It wasn't until 2000, while his father was dying, that retired U.S. Army Capt. James McCormick finally learned about the man's wartime experiences more than 30 years prior, during one of the most controversial military interventions in U.S. history - the Vietnam War.
"But as my father lay there and told me about his time in Vietnam, it occurred to me that I had lived and known one of the greatest men, and I never really knew him," McCormick said. "It pains my heart, and it did as a child, because my father stayed in the Army. So I can remember going places with him, and him telling me 'don't tell anyone I'm in the Army, son.' That was hard for me as a kid, to understand why."
McCormick, himself a combat veteran who served in both Operation Desert Storm and the Iraq War, said while his returns home were celebrated, men and women like his father came back to the U.S. to a very different mindset - one that stuck with his dad and made him reluctant to talk about his service openly.
McCormick talked about his father's service in Vietnam on Wednesday outside the state Capitol, where dozens of Vietnam veterans gathered for the state's fifth annual Vietnam Veterans Recognition Day.
"We received a tremendous welcome home, from Desert Storm and Iraq, but I know good and well that each one of you here today made that possible," he said. "You said, 'No more. We're not going to have these young men and women coming back and having to face what we faced in San Francisco and Oakland and everywhere else.'"
More than 36,000 West Virginians served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, and 732 died in combat, making West Virginia the state with the highest soldier death rate in the war, according to the West Virginia Vietnam Veterans Association. Nearly two-thirds of those who fought in the war are deceased today, according to the American Vietnam Veterans Association, and many still suffer medical issues as a result of their service.
A bill currently before the U.S. Congress would designate a facility to test chemicals used in warfare - chemicals like Agent Orange, the herbicide used by the U.S. military to defoliate Vietnamese farmland during the war and linked to multiple health concerns in a 1979 class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of 2.4 million Vietnam vets.
For Cecil Roberts, a Vietnam veteran and international president of the United Mine Workers of America, the attitudes surrounding Vietnam veterans after the war and the struggles they continue to face today make it important for civilian organizations like the UMWA and others to recognize the need for greater veteran outreach.
"As we say in our union, if you were the first over there, you ought to be first in line for a job when you come back," Roberts said. "You ought to be the first in line for training when you come back here; you ought to be the first in line for health care when you come back here, and you ought to be first in line to own your own home when you come back here."
Roberts still remembers his own homecoming, watching through the window on May 3, 1968, as the plane he was a passenger on circled the hills in his home state.
"I was overcome that I saw West Virginia again ... the truth is, most of us thought from time to time that we would never see West Virginia again," he said. "There isn't a person here that had someone close to them die in Vietnam who can't tell me the date and time it happened, the month, the hour, the minute, and where you were. Time has a special meaning for all of us who served in Vietnam."
Reach Lydia Nuzum at lydia.nuzum@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5189 or follow @lydianuzum on Twitter.