Dr. Bob Smith, Provost, Texas Tech University, opens the 7th Triennial Symposium

Session videos from the 7th Triennial Symposium are now available online on the Symposium Sessions Videos page and in the Virtual Vietnam Archive.

The Symposium was held on March 10-12th at the Overton Hotel and Conference Center in Lubbock, TX, and featured speakers from around the United States, Australia, Scotland, China, Vietnam, and Germany presenting on a wide variety of topics.

Still photographs of the symposium are also available on the Vietnam Center and Archive’s Facebook page.

Symposium Session Videos

Still Photographs Album 1

Still Photographs Album 2

Symposium Information

Vietnam Center Advisory Board member Dr. Ron Milam has received a Core Fulbright Scholar Award to teach a history course in Vietnam.  Dr. Milam was an advisor to the ARVN in 1971 and is currently an Associate Professor in History at Texas Tech.  In the spring of 2011, he will travel to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to teach “America’s Historical Role in International Relations” at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities.  At Texas Tech Dr. Milam teaches classes on US history, the Vietnam War, and military history.  His Vietnam classes are among the most popular offered.  Currently Dr. Milam is accompaning Vietnam Center Director Dr. Steve Maxner and a group of Texas Tech students on a study abroad trip visiting locations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.  He has previously received the TTU President’s Excellence in Teaching Award and the Distinguished Faculty Award, and was recently named an academic fellow for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Since his arrival at Texas Tech, Dr. Milam has been a great support of the Center and Archive and a fixture at our conferences and events.  While we will miss his presences next spring, we wish him the best with this great opportunity.

More Information:

Dr. Ron Milam Faculty Profile – http://experts.ttu.edu/browse/profile/383

TTU Communications and Marketing News Release – http://today.ttu.edu/2011/06/history-professor-seeks-to-make-an-international-impact/

The Fulbright Program – http://fulbright.state.gov/

The Spring 2011 issue of the Friends of the Vietnam Center Newsletter is now available online.  This issue contains articles on many of the Vietnam Center and Archive events held this spring, including our 3rd annual Film Festival, the first half of the 2011 Guest Lecture Series, and the 7th Triennial Vietnam Symposium, as well as a special rememberance of DaNita Buckley.

If you would like to receive a full color printed version of this newsletter in your mailbox, please consider becoming a friend of the Vietnam Center.  Membership information can be found on our Firends of the Vietnam Center webpage.

Links:

Newsletters: http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/friends/newsletters.php

Membership Information: http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/friends/

Today is the Army’s 236th birthday!  So happy, happy birthday U.S. Army.  To celebrate the day we have created a small exhibit with Army materials from our collection.  To view the exhibit click on the link below.

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/Army/army11.htm

In June 1971 the New York Times published the “Pentagon Papers,” officially titled the Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Taskforce.  The release of these documents had a profound effect on American public opinion regarding the war, and has provided historians with an invaluable look at US policy making with regards to the Vietnam War.  Today, 40 years after the NYT publication, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released the entire official Report, including 2,300 pages of previously undisclosed material not included in the Senator Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers.  Hardcopies of the records will be available at the following locations: the National Archives facility at College Park, MD; the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, MA; the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, TX, and the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, CA.  The records are also available online in their entirety at http://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers/.For more information about the Pentagon Papers and the release of the records, see:

• The NARA Press Release regarding the release of the records
• The Pentagon Papers page on the NARA website

Also this week, Vietnam Center and Archive Director Stephen Maxner will accompany Mr. Tran Van Tuan, Minister of Home Affairs of Vietnam, and Dr. Vu Thi Minh Huong, the Director General of the State Records and Archives Department of Vietnam (the National Archivist of Vietnam), to Washington DC to meet with the Archivist of the United States, Mr. David Ferriero.  Following the meeting, the delegation and Dr. Maxner will return to Lubbock to discuss collaboration and joint projects between the Vietnam Center and Archive, the Vietnam State Records and Archives Department, and NARA.

