Inella Jack
St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

I grew up in a college town and remember going to school at a college lab school. It was cancelled more than once for bomb threats.

In the early 80's, I had refugees in my history class - students who couldn't bear to watch the World War II concentration camp movies as it reminded them of the atrocities that they had witnessed first-hand. They told stories of being attacked by pirates at sea as they fled their homelands.

While in college, I had the privilege to take a course entitled "History of the Vietnam Conflict", ironically in the same building I attended the college lab school. As part of the course, guest speakers - former soldiers, refugees, etc. came to speak first-hand of the war. Particularly moving was the father of one of my classmates who spoke of bulldozing villages. He broke down telling the story and later we learned that it was the first time he had talked about the war.