Beginning on 23 May, many of the Viet Nam POW gathered for a reunion in Southern California centered around the Nixon Presidential Library to celebrate not only their 40th anniversary of regaining freedom but also of their night in the White House as a guest of President and Mrs. Nixon, May 24 1973.
As first POW Ev Alvarez notes in the interview below, this may be the last reunion. The Viet Nam generation, particularly those from the earliest days of the war are well into their seventies. The interview includes Alvarez as the first POW and Al Agnew as the last POW released from Hanoi. Al was my first jet instructor at Meridian. We did not see each other after I left for VT-4 at Pensacola until the commissioning ceremony for the USS Stockdale at Port Hueneme California 18 April 2009. I owe him much. Welcome home.
This seemed an appropriate post as I finish up this series. The first and the last…
