To mark Vietnam Veterans Day, Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth hosted a ceremony Tuesday at its commissary. Vietnam Veterans Day was first designated by former President Donald Trump in 2017.
"It's just great. I feel very high from it," says Willie Scyffore, an Air Force veteran. "I'll be geeked out all day long just with the outpouring of gratitude."
Scyffore says he has been glad to see the attitude toward Vietnam veterans shift, saying he noticed the reaction changing in the 1990s.
"When we initially got back in '68, '69, it was a different era, different times," he says. "There were a lot of demonstrations, protesters and, you know, some bad names."
"A ten year old girl calls me, 'gestapo,'" says Ken Henson, an Army pilot in Vietnam. "I wasn't angry. I said, 'you don't even know what it means.'" We were told not to leave post in uniform."
Commander Allen Grimes, executive officer at NAS JRB, pinned a medal on each veteran's shirt during the ceremony.
"You're able to experience the raw emotion that service carried with them," he says.
Grimes says Vietnam veterans formed the "bedrock" of the armed forces' transition from the draft to an all-volunteer service. In Vietnam, the Department of Defense says 66% of those who served were volunteers, and volunteers accounted for 70% of those killed.
"That should not be lost on anyone, the impact that has," he says. "Without that, I don't know we'd be able to transition to an all-volunteer force."
Grimes says 77% of people 50 and older served or had a family member who served. Of those 40 and younger, the number drops to 33%.
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"They're more of the 'thank you for your service' generation. It's a tweet, a celebrity tweet," he says. "They're inundated, veteran discounts. It's all turned into a catchphrase, almost. That was vastly different than the experience these gentlemen had."
The ceremony was held at the exchange at the JRB. Kelly Tolefree-Sarmiento, the general manager, says each exchange is designed with a similar layout to give service members and their families a familiar place regardless of where they are stationed.
"One of our sayings is, 'we go where you go.' Wherever there's a military installation sponsored by the United States, we're there," she says. "We stood up temporary stores in Afghanistan, all over Europe, wherever there's a conflict where the U.S. military's present we're there with chips, sodas and snickers, just a little taste of home."
Tolefree-Sarmiento says a familiar layout and food can help service members and their families feel more comfortable, and she says many children of service members also get their first job at the exchange.
"One of our core values is family serving family," she says. "My father was a Vietnam veteran as well, so that's one of the things that drew me to the exchange was being able to honor his service."
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