Deborah Woehr

I’ve seen many pictures of the Vietnam Memorial in various books and magazines. Somehow, I pictured the wall to be a great big monolith. I’m glad it’s not and yet wish that it wasn’t there at all.

Michael S. Vrablick was my mother-in-law’s cousin. He never got to meet his son or grandchildren.

Looking at his name, I thought of my father, who was enlisted during the height of the war. He was a helicopter mechanic and could have been shipped out to Saigon at any time. Instead, the Navy saw fit to keep him in Kingsville, TX the entire four years, long enough to meet my mother and to conceive me.