The husband was a Vietnam veteran, a helicopter pilot. A few guys I knew had a little college but decided to sign up and serve and “grow up” with the intention of returning to get really serious and finish up their degrees later.Ī new couple moved to town. She wanted a song from West Side Story played, “One Hand, One Heart.”ĭuring the early 1970s, I kept hearing accounts of more and more familiar classmates, Andalusia friends, and graduates in other classes that had gone off to the war. She told me that her mother would have been shocked at what all she went through. I received letters and pictures she sent me from over there. My college friend and her officer boyfriend eventually made it back.
If I name names, then someone will be left out. By then, this war and the involvement of more people I knew was getting more and more serious. She wrote me and told me that she was joining the Red Cross “Donut Dollies,” a group of women, college graduates who would serve over there in the SRAO (Supplemental Recreation Activities Overseas) program for a certain period of time. Her first job was as a kindergarten teacher in Columbus, Georgia where she met an Army officer who ended up being sent to Vietnam. She graduated from high school without her father being present at many happy occasions.īack to college days, my wonderful friend who was also in the School of Education graduated from the U of Alabama about the same time as I did. One of my female student’s father was an officer in Vietnam. I was a music teacher by then and some of my male students were whisked away following graduation. Some other classmates I was friends with were in the guard, in the Army, the Marines and headed somewhere. The day he left, I took to the bed not knowing if his guard unit would be deployed or not. My boyfriend and my other best boy friend did just that.īy that time we are all married and my husband got orders to Fort Knox, Kentucky for basic training to learn to drive tanks. Some guys were adding their names to a waiting list for the national guard just so they could have a little more time to finish college before they would be drafted and have to serve. My gosh, what is this all about? Why isn’t this over? I began to hear about some of my former high school friends being drafted and some joining the service. I did think that I needed to be more knowledgeable about the news, but as time went on, that realization seemed to get more significant. I didn’t listen to much news back then because college campus activities were at the forefront. I knew that there was a lot of news about a war going on in a place called South Vietnam where all of those unfamiliar names of places that fighting was going on was so foreign – somewhere around the world. Moving forward, after graduation, I headed to college in the summer of ’65. Everyone thought that they made a picture perfect pair. A couple that stands out in my memory was a certain beautiful blond cheerleader and a darling fun-loving football player. They were strictly student planned and manufactured projects. No, parents did not work on the floats back then. Those were such fun times with high schoolers mixing and mingling with each other, couples getting together, falling in love in the evening shadows. Our fight song was the “Notre Dame Fight Song,” the tune chosen by many colleges and high schools using words adopted by each institution. I recall the guys and girls, some football players, some cheerleaders, some of us who sang “Hurrah for Andy” and “ Corn, Corn for Ole Andy High” the loudest. My memories are vivid which take me back to our high school homecoming week in the fall of 1964 when the classmates, seniors we were, worked on floats each night prior to the big game on Friday preparing to be the winners over the junior class.