Tag Archives: Florida Voices: Vietnam Veterans

Tony Magnifico is a U.S. Marine veteran of Vietnam, boxing trainer, retired construction worker and husband to a Vietnamese woman he met on a return trip to the country.

A UF student recounts what it was like growing up in Vietnam after the war. Read his story at WUFT.org.

His plane once erupted up into a ball of fire as it hit the runway following a bombing run into North Vietnam — forcing him and another serviceman to eject — but that didn’t stop John Menoski from returning to combat missions the following week. He also once flew 40 missions …

While much of the United States population had by 1971 turned against the war in Vietnam, as well as many of those who fought it, John Lavelle experienced a touching piece of support from his daughter’s fifth-grade class. They collected food and other necessities to support orphanages in the Asian …

Having had the opportunity to see a screening of a part of Ken Burns’ film on the Vietnam War earlier this year, Fred Judkins had this warning for any veteran of that war with post-traumatic stress disorder: “Be very careful, because it’s very, very intense.” Judkins served in an Army …

David Willkomm served toward the end of the American ground-based conflict in Vietnam, and by then, he witnessed a sad breakdown of G.I. morale within his unit. Drug use, racial tension, and alcoholism were all too common, according to Willkomm, who later became a counselor at the Gainesville Veterans Affairs …

Duane Romine saw his nearly two years in Vietnam in motion pictures, which he made as part of a Department of Defense combat motion picture team. He’s proud of the work he did and says, “I loved that job so much.” During our conversation on Aug. 28, 2017, at the …

Raymond Harris’ service was unlike that of any other veteran interviewed for this series. He was a member of a unit called MACV-SOG, or Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Special Operations Group. His job was “running recon,” gathering intelligence about North Vietnamese military operations, often behind enemy lines. Harris later …

The depiction of the Vietnam War in popular culture just isn’t for Terry Coons. He lived it, as a member of the Army’s 23rd Infantry Division in 1969 and 1970. This memory from those 13 months has never left him: A young Vietnamese girl in a nearby village was burned …