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By: James Patterson, Valley High Alum 

Throughout the 1960s, evening network news programs broadcast horrible scenes of the Vietnam War: Injured U.S. and Vietnamese troops, horrified Vietnamese civilians, scared and crying children, and Buddhist monks who set themselves on fire to protest the war. Monday through Friday evenings, the first news item was the Vietnam War.

At Valley High School, some male students enlisted before graduation. When they returned to campus on leave dressed in military uniforms, the students showed appreciation to them for their service. The excitement led some other male students to enlist before graduating. High school classrooms looked better to me than the news about the war.

President Richard Nixon ended the military draft in January 1973. This coincided with a cease-fire agreement between the U.S. and North and South Vietnam. However, the Vietnamese continued fighting.

After my 1973 high school graduation, I received a letter to report to the Military Draft Board at the Chambers County Courthouse in LaFayette. With my draft papers complete, an elderly lady told me I would be placed in Category “H” for “Hold.” She sweetly whispered, “You might not go to Vietnam.”

I went on to Auburn. I had classmates who served in Vietnam. Their war stories were as horrific as the images of war broadcast on the nightly network news.

The Vietnamese continued fighting. Then came the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation. I was an undergraduate at Auburn University when Saigon fell on April 30, 1975.

In July 1975, President Gerald R. Ford, a World War II veteran, announced his presidential campaign. I worked for the Ford campaign in Alabama and at the 1976 GOP National Convention in Kansas City, MO.

Congress refused any more military funding or assistance for the war. Then came Black April and the chaotic fall of Saigon with the unforgettable images of Vietnamese desperate to leave their homeland. Approximately 1,200 Alabamians died in Vietnam.

Approximately 140,000 Vietnamese refugees came to America. American families adopted Vietnamese orphans. Then-U.S. Senator Jim Allen, Democrat of Gadsden, supported Vietnamese refugees in Alabama. Then-3rd District U.S. Representative Bill Nichols, Democrat of Sylacauga, opposed any refugees.

I worked with Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. Several Vietnamese friends shared that they arrived in America with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. They became Americans. A Vietnamese woman in San Francisco told me that her family lived in a single room for ten years.

While working in San Francisco, I met and became friends with Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971. The Pentagon Papers proved that military officials lied to Congress about the Vietnam War. It was unwinnable. The Nixon administration attempted and failed to jail Ellsberg.

When I met Ellsberg, he was a fierce but soft-spoken 80-year-old man. He never regretted leaking the Pentagon Papers. Historians believe Ellsberg’s courage helped bring the Vietnam War to an end. When Ellsberg died in 2023 at 92 years old, many Americans called him a patriot.

At the Vietnam Memorial in April 2025, I met Col. Paris D. Davis, a Medal of Honor recipient for courage in Vietnam. Vietnam veterans gave emotional speeches. As I listened to veterans speak, I learned that the painful memories of the Vietnam War never fade away.

As I knelt by a wreath for Alabamians lost and missing in the Vietnam War, I prayed for them and their families. I remembered my brave Alabama high school and college classmates who proudly served in Vietnam. I remembered Valleyans lost in the war, including SP4 Larry O’Neal Adamson and Sgt. Wilmer Franklin Simpkins, Fairfax; A2C Jerry Rudolph Moon, PFC Thomas Larry Senn, and SGT Roy Delano Watts, Lanett; LCPL Wilber Dean Monroe, Langdale; SFC Wallace Sylvester Little, River View; and SGT Roy Edward Thomas, Lafayette.

At the wreath, I recalled registering for the military draft with an elderly lady at the courthouse in LaFayette.

I remembered my hardworking Vietnamese friends and colleagues who escaped to America. I remembered the courage and patriotism of President Gerald R. Ford and whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. May they all Rest in Peace.