http://ozarkspub.vo.llnwd.net/o37/KSMU/audio/mp3/rememberin_5617.mp3
Marideth Sisco reflects on homecomings and some recent happenings in West Plains.
This is Marideth Sisco for These Ozarks Hills. I've been thinking a lot about homecomings lately - Not the kind with alumni and football, but that other - the return of the native from far away places. As I get older, I notice that certain memories and events will sometimes come to seem part of a larger pattern. For me, with Veteran's Day just past and some local circumstances entering in, it's a window on a part of my past that's also part of the national consciousness.What started me thinking was the Big Read, an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. West Plains, where I live, has been honored for two years running to be included in this wonderful celebration of readership. What a thing, to have the community all reading the same book at the same time. Talk about a conversation starter. Last year it was Twain. This year it's Tim O'Brien, who is sharing his war experiences of Vietnam through the book "The Things They Carried."To augment this experience, the West Plains also managed to snag a traveling Smithsonian exhibition of photographs commemorating the Vietnamese-American experience, called Exit Saigon -- Enter Little Saigon." In the peculiar way of good photography, the impact of these two-dimensional images is to make this diaspora much more three-dimensional to the viewer. I learned more in the 30 minutes it took to tour the exhibit than I had learned in the past 40 years about what it was like for the boat people. It's an experience I recommend. Add to this the almost entirely local story of an Army Reserve officer, Andy Ingalsbe, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and whose body and career were blown apart last September in Afghanistan. The career officer spent weeks hovering between life and death before beginning to rally. That's the story from a distance. But I knew Andy and his kids, and for me and the rest of our little town, the story came very close to home.All those things stirred together took me way back to younger days, and another war, and all the memories it has for me. A student body president whose aircraft went down in the jungle and was never found. A friend who joined the Army Rangers, and who for several long months after he returned home could not leave his house without his Ranger beret and his sidearm. A cousin who hitched a ride on a supply truck, and when it hit a mine, was the only survivor. And oh, the protests, the demonstrations, the passions aroused. And then there were the sad homecomings better forgotten. As you may remember, midway through that war, the country changed its mind about what going to it meant. And the young who were so passionately against it somehow confused the issues with those who were called to serve. And those who answered that call were called hateful names when they returned. As if the war were their idea. I remember my mother saying, during this time, that if she were in charge of things, she could end the Vietnam war in a day. "Just raise the draftable age to 65 and don't exempt anybody," she said. "The minute the ones who are sending them have to go themselves, it'd be over." Wise words.I was in California, near Fort Ord, when the boys and some girls went and came back, or went and died, or took another path and went north to Canada. It changed me, as it changed everyone in that generation. Made us realize that war and country needed another look, to consider what we believed, and what we believed was so. It was the same for those who returned home, if they made it home, forever changed.That's probably why the largest demographic group visiting the Vietnamese exhibit at the West Plains Civic Center is composed of Vietnam veterans and their families. One wonders if it's because they retain a feeling of kinship with the people they met over there, whether fighting them or defending them. Or do they wonder how these boat people managed to receive a welcome denied to the ones returning home. Forty years later, the answer is as elusive as ever.Perhaps that question is better left to historyMaybe we should instead focus on more personal, more immediate, veteran issues. That's what West Plains residents along Highway 63 and down State Route 17 were doing Sunday when they came home from church and walked down to the ends of their driveways, just in time to honor another important homecoming with a wave and a smile, and sincere thanks in their hearts. For on Sunday, Andy Ingalsbe came home. He received his Purple Heart Wednesday in ceremonies at the West Plains Civic Center. This is Marideth Sisco, adding my thanks to all the veterans in and from These Ozarks Hills, and my voice to the many in his home town this week saying Welcome Home, Andy.
