ADJUSTING BACK TO HOME LIFE
Us: Was it hard for you to transition zofran into life back at home?
John: Not difficult… though some aspects might have been a little more challenging. I got home
in September of ’67, and then went back to work part-time for the Pasadena Water department
And knowing you’re leaving one part of your life that you’ve spent (for most of us) 13 months,
and getting back to the life you knew when you grew up…The strange thing is when you’re
going to live in a different culture in a different country, you expect your culture shock to be
when you go to that country. But you get so acclimated in whatever that is, like in Da Nang in
Vietnam, that the greater culture shock is when you come home. That’s what you don’t prepare
yourself for, because you really think you remember the way life was. But you’re not the same,
and you don’t view it the same, and you’ve got to watch saying the same words to your family
around the table versus what you would say in a mess hall.
Us: Can you explain how people’s reactions were when you did come home?
John: I can’t say I was welcomed. I can say I was sworn at, cussed at, spat upon – because
people so hated the war. I did not feel like a popular American…
On Good Friday the following spring, the church I grew up in, All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena,
had a Good Friday service. So I took a break from work, and walked across the street to
celebrate Good Friday. Our minister at that time, who was very much anti-war, in his sermon
was asking all of us to donate our blood to North Vietnam…and I felt that I had heard and seen
enough of that impacting people, that I said this isn’t where I want to stay – and I got up and left.
It’s not like it is today – when most Americans see troops in the airport, many of us will go over
and out of our way to say, “Thank you for your service”. It wasn’t that way in the sixties at all. While we were doing what we had been asked to do by our government, it wasn’t appreciated
by the American people – or by very few.
I had a tie that my wife had given me quite a few years ago. It was black, and it had regimental
stripes. But one of the stripes was the Vietnam campaign medal, and the other was the
Vietnamese service medal, and it alternated those stripes. So anytime I went to Washington
and called on the Halls of Congress, I would always wear that tie because I was very proud
of my service on behalf of my country. I wore that tie one time when I was at one of my
professional associations, and there was a conference in Washington D.C., and there was a
reception one evening. There were probably thirty to fifty people in the room, and there was
only one person that recognized the significance of what that tie stood for. He recognized it,
and he said, “Welcome home.” This was 40 years after I had come back from Vietnam, and it
was the first time that anybody had said, “Welcome home.” I so appreciated that, that when that
gentleman retired last year—he was the executive director of our organization—I gave him my
tie.
Us: Do you have any regrets from the Vietnam War? Would you serve again?
John: Absolutely. Aside from serving my county, I’d say that period was one of the most
valuable learning experiences for me as an individual. It helped me to grow up…to the extent
that I’ve grown up so far.
Us: Can you tell me how your experiences in Vietnam helped you in your career in the field?
John: Fortunately, one of the projects I was involved with while I was there was working on the
design of an aerated lagoon system, a wastewater treatment plant for Camp Tien Sha. And
I had always felt I wanted to be a civil engineer, working in water and the environment – so I
still do the same thing today, I do water and wastewater. It’s made me more comfortable in my career with traveling internationally, working internationally – going into 3rd world countries and helping improve their quality of life. If there’s nothing else I have to look back on in my
career, it’s the feeling that I’ve been able to help contribute to improving the quality of life for
literally hundreds of millions of people on this planet. And a lot of that is in 3rd world developing
countries – a lot in Asia – and Vietnam was kind of the beginning of that.
Us: Would you go back to Vietnam to see your work over there?
John: In a heartbeat. It’s a little harder for me to get my wife to want to go to 3rd world countries.
But I know there is a cruise in southeast Asia that I’ve seen, and sometime I want to do that, as
long as one of its ports to call is Da Nang…So I can walk around and see if I can remember 56
Doc Lap Street, 7 Yen Bai, 151 Doc Lap, where the USO was, the White Elephant…my haunts.
Go up to Camp Tien Sha and go to China Beach, and see what’s it like today, 40 years later…
45 years later!