VietNow National Magazine

It's in Chicago. If you haven't been there, you should go. Really. You should. Here's how to get there. It's easy.

By Judy McKee

I am not a writer and I am not a veteran. I’ve never been outside of the United States. I’ve never stepped off a plane and set foot in Vietnam. I’ve never felt its heat. I’ve never…

But I want to speak to you – you who have – about a place I have been. It’s a place about all of you. I want to take you all there, I want to walk in the door with you and stop, and take it in.

The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum was a discovery to me. I don’t know where I first heard its name, but I’m glad I did. It’s in Chicago, and that puts some people off. The unmanageability of a big city like Chicago, the traffic, the street. I think it stops lots of people from going there. I hope it won’t stop all of you anymore.

The museum really is not hard to find. I’m not just saying that. It’s really not hard. You can ask anyone to head you toward Michigan Avenue. Then just turn right. Literally, turn your body to the right, and you’ll be facing south. You don’t even need to know it. That you’re facing south. You could just raise your hand at that point, and tell a cab driver you want to go to the corner of 18th and Indiana. Or 1801 South Indiana. It’s not bad. Maybe six or seven dollars. Not so much. Or, if you’d like, you could wait on Michigan Avenue and catch a bus, the Number 3, or the Number 4. One dollar and fifty cents. Not much at all.

It only takes a few minutes to get there. The red line will take you down that way, too. Get off at Roosevelt. That’s what I did every Sunday for a few years. I’d walk to the Red Line and get off at Roosevelt.

Then you could walk over, if it’s a nice day and you’re a walker. Or walk over to Michigan and hail a cab or take the bus. The bus is too long a wait for me. I get impatient with waiting, so I walk. Or take a cab.

The details are all a part of it. The getting there. You have to decide to get there. So I’ve tried to make it easy for you. You have to get there before you can walk in the door.

The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum saved me. Really. I stumbled onto it one day, searching for some place to be on Veterans Day. As I said, I don’t know how I had heard of it. It was one of those miracles that you read of in those Chicken Soup for the Soul books. I went with a friend who helped me find it. But the door was locked, and someone from inside came and told us we couldn’t come in. A problem with the lighting, due to a horribly windy storm. Chicago. Huh. They insisted, when I asked if I couldn’t just come in and look around – they said they were having a special event that night in honor of the book they had published. A book of the art they had there. Of the artists, Vietnam veterans who had painted and sculpted about Vietnam. They sent me and my friend away. I asked if I could come to the event. I got the impression at that point, they didn’t really care what I did. They had problems.

We left. We walked and it became dark out. I remember asking my friend what he thought. About going back, or calling it a day. It hadn’t been a bad day. Not really.

But I still needed something. I needed to be there, That hadn’t gone away. So we went. And that’s when I walked into a miracle.

I could see, as we approached, that they’d solved their lighting problem. The place was lit up, and there were cars parked all around. And as we approached the door, I noticed a small sign that said “By Invitation Only.”

Looking back, I think I had received my “invitation” a long time ago. Back in 1968. I was 17, and my family had moved from what I had been used to all my life in Ohio, to Florida. We moved over Christmas vacation during my senior year in high school, and I felt pretty awful leaving my friends. Florida wasn’t home to me.
I didn’t stay. I left to come back north that fall, to start college. But in August, it was all over for me. That’s when my family was informed that my 19-year-old brother had died. In Vietnam. Devastating. Devastating times. Devastating.

Those years of Vietnam, I lived in America. I was confused. I didn’t understand – I was a kid. I knew I couldn’t believe in our government anymore.

That day, when my father told me that my brother was dead, something in me froze. It froze so solid, that for the next thirty years, I never approached or spoke to any of you. I could not begin to think of, much less comprehend, the world you lived in. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. So I sat frozen in a freshman English class in Illinois the day my brother was buried in Florida. I was dead, too. In some way. There was a lightly misting rain that morning. I remember that, as I sat staring out the window, as I sat at that desk in this college classroom that morning. The nuns ran the school, and my aunt was one of them. Because of that, the nun who was teaching that class, mentioned my brother, and asked the class to say a prayer as he was being buried that morning. I didn’t shed a tear. I stared out that window, looking at the misty rain. Something in me was frozen.

