#033 – Places Unknown; People Like Us

In December of 2008, I interviewed my father about his experience in Vietnam. Just this past summer, I interviewed him again for What We Will Abide and it appears as Episode 16, “American Cynic.” But, back in 2008 I also interviewed my mother about how she experienced his time in the Army. After making that video recording, it sat for years, untouched. I never watched it.

In the summer of 1966, my parents got married and my father got drafted. He was sent to Fort Riley in Junction City, Kansas, and expected to stay there, as an on-base dentist for the full 2 years. In the fall of 1967, he was given orders – he was being sent to Vietnam.

I can sort of imagine what Junction City might have looked like in 1966, and I can definitely imagine how my mother, at age 21, having lived all her life in Flushing, Queens, would have seen it. It was so disagreeable that, by comparison, Manhattan, Kansas was nearly paradise. That year, and the year that followed, my mother spent as an army wife. In this interview, now over 8 years old, she told me what that was like for her.

It was really the only time we’d talked at length about this part of her life. She died in 2012; March 17, 2017 would have been her 72nd birthday.

http://samschindler.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/WWWA_033_031117.mp3
Music by Morning Stillness.

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