Remembering April 30th, 1975

April 30th, 1975 was the day Saigon fell, bringing to a close the Vietnam war.  I remember the day very clearly, because I was sitting in a cottage along the Indian River in Jensen Beach, Florida, listening to the events take place on the radio.  That was the month my mother Mary and father Nelson and I traveled down to Stuart, Florida for the first time, to see whether my mother and father wanted to retire there.  We drove the long way, down I-57 from Chicago to Biloxi, Mississippi, and then along the Gulf Coast to Florida. Before heading inland toward the East Coast of Florida, we stopped for the night in Panama Beach, at a little motel along the water, where I took the above photograph of my father looking contemplative at the Gulf. My parents did move to Stuart the following year, and my sister and I still own the condo there.  But I will always remember that day in the cottage along the water, listening to the end of a disastrous 10 year war, resulting in thousands of lives lost or destroyed for absolutely nothing.  Unbelievable.