The new America’s Heroes Channel debuted on March 3^rd, 2014. The channel will highlight all war efforts of the true American heroes.

On Monday, March 10^th, 2014, the channel will be airing a new series entitled, “Against the Odds.”

The series will included a special episode, “The Marines at Hue,” that will feature moving images from the Vietnam Center and Archive.

Narrated by Rob Low, the series Against the Odds unveils the harsh realities of war. The episode will included archival footage and first-hand interviews to illuminate U.S. troops who banded together during battle.

The episode with focus on three U.S. Marines battalions that, along with two Army battalions and South Vietnamese troops, beat the odds to defeat entrenched North Vietnamese troops and the Viet Cong in the South Vietnamese city in 1968.

For more details, click on any of these links.

www.43Films.com

http://www.ahctv.com/tv-shows/against-the-odds/against-the-odds-video/against-the-odds.htm  

http://press.discovery.com/us/ahc/programs/against-odds/ 

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/02/24/military-channel-becomes-american-heroes-channel-will-focus-on-heroes-from-all/

The Vietnam Center and Archive celebrates TET – The Vietnamese New Year this Friday!

   The Vietnam Center and Archive cordially invites you to join us as we celebrate the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, Tet, on Friday, January 31^st, 2014. Please come sample Vietnamese cuisine and learn more about the rich heritage and culture that makesVietnam remarkable.

   Friday, January 31^st, 2014 ushers the Luna Year of the Wooden Horse. InVietnam, one of the 12 animals of the zodiac represents each year. People born in the Year of the Horse are believed to be the most reasonable out of the five types of Horse signs. People born in the Year of the Wooden Horse are self-disciplined, organized, social and happy, but refused to be dominated.

   Tet is the Vietnamese peoples most important holiday. Preparation for the celebration is very time consuming. Preparation includes, cooking, cleaning and painting their homes.

   The Vietnam Center and Archive will start the celebration on Friday, January 31^st, 2014 at 4:00pm in the

International Cultural Center at Texas Tech University. The event is open for everyone. We hope to see you there!

 For more information, please visit www.vietnam.ttu.edu or

call (806) 742-9010.

The Vietnam Center and Archive would like to invite you to join us for a reception opening the Texas Vietnam Heroes Exhibit.  This striking exhibit features 3,417 dog tags of all Texans who were killed-in-action or remain missing-in-action from the Vietnam War.  It is a personalized tribute by the Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Monument to honor and remember every Texan who died in the Vietnam War. Two dog tags were hand-embossed with the name, rank, branch of service, date of loss and home of record of each Texan who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the American Armed Forces during Vietnam.  One of each tag is displayed in the Texas Vietnam Heroes Exhibit.  The second will be entombed in the Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Monument in March of 2014.  The Texans who died in the Vietnam War are remembered on silver tags.  The tags of the 102 Texan military personnel who are listed as Missing In Action are black.

The reception will take place on Tuesday October 29, 2013 at 6:30 PM in the Helen DeVitt Jones Auditorium, Texas Tech University Museum. The evening will feature a short program followed by refreshments.

Please direct any questions regarding this event to the Vietnam Center at 806-742-9010.  Thank you very much and we look forward to you joining us for this important event that honors and pays tribute to all Texas Vietnam Veterans.

The Vietnam Center and Archive website has a new look.  This redesign, in addition to the new color scheme, includes a new layout for the home page and improved navigation.  The Virtual Vietnam Archive has also been updated to include:

• New color scheme
• Ability to limit by media type on the simple search page
• Filter search results by media type or by item availability
• Sort by the date the item was created, or by the date the item was added to the Virtual Vietnam Archive
• Larger preview images for photographs, slides, and artifacts
• and more…

Both the VNCA website and the Virtual Vietnam Archive are now also optimized for use on mobile devices.

Please check out the site and let us know what you think!

 

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 Vietnam Center and Archive’s 2013 Conference focusing on Vietnam in the year 1963 is currently underway.  You can watch the conference online through the US National Archive’s Ustream channel: http://www.ustream.tv/usnationalarchives

If you are in the DC area, there is still time to join us.  This free conference continues until 5pm today, and starts again on Saturday at 8:30am.  For more information on the conference and panelists, visit www.vietnam.ttu.edu/conference.htm

 

The Vietnam Center and Archive is proud to announce that the Vietnam: The Helicopter War exhibit is on its way to Australia.

The National VietnamVeterans Museumin Phillip Island, Australia, island just south of Melbourne, Victoria, will host the exhibit starting November 17^th 2013 and ending January 26^th 2014.

In the summer of 2013, the exhibit was on display in Lubbock’s Silent Wings Museum for the first time. Then, it was displayed in Midland,Texas. And now, a year from its creation, the exhibit will be available to the Australian public.

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.

Half-way through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) funded project to digitize the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) Application Files of the FVPPA/VAHF collection, two major milestones have been reached – over 10,000 ODP files are now available online, totaling more that 200,000 pages.  Although the pace has slowed down this summer with many of the students involved in the project taking summer vacations, the project is still well ahead of schedule, with over 90 of the 124 boxes of ODP files completely digitized.

This three year project is projected to make available online over 250,000 pages of materials documenting the immigration experience of Vietnamese to the United States following the end of the war in Vietnam.   All of these files are accessible through the Virtual Vietnam Archive, and you can keep up with the project on our ODP Digitization Project Page.