About "Stories of Vietnam"

Over 50 years ago, American politics ended in the loss of a war. But "Vietnam" isn't a war, it's a wealth of stories.

Welcome to Stories of Vietnam

Stories of Vietnam is a weekly newsletter (delivered via the Substack platform) that features a wide variety of Vietnam stories. My interest in such stories springs from the fact that I spent most of my third-grade year “in-country” in 1974-75 and was evacuated out just a few weeks before the Fall of Saigon. (I wrote a book about it.)

In addition to my own research and stories, I’ve published such topics as:

• Memoirs of the librarian at our American School in 74-75 (Karen Griffin Kaiser);

• A Green Beret’s experience at the Battle of Loc Ninh;

• An American teenager’s personal experience with the Diem regime (Maribeth Theisen);

• An embassy security officer’s story of adopting “the orphanage next door.”

Do you or anyone you know have a Vietnam story that calls to be shared? As we come up on the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon (April 30, 2025), now is the perfect time to help people understand the nuances and deep stories of that difficult era.

Where my stories began

This journey began for me long ago when my family first moved to what was, at that time, a “benighted country.” I was just a child . . .

The Welch siblings, (l-r) Chris, Jimmy, Kim, Mikey, Me, Michelle, John.
Saigon, 1974

In July 1974, we left the safe haven of Taiwan to join my father in Saigon. He had typed a letter to me in anticipation of the fun we would have together.

We’d been separated for two years and we were eager to be reunited. The Vietnam War was supposed to be over and so, as they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

We know now that it wasn’t really. A good idea. But the happenstance of my family living in the hotspot of Saigon for 10 months before the calamitous fall of the country in April 1975 has given rise to my taking a long, hard look at that time in our history.

What has resulted—after a decade’s research and cogitation—is a creative nonfiction book, For the Love of Vietnam: a war, a family, a CIA officer, and the best evacuation story never heard.

Vietnam is a subject that remains alive in us in a way that is almost inexplicable. As one of my father’s colleagues wrote after a 1988 phone conversation:

“[after hearing your voice] . . . all Vietnam came flooding back. I thought all that had been buried under the overburden of the intervening years, but all those events remain closer to the surface than I suspected. I wonder why memories of that benighted country and that fumbled war remain so intense? 

The subject of Vietnam has been a difficult one for our country. We have stumbled. A lot. Perhaps with more storytelling, we might find that all we have been loathe to face can become the place from which we can start again.

Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.” ~Joseph Campbell

April 30, 2025, we commemorated the 50th Anniversary of the Fall of Saigon but that did not mark the end of coming to terms with what the “Vietnam Era” means to us. Nor did it mark the need to explore our Stories of Vietnam.

I hope you’ll join the readership of this newsletter to keep the subject, and the meaningful memories and lessons, alive.

Offering a presentation at the Saratoga County Historical Society at the Brookside Museum, Ballston Spa, N.Y., September 25, 2024.

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