Jan K. Herman was the chief medical historian of the Navy from 1979 to 2012, the curator of the Old Naval Observatory, and editor-in-chief of Navy Medicine for 30 years. Since 2000, he has written and produced documentaries for the US Navy highlighting its medical service. In the documentary and its companion book, The Lucky Few, Herman tells the “relatively unknown heroic tale” of one small US Navy destroyer escort’s participation in the closing days of the Vietnam War. Herman has authored more than 50 articles and monographs plus five other books.

Captain Paul Jacobs (USN, retired) will also be in attendance. Jacobs served as commanding officer of the USS Kirk in April-May 1975 during Operation Frequent Wind (the evacuation of Saigon), during which the USS Kirk escorted the ships of the South Vietnamese Navy and 30,000 refugees to safety.

This lecture is sponsored by a generous grant from the Helen Jones Foundation and co-sponsored by the Museum of Texas Tech University.

As many of you may have already heard, longtime Associate Director and Archivist Mary Saffell has accepted the position of Senior Archivist/University Archivist with Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, beginning in October.  Mary joined the Vietnam Center and Archive in the spring of 2002 and has been instrumental in the growth the Archive has experienced over the last decade, as well as the development of the Virtual Vietnam Archive.

During her time with the VNCA, Mary has been a part of a significant number of wide-ranging projects.  She has received grants for and directed numerous archival projects, starting with a project to preserve the film “Dong Tam Base Camp,” part of the William Foulke Collection.  In 2005 Mary applied for a grant through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to process the Families of Vietnamese Political Prisoners Association/Vietnamese American Heritage Foundation (FVPPA/VAHF) collection.  This grant was awarded in 2006 and led to the creation of the Vietnamese American Heritage Project at the Archive, as well as an additional NHPRC grant (currently ongoing) to digitize this invaluable collection.  In 2011  Mary, along with current Assistant Archivist Amy Mondt, and the VNCA’s former Communications Coordinator Victoria Lovelady, initiated the VNCA’s Guest Lecture Series, which to date has brought 14 speakers to Lubbock and will continue this fall with two additional speakers, and four speakers planned for 2014.

These are just a few of the many things Mary has been a part of during her nearly twelve years with the Vietnam Center and Archive.  She has played a vital role with the VNCA and will be greatly missed.  We wish her the best of luck in Fort Worth!

The third Friday in September is National POW/MIA Recognition Day. There are 83,343 Americans listed as MIA since WWII, including 1,644 from the Vietnam War. Please take a moment today to remember those who are still missing from the Vietnam War and all other wars.

To learn more about efforts to account for and recover all of our missing personnel, visit the Defense Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), or this lecture by Major General (Ret) W Montague Winfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs and Director of the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, who spoke as part of the Vietnam Center and Archive Guest Lecture Series earlier this year.

Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center and Archive will collaborate with Michigan State University’s Vietnam Group Archive on a recent grant  received to create an online repository.

The project received $265,000 in funding from the National  Endowment for the Humanities to digitize 100,000 pages of materials related to  the U.S. government’s early efforts to build a stable, non-communist regime in  South Vietnam. This will provide students and scholars across the world easy  digital access to materials significant to the study of Vietnam.

“What is very special about this particular project is that  Michigan State engaged in this very important project during the Vietnam War to  assist our government in developing a more efficient and effective  nation-building program for the Republic of Vietnam,” said Steve Maxner,  director of the Vietnam Center and Archive.

Texas Tech’s role in the project is to share insights and  the practices they used to develop the Virtual Vietnam Archive, which houses  over 3.2 million pages of scanned materials related to all aspects of American  involvement in Southeast Asia.

“Working with Michigan State to provide free international  access to this collection via the Virtual Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech will  help researchers and educators who wish to look more closely at this important  aspect of Vietnam War history,” Maxner said.

In return for Texas Tech’s support, Michigan State will  provide copies of the digitized “Vietnam Project” resources to add to the  Virtual Vietnam Archive. These documents, which cover a time period predating  the majority of Texas Tech’s collection, will fill a gap in the archive from  the 1960s to the 1970s.

“It will assist policy-makers who wish to gain valuable  knowledge from the nation-building experience in Vietnam and how those lessons  might apply to contemporary policies, and it will help create a better-informed  citizenry regarding these historical experiences and this very timely topic,”  Maxner said.

The Vietnam Center and Archive at Texas Tech, which was  founded in 1989, houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of  materials relating to the Vietnam conflict outside of the U.S. National  Archives.

-Written by Sydney O’Drobinak (TTU Communications and Marketing)

The city of Lubbock experienced a massive power outage early this morning (July 21st) lasting for several hours.  During this time, the Vietnam Center and Archive website, including the Virtual Vietnam Archive, was unavailable.  Power has been restored and the website is functioning normally again.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may have cause.

If you experience any problems with our online resources, please send a message to vawebmaster@ttu.edu with the full details of the problem, including any error messages you may have received and the internet browser you are using.

Thank you.

Due to snow and icy conditions, the Vietnam Center and Archive will not open until noon today, February 13th.

just an electrical transformer that failed knocking out power to our building for most of the day.  The Vietnam Center and Archive’s online resources are now available, and onsite services will resume with normal business hours tomorrow (Thursday) morning.

Funeral services for DaNita Buckley will be on Saturday, February 19th at 11:00am at Oakwood Baptist Church, 6002 Ave. U, Lubbock, TX.  DaNita passed away on February 7th.  She spent the last 9 years at Texas Tech, and will be greatly missed.

We are very sad to inform our friends and supporters that Ms. DaNita Buckley died yesterday, February 7, 2011.  She spent the last nine years with us at Texas Tech University and was a wonderful friend and colleague.  We miss her very much.  We will post information about memorial and funeral services when they become available.

The Vietnam Center and Archive was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Gerald Hickey in Chicago, Illinois on November 9, 2010.  Hickey was a prominent anthropologist who was best known for his work with Montagnard tribes in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.  His first work in Vietnam was with Michigan State University from 1956-1959 to help rural South Vietnamese develop a modern nation-state.  During this time he particularly became interested in working with the Montagnards.  In fact, Hickey returned to Vietnam in 1964 as an employee of the RAND Corporation where he spent nine years tirelessly fighting for improved political rights and economic conditions for the Montagnards.

We are proud to have close to 20 linear feet of material at the Vietnam Center and Archive in the Gerald Hickey Collection to include photographs, textiles, swords, and carvings as well as many rare books on Montagnard culture in French, Vietnamese, and English.  More than just being an important donor to the Vietnam Center and Archive, Gerald Hickey was a good friend.  He will be greatly missed.

Hickey’s Funeral Mass will be held at 10:00 AM on Saturday, November 13 at Immaculate Conception Church, 1415 N. North Park, Chicago, Illinois.  Visitation will begin at 9:00 AM and last until the beginning of Mass.

For more information about Gerald Hickey including two issues of Friends of the Vietnam Center featuring articles on him and a list of the contents in his collection at the Vietnam Center and Archive, please view the following links:

Summer/Fall 2008 Issue of Friends of the Vietnam Center

Summer/Fall 2010 Issue of Friends of the Vietnam Center

Link to the contents of the Gerald Hickey Collection