SPOTLIGHT COMMUNICATIONS

By Michael Davidson, CEO, Eagle Society

Robert Kiyosaki — author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, one of the best-selling personal finance books of all time — came home from Vietnam on January 3, 1972. Before he stepped off the plane in San Francisco, the captain addressed the 300 Marines aboard: “Gentlemen, America has changed. When you get into the terminal, I suggest you get out of your uniforms, put on civilian clothes, and get out of the airport as fast as you can.” There was to be no parade and no welcome home. Just a quiet instruction to disappear back into the folds of an America that did not thank them for their sacrifice

This Sunday, March 29, is National Vietnam Veterans Day where we pay tribute to the 9 million Americans who served during the Vietnam War era. I want to ask a harder question than the ones we usually ask: have we ever really let them come home?

This month, I had the privilege of leading a delegation of Vietnam-era veterans back to Vietnam, including two fellow Tennesseans. Robert was alongside them. So were men who earned Purple Hearts, men whose families had waited decades for this moment, and men for whom this trip was never a question of whether—only of when. The eagerness in their voices when I called to thank them and introduce myself told me everything: these men had never stopped waiting for this moment.

There is growing research on how multi-sensory experience can release trauma that words alone cannot reach. When a veteran puts his feet back on that ground, smells the air, and stands in a place his memory has been anchored for decades, it sends a signal to his body saying you don’t need to fight anymore. You’re home.

Vietnam is our most misunderstood war. It resists easy stories. Unlike World War II with its arc of sacrifice, victory, and parades; Vietnam came home to a divided country, institutional distrust, and in too many cases, open hostility. I’ve spoken with veterans who, more than fifty years later, still worry about being judged rather than thanked. As America approaches its 250th year, the unfinished business of Vietnam is part of the unfinished business of who we are.

The national conversation around Vietnam has too often forced a choice between two blunt options: the war was wrong, or the war was right. Both framings abandon the men who fought it. The men who served deserve a conversation as complex and honest as their sacrifice. These were young Americans who answered a call during one of the most dangerous periods of the twentieth century—when Soviet oppression and expansionism, Maoist terror, and communist ideology were killing tens of millions across Asia and Eastern Europe. They were let down by leadership, strategy, and politics. And then they came home to a country that punished them for going.

We have let the political failure of Vietnam become the veterans’ failure too. It isn’t. These were men who went when called, fought under impossible constraints, and stood in the gap for the liberty and human dignity of people who had no one else. We owe them the honesty to say so.

The next time the conversation turns to Vietnam and someone reaches for the easy verdict, don’t reduce them to symbols of a divided era, but as Americans who went to the fire when called. Not to pretend it wasn’t complicated, but because more than fifty years of silence and shame is not the honor these men earned. 

My own children bolted toward a Vietnam veterans’ booth at a street festival recently. No one had taught them the complicated politics of the era, so they responded the only way that made sense: with gratitude. It is the adults, shaped by decades of division and debate, who forgot how to do that.

This March 29, if you know a Vietnam veteran, look them in the eye and say “thank you for your service” and “welcome home.” Honoring these veterans never required grand gestures. The best time to give these men the homecoming they deserved was fifty years ago. The next best time is today.

---

Michael Davidson is the founder of Eagle Society, a Tennessee-based 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to honoring veterans and strengthening American civic life through immersive philanthropic experiences.