I remember telling a teenage friend about my father’s medical exemption from the draft for the Vietnam War as we rode together in the back of our station wagon. I thought it was funny that my beanpole dad beat the system just by being too tall and skinny for war. And, though I didn’t usually admit it, I was proud that he went on to support other young men who wanted to be conscientious objectors.

After we dropped my friend off, Dad told me to think twice before I shared that story with anyone.

I couldn’t figure out why anyone would still care so much about Vietnam. The war ended the year before I was born, and to a teenager, that might as well be the Stone Age. But my dad knew that emotions still ran high in our small Southern town, especially as we entered another war in the Persian Gulf.

Vietnam holds a powerful place in our nation’s memory. It lies underneath so many of our arguments over intervening in other countries, and over how we recruit our soldiers and support our veterans. With the passing years, we are more able to talk about what happened in those years, but we still find very different meanings in the same events.

If you’d like to learn more about the history of resistance to the war, the group United for Justice with Peace will be commemorating the 40^th anniversary of the end of the war with a day-long workshop. Noam Chomsky and a variety of leaders from the resistance movements will be speaking.