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Letter left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, July 20, 1985

Published in Shrapnel in the Heart, edited by Laura Palmer, 1987

"I learned that the pain and loss never goes away. It just changes."

When American Vietnam veterans returned home to the United States, many of them felt ignored and rejected by their country. The Vietnam War had caused so much pain and unhappiness that most Americans seemed to want to forget that the conflict had ever taken place. As a result, neither the nation's surviving veterans nor those soldiers who were killed in Vietnam received any meaningful recognition outside of their small circle of family and friends. In 1982, however, their sacrifices and service were finally recognized by their nation with the formal dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The idea for the memorial originated with Jan Scruggs,...