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Patrick Draper
Rochester, MN, Olmsted
The Vietnam War was a daily occurrence to me from the time I was 10 years old until I was 18 years old. I saw it everyday on television, usually two to three times each day. Being an unusually socially informed child and adolescent these images of the war impacted me greatly. Family friends who were just a few years older than myself were being drafted and being sent to Vietnam - some did not return. Looking back after 25 years of the war's completion my thoughts and feelings remain conflicted. Was this a war that should have been fought by us? Was the war mishandled? Was the sacrifice we made worth it all? What, if anything, have we learned from this experience? I miss my family's friends who did not come back home. I often wonder what they would have accomplished in their lives had they not died in the war. The war may have ended 25 years ago, but in many personal and important ways the war, for me and many others, will never really come to a close.
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