KatyWhoWaited on HubPages

Dear Reader,

Hi, and thank you for stopping by!

Although I have several hubs on miscellaneous topics published under "Katywhowaited", most of the hubs I have posted and continue to post are part of the "Love Letters from Vietnam" series. In those "episodes" from 40 years ago,  I'm "Kate," the recipient of "Tim's" letters from Basic Training, AIT, and Vietnam. When I first started this series of Hubs, I called it  "Tim and Kate Plus Fate" but have since changed the title to reflect the content more accurately.

In the first Hubs of the Vietnam letter series, you'll be able to read Tim's letters to me and my letters to him.  As the "episodes" progress, however,  only Tim's letters from Quang Tri (and a few of letters of mine to Tim marked "return to sender") are left - the letters I sent to Tim in Vietnam never made it back home.  

The names of all of the friends and family and places mentioned in these letters have been changed for reasons even I'm not sure of!  

Besides the military conflict that was dispiriting our nation in the 60's, was an inner conflict that raged silently inside of me during this time. To have the person I loved enlist in a war I opposed was an ongoing angst.  In addition, the uncertainty of whether our relationship would grow during this long separation was an underlying concern for both of us,  Most importantly,  the question of whether Tim would come home "safe and sound" from Vietnam was a wrenching worry beyond description. 

I'll let the outcome of Tim's fate and the fate of the relationship unfold for you as it unfolded for us through the letters we wrote. I hope you'll find them interesting and discover, in reading them,  some meaning for your own life, for your own political views, and your own relationship. (Please note: I have created a Hub which will have a running link to the letters, so that the reader can simply go to the index and click rather than trying to hunt for the next letter in the series.)

By today's standards, the letters are as naive and sappy  as we were, and at times I wonder why I'm really publishing them.  I am proud that my views of love and religion have since grown and changed. ( As Muhammed Ali has said, "A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.").  But while some of my views have changed, there is one that did not: my view that the Vietnam Conflict was a misguided war whose objectives could have been obtained sucessfully without the loss of so many if only we had had the courage to step out of the military complex paradigm of the Eisenhower administration.  And despite the sacrifices that both Tim and I made as two young Americans, that view has not changed since 1969, and that fact also makes me proud.

These letters are not great literary works by any means; they don't reveal much about our inner feelings about the war, especially mine. And since Tim was stationed on a military base and didn't fight in the jungles, there is not the poignant insight into combat that books like The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien offer.   

However, I saved the letters; through forty years of moving around the country to the states of Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and California - I saved them. They are dear to me and it just seemed to me that they just shouldn't be left in a shoebox any longer!

 Again thank you for stopping by whether it's for the letters or for the miscellaneous hubs.

Peace,

"Kate"