My family gathered last week to celebrate my father’s 70th birthday. I come from a close family. Several factors play into our having maintained that sense of closeness and loyalty not the least of which is a basic respect and compassion enculturated by our parents. I also attribute our familial adult friendships to the frequent relocations we experienced as children. Moving so often, my two brothers and I were one another’s most reliable and consistent playmates. My parents talked to us about the moves when they happened. Each move was demonstratively better for the family as a whole even if a move was sometimes not in the individual best interest of one of us kids. Family well-being trumped individual well-being every time.

Dad was an army officer. When he enrolled in ROTC in college, the conflict in Vietnam was already underway. He fully expected to be sent to Vietnam once graduated from college. As he tells it, his views were patriotic and while he was not eager to leave his wife and new baby (me), he felt communism was a real threat and the Domino Theory espoused by the administrations in the 1950s and 1960s had merit. He deployed early in 1968 and returned at the end of 1969, a little longer than the standard 18 month tour. By the time I was 10 years old, Dad had resigned his commission. His new career still moved us around though not as frequently as had his army career.

By this time, or not long after, we started learning about the Vietnam war in school, how it impacted the (still ongoing) cold war and the social conflict it gave rise to domestically. I’d ask Dad about his experiences in Vietnam over the years, sometimes out of curiosity and sometimes in connection with a school project. My brothers and I all inquired about his experiences, trying to place the father we knew in the jungle, in the moral quagmire soldiers faced, in the domestic criticism stateside. But he seemed somehow removed from that history we learned about in the textbooks.

He hadn’t returned with a drinking problem or a drug addiction or anger issues. He didn’t appear bitter. He was religiously devout and politically independent (he voted for Anderson in 1980). He is avidly politically independent to this day. If we argue politics at all, it is with me pointing out why the U.S. political structure will never allow for a strong third party voice. In short, Dad never fit the stereotype of a veteran of the Vietnam war. When asked, he’d share an experience here or there with us, matter-of fact, never in great detail but also not seeming to shy away from the gruesome, difficult or heartbreaking.

My stepmother has mentioned that Dad has been talking about his wartime experiences more often recently. I didn’t really pay attention when she told me that because he’s never seemed adverse to talking about it while at the same time rarely introducing the topic himself.

Dad has also mentioned that some of the men he served with in Vietnam have gotten in touch with him the last few years. It’s been about one new person per year each of the last three years. He’s told me about these contacts and it was evident to me that he takes a lot of pleasure in hearing from them.

Even with the above, it was startling last week to hear my father talk so much and for so long about his time in Vietnam. All these stories came out in waves, one right after another. It was so unlike Dad, the way he spoke. The fact that he had so much to share about those 18 months in Vietnam and the way he told the stories. It was almost without inflection but he was also crying at points. The combination of tears and monotone delivery was eerie. Watching and listening to him reminded me of interviews with WWII vets and the way the war clearly affected them decades and decades after they served. Only this wasn’t something on TV and it wasn’t WWII, this was my dad and the war was Vietnam.

As we all sat and listened to him tell his war stories, which had been bottled up so long and needed to come out, I couldn’t help thinking of all the veterans who have spent the last decade serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and how in another 50 years, their kids will be sitting around listening to their battle stories. I thought about all the generations prior, all the way back to the ancient battle for Troy, and how many times stories like this have been repeated. Technology has changed war along the way but human experience of war has not changed. The first guy who contacted my father, the one who called about three years ago, my father has stayed in touch with. They talk every couple months now – this after knowing each other for 18 months in another country and having no communication in the last 40+ years. The man located my father by searching property ownership records nationwide. We have an uncommon last name. It took the man about 60 attempts to find the right person, my dad.

One of my brothers asked my father if he’d thought about joining an organization like the VFW but he says he’s not interested in doing that. My stepmother told my brothers and me again (and this time we really understood) that my father has been talking to her a lot about his experiences in the war. I hope talking is enough, that he’s getting what he needs. It’s obviously been a big part of him, bigger than was apparent to any of us kids. It’s only now that we can look back and see more clearly how the war experience formed Dad’s later adulthood and therefore our childhoods.

At this point I don’t have any conclusions to draw from the week of my Dad’s 70th birthday. We had fun. We created a lot of new family memories. I have other posts to write about the week. But there’s a new dimension to my father that I’m aware of now. And because he shared it with all of us kids, spouses and older grandkids, we’ve had a new family experience too.