Kissimmee’s Makinson-Carson American Legion Post 10 hosted a Vietnam War Veterans Day ceremony on Saturday at the Post’s Lakefront site. The ceremony was well attended and over half a dozen vendors were on hand as well.
Proclamations for this year’s Vietnam War Veterans Day observance by Florida Gov. DeSantis and the City of Kissimmee were read, with Kissimmee Vice Mayor Angela Eady doing the honors for the city proclamation. Names and stories of Osceola County residents who died in the Vietnam War were then read aloud. The ceremony concluded with a 21-gun salute and the playing of “Taps”, both conducted by the Osceola County Veterans Council Honor Guard.
Over three million American men and women served in Vietnam and Southeast Asia during the war; 58,000 were killed and over 300,000 were wounded. Some 1,577 are still listed as Missing in Action, including 53 from the State of Florida. Over 430,000 Vietnam veterans are thought to live in the state.
Although initially supported by a majority of the American people when the war began in 1965, by 1968 that support quickly faded, against the backdrop of social unrest and highly visible antiwar protests, mainly on college campuses. Veterans returning from the war were often treated with silence and disdain by many Americans, mostly of the same younger generation as the veterans. Rejection at home combined with the suffering from physical wounds and mental trauma sent many veterans spiraling into alcohol and drug addiction and withdrawal from spouses and family.
The initiation of a Vietnam War Veterans Day by the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017 is intended to provide a formal belated “welcome home” to the veterans who were largely disparaged by their fellow citizens during the latter years of the war.
Post officials expressed that due to the intense effort by Post 10 in hosting the Vietnam Memorial “Wall that Heals” earlier in the month, this year’s observance was not as elaborate as in the past. Plans for a larger event next year are being made, with Kissimmee one of the few communities in the Central Florida region hosting any type of formal Vietnam War Veterans Day ceremony.
Post 10 is also supporting a memorial event at the City’s Bataan Corregidor Memorial at Lakefront Park, on April 12. The annual commemoration is held by the Bataan-Corregidor Memorial Foundation, which built the memorial in the 1990s with help from the Filipino American community. The monument depicts the tragic, brutal early World War Two Bataan Death March of tens of thousands of captured Filipino and American soldiers into prisoner of war camps. Thousands died, including Filipino civilians executed by Imperial Japanese soldiers when they tried to give water, food, and medical aid to the suffering soldiers.
For more information on Kissimmee American Legion Post 10 see https://bit.ly/4lbqtbM.
