is the South County Antique Mall off Tesson Ferry in St. Louis, Missouri. They have quite a selection of booths filled with all kinds of different antiques. Some genuine and some... not so genuine. Some treat it like a garage sale to get rid of just random items.
    A few weeks back, we were looking to get out for a bit so we went over there to look around. Mark was on the lookout for some old records and I was looking for a book for the Franklin County Historical Society. So that meant I was browsing through tons of stacks of books. Let me tell you, I never expected to find what I found. In one booth, they had a ton of military memorabilia that caught my attention, so I stopped to look. And what did I find in the back on some shelves? Yearbooks from the U.S. Army Training Center in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri dated during the Vietnam War. *gasp*

    I recognized these books because I had my dad's copy in my office. I couldn't believe it! Who would get rid of these?? And there were quite a few! Some were duplicates. How did this person get these? Well, that how part didn't interest me as much as the "How much are they?" part. Only a few bucks per book. Oh, they are mine now! I just couldn't leave them behind. I didn't know what I was going to do with these yet, but I figured as long as I had them they were safe.
    No, I'm not crazy I promise. I just knew that there had to be some people out there who didn't have these books and would be interested in them. I also knew Yearbooks were a hot item right now in the genealogy community, so I figured I would check to see if these were available anywhere to donate so they could be digitized.
    Well, fast forward to now. I have about 8 books now, including my dad's. I have shared which ones I have in the Missouri Genealogy Group and in the GAA Group as well, offering look-ups for anyone. I had learned that Fort Leonard Wood apparently doesn't have copies of the yearbooks for anyone to look up anymore, so I knew I made the right decision getting these books. I haven't found anything in them that anyone was looking for yet, but you never know.
    I'm hoping to get the pages with people on them uploaded somewhere for others to look through, but I have to research the copyright laws on this first. I don't want to get in trouble. I don't plan on putting up the whole book; just the pages with people. So be on the lookout. 
    Now every time I go to Antique Malls, I am checking every booth for these Yearbooks. I found more in other booths and began to wonder, "why are all these popping up all of a sudden?" Then I remember back to when I visited my dad's grave. The majority of the headstones around him had "Vietnam" written on them, my dad's being one of them. And it occurred to me, that generation is started to pass away. Just like World War II veterans, soon this generation will be no more. And what happens when people pass away? Things get donated, sold, or (even worse) trashed! So I am sure we are going to be finding more and more of these yearbooks popping up.
    The Vietnam War was not like the first three wars. Americans didn't come home to a hero's welcome. Most came home to people who hated them and wanted nothing to do with them. They were treated so differently. Look, I don't care if you agree with the reasons we were at war or the politics of the war, you don't do that to those who risked their lives fighting for those who couldn't fight for themselves. These soldiers came back scarred for life. And then to get rejected by your own country, just makes it worse. The experiences these soldiers went through were nothing like anyone should ever have to face. So it's no surprise if these men didn't talk about their service with their family (my dad barely did). And then it's no surprise that these books end up being gotten rid of. 
    So I've taken on this project. To collect as many yearbooks as I can and upload their pictures for others to find. Because their pictures deserve to be shared. Their names deserve to be remembered. So if you are out and about and you find any of these yearbooks (or any yearbooks for that fact; I found quite a few booths that had high school and college yearbooks), I suggest you pick them up, scan the pages with faces, and names, and add them to a site online somewhere. Or if you don't want the hassle? Send the Fort Leonard Wood Yearbooks to me! I'll take them. Just send me a message through my blog or you can email me at auntiejen82@yahoo.com.

In honor of my Dad and all the others who served in Vietnam, here is a video I put together last year (2020). I compiled interviews I conducted with my dad from times he actually WOULD talk about Vietnam and put them together in a slideshow presentation. Enjoy!

This blog post was posted on The Genealogy Blog Party for celebrating Family History Month.