But that night, at the Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, I needed you. My walls had come tumbling down. In a moment I hadn’t arranged, a few months before, I had stumbled onto information about how my brother died that shook me.

All I could think about was Vietnam. I cried. I wept. About Vietnam. About what happened there, and what I didn’t know that happened there, and what I did know. And what I didn’t know. I haunted bookstores, staring at maps of Vietnam. I lived as if it were 1968. It was, for me.

I’m telling you this for the same reason that I told you about getting to Michigan Avenue. I want you to go there. Like I did that night. I want you to be on that corner, at 18th and Indiana, and have that door handle in your hand, and pull that door open, and walk in.

That’s what I did that night, and I was saved. It will probably be different when you walk in, because if there isn’t an event going on, it’s pretty quiet there. The night I walked in there were lots of people. They were serving little appetizers and drinks, and people were talking and laughing. It was a celebration, of the place and the book.

I walked in that place very nearly as if I were still in 1968.

I told myself repeatedly, don’t cry, don’t cry – the people are laughing. No one is crying. And I saw that they were selling that book, and you could ask some of these guys to autograph it. These guys who had painted about being in Vietnam. So I did.

I’m hoping you understand the struggle within me, as I walked up to one of you, to ask if you would sign that book. I had never spoken to any of you; I had never talked to any of you, of Vietnam and of Steve dying. Of my brother, and of Vietnam. And I was telling myself don’t cry, don’t cry.

And I did it. I asked, and one of you signed the book. You were friendly, and you asked if I knew what “in country” meant. It was like listening to a voice from a different land that I had always feared. To feel what all of that felt like. Including that day in 1968. But I did it. I asked, and I thanked you.

And that’s when another miracle happened. I decided I could do it again. I walked across the room, and approached another of you, with that book in my hand, and it occurred to me that I could ask you to sign it to my brother.

And I did. I did that. And I didn’t cry. And that’s when you asked. An innocent question. A very innocent question. “Where does your brother live?“ And my eyes met yours, and I hadn’t forgotten to not cry, but it was hard to look at you and say anything out loud. But you were standing there, having asked the question – and I did not cry. And I said what had been frozen in time for 30 years. My brother died in Vietnam. He died. And I just found out how.

You men sometimes don’t know, I think, what you are to people like me. You don’t know – I have to guess – that the fact of you having lived through whatever your experience was in that country, makes you someone so special. I don’t think I can explain that all very well, so I’m not going to try. But I always wish you all knew it. That you are thought of in a very deep way. That you are so far from not forgotten that you wouldn’t ever have to question it.

That’s what the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum is. It’s a place for you. Of you. About men like you, who went from being in this country at a very young age, to a place like Vietnam. About how that was for you, about how it felt. About – for some of you – how it still feels sometimes.

I think.

I can only guess, because like I said, I lived here that whole time. I lived here.

I was…well, I told you before.

Those years changed people, I think. I know they changed me. And when I found this place, this National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, it was about all of that. It is a place that respects you. It is a place that honors you. It may seem pretty quiet, as you walk around, looking at the art. The first floor always seems chilly to me in the winter. The second floor is warmer. Cozier, if you can apply the word cozy to a place that has pictures and paintings that include death. But it is to me. It is my connection with you. All of you. You may not agree. That’s all right. You don’t know me. But I am one of those people out in the world that you will never meet, never have a conversation with. But I think of you. And I thank you. I thank you a thousand times over.

When I visited The Wall, I overheard two of you talking there. Your wives had walked away, to leave you alone. I started to walk away too. But I felt something so strongly, I had to approach you. I apologized for interrupting. You looked startled. But I had to do this. I asked, if I could shake your hands. And I did. And I said thank you.

Thank you again. And accept my invitation. You just hail a cab at Michigan Avenue. Tell him you want to go to the corner of 18th and Indiana.

Judy McKee lives in the Chicago area.

The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum is at 1801 South Indiana Avenue, Chicago. Phone ahead (312.326.0270) for current hours, prices, etc.

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