Veterans share war experience with students

About two dozen students from Bloomington’s Batchelor Middle School and Bloomington High School South gathered Thursday as part of the IU Art Museum’s Meet the Artist program.\nThe students were introduced to Jeff Wolin, the Ruth N. Halls Professor of Photography in the Hope School of Fine Arts, and four Vietnam veterans featured in his gallery, “Inconvenient Stories: Portraits Vietnam War Veterans by Jeffery A. Wolin,” on display at the museum’s Special Exhibitions gallery. The exhibit will close on Sunday.\n“I started the project in 1992, but I put it down to focus on a project about Holocaust survivors,” Wolin said. “When the Iraq war broke out in 2003, it struck me as something very similar to Vietnam, and my response was to get involved in this again.” \nAfter a short introduction by Nan Brewer, the curator in charge of the exhibit, the students were given 15 minutes to walk amongst the 50 portraits of Vietnam veterans. Each display featured Wolin’s photograph of the veteran, a picture of them during the war and a blurb describing their experience, transcribed from interviews that Wolin conducted. \nCarson Day, a senior at Bloomington High School South, said the exhibit was enlightening.\n“I love the variance between soldiers and their home lives,” he said. “It puts a personal context into a military viewpoint.”\nDay is a former student of Stacey Jennings, who teaches advanced photography at Bloomington South. Jennings offered her students extra credit for attending the event, and about eight of them took the opportunity.\n“I am really interested in portraiture,” said Megan Davis, a senior currently enrolled in Jennings’ class at Bloomington South. “Getting the honest looks that these men have in their faces is really hard to do, and I imagine it was an uncomfortable experience at times.”\nAfter the viewing, the students reconvened in the middle of the gallery and were given the opportunity to ask the veterans questions.\n“When you see combat firsthand, it changes you; it affects your psyche. It may be short-term or long-term, but it’s a fact of war and it’s something to think about as we send young soldiers to Iraq,” Wolin said as he introduced Mark Skully, Phil Zook, “Blue” Miller and IU doctoral student and employee Tim Bagwell to the students.\n“I’m in this exhibit because this is who I am,” Miller said. “For about 15 years I hid from my time in Vietnam. Then I realized that the only way I would be able to make any sense of my experiences was to deal with it.”\nThe veterans also offered their thoughts on comparisons between the Iraq and Vietnam War.\n“We were the aggressor in Vietnam. I realized when I was on the ground that we were attacking a country that wasn’t attacking us,” Miller said. “I find Iraq very similar to Vietnam in that regard.” \nBagwell, who enlisted in the Marines when he was 17 years old, showed the students a picture of wounded Marines being evacuated from a camp in Vietnam.\n“I went to sleep looking at this picture every night when I was a 16-year-old,” Bagwell explained. “I saw honor and bravery in it. Now, as a 57-year-old who has experienced the pain and sacrifice of war, I see pain and horror.”\nOne man asked the veterans about government care after the war.\nSkully replied, “We don’t want highways named after us, that doesn’t do us any good. We want you to tell the government to raise taxes for money for mental help. Do it, and be glad you did it, because this country will be better for it.”\nFollowing the formal question-and-answer session, Wolin, the veterans and the students engaged in informal discussions over slices of pizza on the second floor of the Thomas E. Solley Atrium.\nMandy Hafner, another photography student and senior at Bloomington South, was surprised by what she heard from the veterans. \n“I hadn’t heard many war veterans speaking out against war before,” she said. “Usually they seem very honored and proud to have served after they get back, so that was different for me.”\nZook, who entered Vietnam in December 1969, is proud of the time he served, as well as the sacrifices that are being made today in regard to the Iraq war. \n“For a while, Vietnam vets were portrayed as psychos and misfits,” Zook said. “Then, with the movies that came out and the Kuwait War and now the Iraq War, people are recognizing our soldiers as heroes. It has been a strange cycle, and the cycle is not finished.”