Tomorrow, Saturday, March 29, is the eighth anniversary of the Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017, signed into law during the first Trump Administration. The recent legislation designates each March 29 as National Vietnam War Veterans Day. To our now thousands of BVA members who served during the Vietnam War era, the National Board of Directors and National Headquarters once again offer a much belated but sincere “Welcome Home” and “Thank You for Your Service and Sacrifice.”
National Vietnam War Veterans Day joins six other military-centric annual observances codified in Title 4 of the United States Code, Section 6. They are Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, National Korean War Veterans Armistice Day, Navy Day, and Veterans Day.
March 29 was chosen to be observed in perpetuity because March 29, 1973, was the day that the United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, was disestablished and the day the last U.S. combat troops departed Vietnam. On and around this same day, Hanoi released the last of its acknowledged Prisoners of War.
The new National Veterans Memorial and Museum in Columbus, Ohio, will commemorate National Vietnam War Veterans Day with a “Welcome Home” Ceremony live from its Great Hall at 10:50am on Saturday. The ceremony will also be webcast virtually via YouTube. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The keynote speaker is U.S. Navy Veteran Kimberly M. Mitchell. Mitchell was a Vietnamese orphan who was adopted by a U.S. Airman and grew up in Wisconsin. She attended the U.S. Naval Academy, and after her military career, she became an advocate for veterans.
Mitchell served as the president of the Dixon Center for Military and Veterans Services and as the president and CEO of the Veterans Village of San Diego. She is a board member at the Infinite Hero Foundation and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. She is also a member of the VA Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Homeless Veterans.
Emily Compagno will serve as the Master of Ceremonies for the Welcome Home Ceremony. Compagno currently serves as a co-host of “Outnumbered” on Fox News and is the author of “Under His Wings,” which debuted as a New York Times Number 1 bestseller. Compagno holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Washington, where she was awarded the U.S. Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps’ Cadet of the Quarter Award. She earned her Juris Doctorate from the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she was president of the Federalist Society and articles editor of the Intellectual Property Law Bulletin.
