Vietnam Veterans Fading Away
Cleveland.com: Vietnam generation begins to fade as death rate rises for war's veterans
Forty years ago, Ron Willoughby was death with a telescopic sight as a Marine sniper in Vietnam.
Today, mortality has Willoughby and other Vietnam veterans in its crosshairs.
The generation of an estimated 8 million military service members of the Vietnam era, 1964-1975, is fading.
The number of Vietnam veteran deaths has almost doubled since 2001 and, according Department of Veterans Affairs' projections, will hit 103,890 this year -- approaching 300 a day. That's more than five times the average daily number of U.S. combat deaths during the peak casualty year of the war in 1968.
Willoughby, now 63 and a year older than the national average age of Vietnam vets, said three members of his old unit have died in the past five years, two from cancer and one from a heart attack.
That's why the North Olmsted veteran said the unit reunions have been changed from once every two years to annual affairs.
Time is catching up, and they know it.
Jim Quisenberry, a member of the local Joint Veterans Honor Guard, said he has been serving at an increasing number of funerals for fellow Vietnam vets in recent years.
"It's scary," said Quisenberry, 61, of Lakewood. "It seems like the 'Nam guys aren't going to be around a long time, not like their fathers."
John Wilson, a professor of psychology at Cleveland State University, said one difference between Vietnam vets and those who served during World War II is that the older vets had closure -- a recognized victory -- for their conflict. The World War II vets came home heroes and were treated as such, he noted.
But "for the Vietnam vet, there was never an end point, psychologically," Wilson said. So the impact of war continued long after the shooting stopped.
