My high school class in 1964 had 57 people.

[Biophilic]

One of those was kind, gentle guy from a farm family west of the city. He was a very talented artist, but obviously his family didn’t have the funds for Art School. He went to Nam instead. He didn’t return. I think about Paul often. He was a special human being.

[senseandsensibility]

1. Great post for Memorial Day

And there are thousands and thousands more. Each life was important. That's what the holiday is all about. Thanks for sharing.

[PJMcK]

2. My class had about 650 kids

This year marks our 50th reunion.

More than 100 of my classmates have died. Many different causes.

I feel fortunate to still be alive. I grieve for those service people who never came home.

[niyad]

12. And I also grieve for the ones who came home wounded in body or mind,

and for their loved ones. I spent many years trying to help heal the wounded minds.

[COL Mustard]

16. You and I graduated the same year.

I remember how proud I was to graduate in the Bicentennial Year, with all the patriotic displays and fervor that we had back then, at least in my part of the country. We've lost so much since then, and the pace is accelerating.

I know several of my HS classmates have died since then but I'm sure there are others that I don't know about.

Not sure if we are having a reunion, so graduation may have been the last time I saw some of those folks.

[Joinfortmill]

3. 1967 here. About the same number of grads.

It was college or Nam.

[anciano]

4. ...

[BeneteauBum]

5. A lot of us lost friends in Vietnam

Friends I knew in high school. I remember the first death of someone I knew…..I was a sophomore. Also, many of us lost relatives in WW2 and Korea. I had an uncle die on the Bataan death march. The horrors of war should never be trivialized and the sacrifices of people defending us should always be memorialized.

Peace ☮️

[IbogaProject]

6. A classmate from fifth grade for me

He was the very first causalty in Desert Storm the first Gulf War.

[tavernier]

7. 64 also.

Several died in Nam, but the one I especially remember told me once that I was the first girl he ever kissed.

[littlemissmartypants]

8. ...

[Festivito]

9. My SO's brother recounted the story of his friend.

His friend, Jesus, did not make it back from Vietnam alive. His eyes welled up after all these years as I listened.

My close neighbor told another neighbor friend that he should go to Vietnam. She carried the memory of his death until her own.

As I work as a civilian on a military base, the memory of Vietnam is not with the young people there. My condolence to all those with memory.

[Unwind Your Mind]

22. Hell, I'm getting pretty old and am still too young to remember

I did have a friend when I was young whose father didn’t return from Vietnam

My Dad and his brother were 4F. Uncles on my Mom’s side were younger and stayed in school long enough to avoid it. Their father was a WWII veteran and didn’t want his sons to go

Class of ‘88

[surfered]

10. Many of those who survived suffer from severe PTSD.

[MineralMan]

11. 106 in my 1963 class.

6 died in Vietnam. Just under 6%. Shocking!

[ShazzieB]

13. 1968 reporting in.

75 in my graduating class. I didn't stay in touch with any of those people, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the guys got drafted. Now I'm wondering if they did and if they all made it back.

One of my cousins got drafted but never left the states. He ended up in the quartermaster corps after basic training and spent the rest of his hitch in Ft. Dix, NJ.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend Paul. There were too many like him.

[MustLoveBeagles]

14. I'm so sorry you lost your friend

[KitFox]

15. Appreciate you sharing this special remembrance. We are of the same generation. My graduating class of 105 in 1967 lost

two of our classmates in Vietnam and another committed suicide 3 months after coming home. We had all been in school together since first grade and it hit us so hard. I lost two of my former students: one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. I cry every time I look through my school yearbooks and see their sweet little 7 year old faces smiling back at me. My mom’s brother was killed in World War II so I sadly never knew him. I choke up every Memorial Day and Veterans Day when I put out my flag.

