This blog ended in December, but as you may have noticed, it’s still impacted by the following announcement from our Web editors:

“In the coming days, we will be moving this and other LoHud blogs to a dedicated server that will provide more stability and better troubleshooting capabilities than what we currently have. Please bear with [...]

Edited 2/18: We’ve just launched a permanent veterans affairs blog, “At Ease!” Click here to visit it.

I wanted to wrap up this blog with one last slideshow, more or less summarizing our father-daughter, veteran-journalist return to Vietnam last month.

I’d like to keep covering military and veterans issues, so keep an eye on LoHud.com next year [...]

I recently heard from Jennifer Weaver, the 22-year-old woman who had decided to stay on as a volunteer at the Go Vap Orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City after her parents and the rest of her humanitarian tour group returned to Seattle. She’s back home now, and here’s what she’d like Americans to know:

“These kids [...]

In the previous post, my father recalled surprising his family with his first return from Vietnam 40 years ago. As he explained, it wasn’t the smoothest transition, but several of the veterans we traveled with last month and others we’ve spoken to recently had far more challenging homecomings, including taunting cab drivers, dismissive family members [...]

My paternal grandmother was, to be blunt, a tough old bird. She survived several wars, was widowed twice and worked many blue-collar jobs in rural Greek villages, then in New York City, to support my father and three other children before she could finally retire to her dream house in Marble Hill.

So, I shouldn’t have [...]

Near the end of our trip to Vietnam last month, our group visited Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain. My father, Howard Goldin and other veterans on our trip who had been stationed in the Cu Chi – Tay Ninh area remembered seeing this high hill every day, which is about the only thing [...]

Besides his M-16 rifle, the other indispensable item that American soldiers carried in Vietnam was the small P-38 can opener needed to open the C-rations, the meals they ate in the field. Like other soldiers, my father wore his P-38 on the chain of his dog tags, which hung around his neck, so he wouldn’t [...]

While digging through his Vietnam War letters, photos and other memorabilia, my father came across a faded red cloth bag. This brought a big smile to his face, and he shared the following (rare) happy memory from Christmas 1967 in Cu Chi:

“The Red Cross ladies and volunteers came around and handed out to [...]

JoAnn Quattrone, the Orange County dentist who filled several suitcases with life-saving medical donations for Vietnam last month, was one of the honored guests at the Spring Valley Rotary Club’s holiday party last week. Rotarian Ed Frank of Congers, who is also president of Rockland County’s Vietnam Veterans of America, presented her with an award [...]

At the Spring Valley Rotary Club’s holiday party Wednesday night, Sister Therese Minh, a Dominican sister from Ho Chi Minh City, came face to face with her local counterpart: Sister Joseph Mary Mahoney, president of the Friends of Saint Dominic’s in Blauvelt, NY.

Sister Joseph Mary was invited by Rotarian Voncile Oliver, who had wanted the [...]

In his interview tonight on Cosmos FM, my father reiterated his pleasant surprise at how the Vietnamese people very warmly welcomed us and other Americans, especially veterans, 40 years after the war. As I posted earlier, this enthusiasm occasionally caused some cognitive dissonance for us, as we would pass memorials and artistic renderings of the [...]

Our trip to Vietnam seems to have struck a chord with many different communities. Over the past few weeks, my father and I have gotten lots of calls and e-mails from veterans, Rotarians, Rockland County residents, fathers and daughters, educators, journalists, students, war history buffs, Vietnamese immigrants and Greek Americans.

For the Greek American segment of [...]

In hopes of squashing the stereotype of the “crazy Vietnam vet,” I used to have my father visit my social studies classes at Briarcliff High School. He would wear his Army uniform and shiny medals, and give calm, rational answers to all the questions, even including “do you have flashbacks?” and “do you know anyone [...]

As I’ve explained in previous posts, the people of Vietnam are very welcoming to Americans today, but all the one-sided memorabilia of the Vietnam War – the American War, as it’s called there – sends a different message to visitors, especially veterans.

Our cognitive dissonance began in Cu Chi, when we were led by extremely friendly [...]

The first time I remember talking with my father about a return to Vietnam was in 1997, 30 years after he went there as an Army officer with the 25th Infantry Division. We both love to travel internationally, but school, work, weddings, and other family plans kept postponing our father-daughter trip. A decade later, we [...]

The adults we met in Vietnam thanked us profusely for the donations of life-saving medical devices, vitamins, clothing and school supplies our group collected and distributed to orphanages, schools and villages last month, but of course it was the gifts of Beanie Babies, yo-yos, volleyballs and other toys that brought joy to children everywhere we [...]

In the weeks since we’ve returned from Vietnam, many readers have asked us how the people of Vietnam really feel about Americans, especially U.S. veterans.

Obviously, we didn’t understand what people were saying when they were speaking Vietnamese, and maybe we’re naive, but it certainly seemed we were quite warmly welcomed everywhere we went, even at [...]

On this freezing New York winter day, with my nose turning fuchsia and my father bundled up like South Park’s Kenny just to do some yard work, we needed a photo like this to remind ourselves we were in sunny, warm Vietnam – standing on the top of the Black Virgin Mountain – just a [...]

My father has joined Westchester County’s chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America just in time for the holidays and a new local VVA tradition: Chapter 49 has decided to join Wreaths Across America, a national nonprofit organization that aims to lay wreaths on all the headstones at Arlington National Cemetery.

The national ceremony will take [...]

As I wrote in my story last week, there are still nearly 1,800 Americans listed by the Department of Defense as missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War, including 124 from New York.

As Vietnam veterans and their former enemies have shared information in recent years, those numbers have gradually decreased. Thanks to ongoing excavations [...]

Today is World AIDS Day. (I always remember this, because it also happens to be my birthday.) UNAIDs estimated 260,000 people in Vietnam were living with HIV/AIDS by the end of 2005, about 0.5 percent of the population. About 13,000 people died of AIDS-related illnesses that year.

While traveling in southern Vietnam last month, we noticed [...]

One of the greatest rewards of this Return to Vietnam project has been the opportunity to meet so many other veterans, particularly from the Lower Hudson Valley: Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties. My family has lived in Briarcliff for 20 years, but my father was always too busy commuting to Manhattan and volunteering with numerous [...]

A motorcycle is the best way to get around Ho Chi Minh City’s buzzing streets. My father and I experienced this for ourselves, courtesy of Bao Anh, Vietnam veteran Bernie Duff’s girlfriend and partner in humanitarian work. Hurtling through the crowds, ankle to ankle with other riders, dodging the random pedestrians, bicyclists, taxis and trucks [...]

I’m a woman, and the daughter of a Vietnam veteran with a long memory (aided by plenty of memorabilia), but I never knew much about the thousands of women who served during the Vietnam War – except for my father’s fond feelings for the female USO entertainers and the morale-boosting powers of pinups – until [...]

“Doc” Bernie Duff, a member of Rockland County’s Vietnam Veterans of America, is gearing up for the annual tradition he started after moving to Vietnam last year: dressing up as “No En,” Santa Claus, and visiting disabled and poor Vietnamese children at local schools and institutions. You can read about his plans on his blog [...]