The honor of another guest veteran reader

Steve Orr in a TV interview about Vietnam

The Vietnam War was a different experience for every soldier, sailor and pilot who fought in it. The chance to share more than one man's story is part of the pleasure in having a veteran participate in my public readings of "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War." 

Case in point: Steve Orr, who will read a passage from the book at this Saturday's reading in Clarkston, Washington (see the events page for details). 

Steve was at the same bookstore, And BOOKS, Too!, in 2008 for an event focused on "A Patch of Ground: Khe Sanh Remembered."  Written by his friend Michael Archer, it recounts Steve and Michael's experience in Vietnam, which was even more intense than Grady's. They fought in the Battle of Khe Sanh,  in which 6,000 U.S. Marines were surrounded by 40,000 North Vietnamese, under continuous fire for 77 days. 

Steve is the police chief in Lewiston, Idaho. My first "guest veterans" was my former journalism colleague Dan Webster, a Navy veteran who read in Spokane at Auntie's Bookstore. Dan, a movie critic, said his experience in Vietnam was more like "Apocolypse Now" and Grady's was more like "Platoon."  D'Wayne Hodgins, a retired University of Idaho writer and instructor, read with me at Book People of Moscow. Like Grady, he served in the Army. D'Wayne poured emotion into his presentation, clearly still feeling his personal losses from the war.

I couldn't be more grateful and moved by the willingness of these men to share their own stories and join me in honoring Grady's.

---