[dedl67]

17. Six from my class didn't make it back.

[sab390]

18. My uncle was the only male in his highschool class to survive WWII

When I went to my 5th highschool reunion more than 10 percent of the boys were dead. Half from drugs, half didn't come back from Vietnam. I had a graduating class of 400.

[GiqueCee]

19. I graduated in '65...

... and when I went for my draft physical, I got a 1Y instead of a 1A because I was too light for my height. Hard to believe, looking in the mirror now. When they went to the lottery system, I got a high number, so I never got called up.
'Nam was a war that should never have happened, which, to my mind, makes the loss of 58,220 young lives all the more tragic. And the 303,644 who came home wounded will likely attest to that.

[Jarqui]

20. I protested the war and still wonder if I did enough

I was too young.

I became casual friends with a Vietnam vet in Florida. His father bought him a Corvette as a present for surviving the war.
He lived in a crawl space in a stairwell of a motel. He worked at the motel cleaning the pool/maintenance.
I feel he was disturbed from his experience and largely detached from family and society.
I knew from my other family members who served that you don't pry very hard into those areas as vets in my family did not like to discuss it.
I guess I just functioned as non threatening company - easy companionship
I found him interesting and kind of exciting - he seemed so carefree in some ways and yet emotionally wounded and withdrawn/guarded in other ways.
Once, he took me out to Daytona beach in the wee hours. I can't be sure but I think he got his car up to 168mph. It was rattling so much, I thought the car was going to fly apart. The speedometer was hard to read. Turns out that beach isn't as flat as you think.
One day, not long after, he was gone without saying a word.
He left me with some good memories. I think he had a very tough experience. I hope life worked out for him.

I still feel the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is the saddest place I have visited in the country.

[krawhitham]

21. Same school OH school (Dad) 1969 had 116, (Me) 1993 had 394, (Boy) 2014 had 255

[Tetrachloride]

23. war was a taboo topic in my family and school

[oberle]

24. I was the organist at Arlington Cemetery for 5 years.

That was in the 70s when they were reclassifying servicemembers from missing in action to killed in action. That was hard. There were so many.

[Aussie105]

25. A lot of good people died for no good reason.

And the 'WHY?' will never be answered.

But it needs to be asked, every day.

And those who didn't come back, remembered.

I was at University at the time when Australia had the draft for the Nam war.
It was a draw the birthday system, and mine didn't come up.
My parents were anti-war, having lived through WW2, and talked of sending me back to my county of birth, Holland.

[duhneece]

26. My late husband lost both legs at Chu Lai

One was AK (Above Knee) and one was BK (Below Knee). He came home got a double Bachelors in Wildlife Science and Range Management and a Master’s in Wildlife Science.
He died from a self inflicted gunshot wound to his stomach.
Our son who was 20 and had a full scholarship to NM Tech was in jail for drugs in the following year. And so it began.
I’m not putting all the blame on his father’s suicide but it was definitely a big part of why he self-medicated.

[Irish_Dem]

27. I remember the draft lottery on TV.

When the birthdays came up you knew some of those boys were going to die.

[Jilly_in_VA]

28. I graduated in 1961 in a class of 482

We lost a couple of guys, had more with PTSD. One of my classmates got the Medal of Honor. It's a long, tragic, and complicated story. He was a guy who had moved from another town and most of us didn't know him well. He sang in choir with me and asked me out once. We had a tolerably good time but he never asked me out again. He was very shy.

My brother got a scholarship to a prestigious prep school in New England. He graduated a couple of years after me, and I went with my parents to his graduation. He fixed me up with a classmate and we hit it off amazingly well. We wrote letters back and forth and the relationship bloomed to the point where he stopped to see me the next year at my house. Then the following year it got even closer and after my parents moved to upstate NY I went to see them during Easter vacation and went up to see him at Harvard, where he and my brother were going to school. Let's just say the relationship was becoming so intense it scared me and I broke it off in June, something I've always regretted. He was killed at My Lai n September, 1967. It took me years to get over that.