This week’s Feel-Good Friday is an homage to our Vietnam veterans. I was honored to attend a “Vietnam War 50th Anniversary Commemorative Lapel Pin Ceremony” at the University of North Alabama in downtown Florence. U.S. Congressman Robert Aderholt (R-AL) is on the House of Representatives’ Veterans’ Affairs Committee, so he wanted to honor the Vietnam veterans in his district to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

April 30, 1975, marked the Fall of Saigon, and the inglorious end to the Vietnam War, where over 58,000 men and women never made it home. Sadly, America is still trying to rectify the terrible treatment this particular group of veterans received, and in some ways is still receiving. Because of the controversy over the war and its outcomes, on their return home, many Vietnam veterans suffered scorn and abuse, and did not receive the help and services they rightly deserved and desperately needed. In contrast to the World War II veterans returning from war–who received parades, accolades, and thanks–for the Vietnam veterans, there were no parades. The majority of the American people also shunned them, rather than embraced them, making their integration back into society difficult.