The Healing Journey

March 29, 2025

George still remembers the day more than 55 years ago when his family received the telegram that said his brother David had died in Vietnam. He was 22 years old.

George, who was 25 at the time, said, “It was so difficult for us. My sister was home when the notice came. Our father’s knee buckled beneath him. He had just been through his twin brother’s son being killed there two weeks prior. I can still remember reading the telegram with my mother sitting next to me and watching her fall to pieces.”

Even sharing his story decades later still brings tears to his eyes and revives that old, tragic grief.

Today, March 29 is a day set aside for honoring Vietnam veterans. We will honor them in perpetuity on this day. On March 29, 1973, the United States Military Assistance Command was ended and the last combat troops left Vietnam. Some 58,220 U.S. military fatalities occurred during the Vietnam War, which lasted almost 20 years, and to this day their memory is painful for countless Americans.

“I have a story about my brother, who died in Vietnam,” George recently said. “I was looking at some pictures, and one of them was when he was a young boy maybe 8 or so. We used to put up pictures on the wall in the bedroom of celebrities and singers of the day, and when I looked closely, I saw a picture of Jesus right above David’s head. How can that be explained? It was very comforting for me.”
© J Pisani

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