April 30th...

Today is April 30th, the anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War back on this date in 1975.  I remember watching this war on the evening news starting in 1964, when I was in the 6th grade at Fort Dearborn Grammar School in the Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago, and no way did any of us realize that the war would go on as long as it did.  I remember years later when I was attending IIT (the Illinois Institute of Technology) walking to the bookstore and opening up the Chicago Daily News (one of the evening papers in Chicago) to see what my number was in the 1972 draft lottery.  My number was over 300, thank God, and I didn't have to go to Vietnam, but many thousands did and died there.  I remember listening to the fall of Saigon in a cottage in Jensen Beach, Florida, on a trip to see if my parents wanted to move to Stuart, where my Uncle Bill and Aunt Elsie had moved.  They did move there the following year, but I digress.  That day, exactly 44 years ago, was the true end of the war, which resulted in over 58,000 American soldiers lost, not to mention the thousands of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed on both sides. All for nothing. A true tragedy.