Veterans
Kansas City’s Vietnam Era
Finding Kansas City-area Vietnam veteran John Musgrave for the upcoming PBS documentary “The Vietnam War” was “the most fortuitous thing,” filmmaker Ken Burns said last week while in Kansas City. Musgrave, long known to Kansas Citians as an eloquent and thoughtful commentator and critic on the war, has been referred to as the Shelby Foote of…
Vietnam War Refugees Succeed — and Struggle — in Kansas City
When American troops made a chaotic, embarrassed withdrawal from Vietnam in April 1975, the flood of terrified Vietnamese refugees to Kansas City began. Ty Bui, who had spent seven years in the Vietnamese military, escaped his country in August that year and, after staying in a refugee camp in Arkansas, came to Kansas City in…
A Ledger of Names, Mine Among Them, Tell Our Vietnam Stories
All 30 of the boys listed on the Vietnam-era Selective Service ledger were born in the spring of 1948, during America’s most prolific era of mass procreation, the end of World War II. At 18 years old, the thing first and foremost on our minds was to find a way to commit the same act…
‘Invest Your Son’ — Catching Up With the KCAI Student Who Spoke Against the Vietnam War and Caused A National Furor
The year was 1966. The Vietnam War was escalating, but the public tide had not yet fully turned against the war. That didn’t stop Joe Draegert, then a 20-year-old student at Kansas City Art Institute, from deciding to make a statement. Even as a boy, growing up in the small town of Chariton, Iowa, Draegert…
New Farm Will Cultivate a Future for Veterans and American Agriculture
Off a narrow dirt road in the middle of Kansas, retired Army Col. Gary LaGrange, his daughter Shari LaGrange-Aulich and a group of veterans are cultivating a future for service members and American agriculture. Three hundred and twenty acres nestled between Manhattan, Kansas and Fort Riley will be the future site of S.A.V.E. Farm, which stands…
The Day Before The Fall of Saigon
Nguyet Ha-Le was born in Thai Binh, Vietnam, in 1953. She was born into a large family – the fifth of 10 children. Life was comfortable in North Vietnam. Her parents were teachers with generational wealth that allowed them to live in a three-story, stone house with maids for each of the children. But only…
‘Homefront’ Increases Mental Health Resources for Area Veterans, Families
Valetta Tsangaris met her husband, a helicopter pilot for the U.S. Marines, when she worked as an aviation machinist during Operation Desert Storm. His tour continued after she returned home, but when he finally joined her, he was frequently angry, verbally abusive and struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. They eventually divorced. Tsangaris now works with…
These Colorado Veterans Are Finding Peace On The Farm
Ben and Leticia Ward’s farm in Fountain, Colorado, just outside Colorado Springs, doesn’t look like an army base. But it’s not hard to uncover whiffs of military influence at Little Roman Farm. A stack of sturdy fiberglass bins next to a greenhouse seem benign, ready to be put to use as brooding bins for chickens…
Healing the Invisible Wounds of Combat
It’s the serviceman who beats himself up about being unable to save a dying buddy. Or the truck driver who follows orders to run over children in the road, because they might be placed there to facilitate an ambush of a convoy. While it has been more than half a century since the United States…
KC Clergy Stood Fast With Anti-War Stance
He’s 84 now, and has been retired since 2003 from his role as pastor of a United Methodist Church in northern California, but the Rev. Phillip Lawson vividly remembers all the trouble he stirred up in Kansas City in 1970 by speaking out against the Vietnam War. He went to Hanoi and, in a radio…