Governor Paul LePage and First Lady Ann LePage were among those paying tribute to Maine's Vietnam Veterans Saturday afternoon at a welcome-home ceremony in Bangor at Cole Land Transportation Museum.
"What we have learned is that it's not the soldier that starts the war," said LePage after the ceremony, "I was in college from 1967 to 1971 and I saw what was going on stateside while these people were giving their lives. Their return home was never what it should have been."
Veterans from the Vietnam War era received a handshake from Governor LePage and a hug from First Lady Ann LePage.
One of them was 82 year old Donald Smith of Bristol, a Congressional Medal of Honor nominee, who served in both Korea and Vietnam. Smith says veterans' affairs and public awareness of veterans' issues have come a long way since the 1960's, but more work is needed.
"Being in a combat area is awful hard on a person, " explains Smith. "You lose all the freedom you had in civilian life and your life is on the line." Returning to an unsympathetic public in the late 1960's made an already difficult situation worse. "It was almost like suicide coming back." he says.
In 1964, the United States escalated its involvement in the Vietnam region with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Some 58 thousand Americans died in the conflict, with more than 150 thousand service people wounded.
According to Bureau of Veterans' Services Director Peter Ogden, some 343 Mainers are known to have been killed or lost in action during the years-long conflict.
The homecoming ceremony is a symbolic tradition that seeks to honor those who served- including those listed as missing. Gov. LePage says the state will keep holding the welcoming ceremonies until 2025, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the conflict's end.
Congressman Mike Michaud, who is challenging Governor Paul LePage for the Blaine House in a three-way race, which also includes independent Eliot Cutler, is planning to attend a veterans' event in Lewiston on Monday.
