Dozens of Central Coast Vietnam War veterans gather at SLO museum for special event
The Central Coast Veterans Memorial Museum in San Luis Obispo hosted about 60 Vietnam War veterans on Friday in celebration of National Vietnam Veterans Day.
The museum organized a special coffee meetup for Central Coast veterans including guest speakers Dennis Hennessey and George Marrett, both of whom served in Vietnam.
Hennessy spoke about the meaning of National Vietnam Veterans Day and the 50th commemoration of the Vietnam War, while Marrett spoke about his experiences flying rescue combat missions.
The event culminated in an open conversation round table in which attendees could share their war stories with their fellow veterans.
“Vietnam veterans, unlike most veterans of our conflicts, came home to an unpopular war and were greeted as if they represented that unpopularity,” museum director Bart Topham told The Tribune after the event. “It took many years for those folks to kind of shed some of those scars, where they weren’t popular, they weren’t appreciated, they weren’t helped in any way. And it was a long time before we were able to turn that around, and start to help them to heal, and we’re still helping today.”
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