Part two of the local PBS channel’s “Keeping it Local” series on the Vietnam Center and Archive can now be viewed online at http://www.ktxt.org/productions.asp or by clicking the play icon below. This segment focuses on Kim Phuc, “the girl in the photo” and the second speaker in the Vietnam Center and Archive’s 2011 Guest Lecture Series.

KTXT’s complete interview with Kim Phuc can be viewed on their YouTube page – http://www.youtube.com/ktxtdt

The Vietnam Archive is proud to unveil its new program and online exhibit “Techsans in the Vietnam War.” We created this program to honor Texas Tech grads who served in the Vietnam War. Anyone can nominate a veteran for this program. The requirements are that the honoree graduated from Texas Tech University, before or after their service, and served in Vietnam between 1960–1975. If you nominate someone for this program, please assist us by filling out our Techsans in the Vietnam War Biographical Submission Form (available at the link below) and sending us images. If we have documents or images of an honoree in our collection, we will include them on their page, but the more information that you can provide to us the better. If you participate in this program, please consider donating your original images and documents to the archive, as we would love to be able to preserve materials from our TTU grads.

Once we receive your nomination, biography, and images, we will create a web page honoring or memorializing the Tech grad in our “Techsans in the Vietnam War” online exhibit. Please be aware that we want these pages to be well crafted, which means that we may take some time to put up an honor/memorial page, especially if we receive numerous requests at one time. We also reserve the right to exclude information or images from pages for any reason. If we receive a name with no images or biographical information and we are unable to find any information in our collection, we will add the name to a page in the exhibit that lists Tech grads that served and/or died in Vietnam and they will not have an individual page until we receive more information.

To start this program, we have memorial pages for three Texas Tech grads who were military officers who served and died in Vietnam. Please click on the exhibit link below to see the memorial pages for Lieutenant Lee Roy Herron, 1^st Lieutenant Louis K. Breuer IV and Major Samuel B. Cornelius.

To nominate someone for this program please contact Amy Mondt at vietnamarchive@ttu.edu.

To view the exhibit or find the Techsans in the Vietnam War Submission Form click this link. www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/TTU

For all the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for us and our freedoms, thank you.  Happy Memorial Day from the Vietnam Center and Archive staff.

Vietnam Memorial Wall Ryan Aranda - 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Division Association Collection

This week the Texas Tech University PBS station, KTXT, broadcast the first of two shows on the Vietnam Center and Archive, part of their “Keeping it Local” series. This segment can be viewed online at http://www.ktxt.org/productions.asp, or by clicking the play icon below.

Part two will air on KTXT next Thursday evening and will feature the recent lecture by Kim Phuc, part of the Vietnam Center and Archive’s 2011 Guest Lecture Series.

May 6 – 12 is Nurses Week; a week dedicated to saying thank you to nurses for all that they do for their patients and communities.  In honor of this week, the Vietnam Center and Archive has developed an online exhibit titled National Nurses Week – Celebrating the Nurses of the Vietnam War.  To see the exhibit please click on the title above or use the link at the bottom of this post.

1st Lieutenant Cheri Hawes, US Army Nurse Corps, at desk for Emergency Room, 91st Evacuation Hospital, Chu Lai, Vietnam

In addition to the exhibit, the VNCA is hosting LeAnn Thieman, the third speaker in our Guest Lecture Series.  Thieman is a nurse with over 30 years of experience who volunteered to help with Operation Babylift in the final days of the Vietnam War.  She is also an author in the popular Chicken Soup series and will speaking at the Lanier Auditorium at the Texas Tech Law School on Thursday May 12th at 7:00.  The lecture is free and open to the public.  For more information about LeAnn or the guest lecture series, please visit the Guest Lecture Series site.

LeAnn Thieman

For all the nurses, thank you for all that you do.

National Nurses Week – Celebrating the Nurses of the Vietnam War

www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/nurses/

Guest Lecture Series

www.vietnam.ttu.edu/events/LectureSeries/2011.htm