STUDENTS RESPOND TO VIETNAM VET WHO SAYS SERVICEMEN JUST WANTED\THANKS.Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY Dennis McCarthy may refer to:
He stayed up until 3 a.m. Friday, working and reworking the 45 minute speech he would be giving later in the day to three humanities classes at Chatsworth High School. Miguel Oropeza had a lot of years and memories to catch up on, and he wanted to get it right. He had to get it right. "Man, I'm nervous," he said, pacing the school's hallways minutes before the auditorium auditorium Portion of a theater or hall where an audience sits, as distinct from the stage. The auditorium originated in the theaters of ancient Greece, as a semicircular seating area cut into a hillside. began to fill up with students more interested in getting the weekend started than sitting through another lecture. Miguel had never stood up in front of a large group and talked before. He was a grocer, not a public speaker. He wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for that phone call a few weeks ago from his nephew, Robert Castillo, a student at Chatsworth. His class assignment was to talk to a Vietnam vet, Robert said. Would his uncle mind? Of course not, Miguel said, trying to turn the clock back 30 years in a few minutes over the phone. It was impossible. "What if I prepared something and talked to the whole class?" Miguel asked his nephew, surprised by his own boldness. And now, here he was after a week of sleepless sleep·less adj. 1. a. Marked by a lack of sleep: a sleepless night. b. Unable to sleep. 2. nights writing and rewriting re·write v. re·wrote , re·writ·ten , re·writ·ing, re·writes v.tr. 1. To write again, especially in a different or improved form; revise. 2. feelings 30 years old - standing nervously in front of three classes, more than 100 high school students - opening his mouth and hoping the words would come out right. "I'm just a man who joined the Army 30 years ago," Miguel Oropeza began. He was a graduate of the infamous in·fa·mous adj. 1. Having an exceedingly bad reputation; notorious. 2. Causing or deserving infamy; heinous: an infamous deed. 3. Law a. class of '65 - a Pacoima kid getting his high school diploma A high school diploma is a diploma awarded for the completion of high school. In the United States and Canada, it is considered the minimum education required for government jobs and higher education. An equivalent is the GED. from Sylmar High before moving on to Valley College to study a little, and party a lot. Miguel was 19, and in the first six months of 1966, he would go from a frat house to Vietnam. Go from being a kid who hadn't seen much of life to a man who saw too much. "It was my second day out in the field with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, and I was reading the 'Stars & Stripes,' an Army newspaper," Miguel's telling the kids. "That's when I found out a friend from the neighborhood had been killed in action. Leonard Burris. We'd grown up together, played football in the street. I had known him my whole life, and now he was dead. I was numb numb (num) anesthetic (1). numb adj. 1. Being unable or only partially able to feel sensation or pain; deadened or anesthetized. 2. . "That was my introduction into the reality of war - the moment I realized that Vietnam was the real thing, that I might not come home alive." Ten rows back, half a dozen boys hunkered low in their seats whispering and passing sticks of gum to each other slowly began to sit up a little straighter. They're not talking anymore. The focus of their attention is now on the man standing up there in front of the class. A man who was just about the age they are now when Uncle Sam Uncle Sam, name used to designate the U.S. government. The term arose in the War of 1812 and seems at first to have been used derisively by those opposed to the war. Possibly it was an expansion of the letters "U.S. plucked pluck v. plucked, pluck·ing, plucks v.tr. 1. To remove or detach by grasping and pulling abruptly with the fingers; pick: pluck a flower; pluck feathers from a chicken. him from his family and friends, sending him to war along with hundreds of thousands of other young men like him. Boys who had been sitting in high school classrooms like this only a few years earlier. "My mother always wrote me in Espanol, and I answered her in Espanol," Miguel continues, weaving weaving, the art of forming a fabric by interlacing at right angles two or more sets of yarn or other material. It is one of the most ancient fundamental arts, as indicated by archaeological evidence. through his life in Vietnam. "She saved every one of those letters I wrote her. I've never read them. "Thirty years later, I'm still not ready to read them." His name was Warren Schrobkgen, and he was Miguel's best friend in Vietnam - a guy who had also grown up in Pacoima only blocks from Miguel's house, but their paths had never crossed - until they went to war. "I got a letter from him in the field one night saying that his company was catching hell out there, but he'd be coming back in the next day," Miguel says, his strong voice growing softer with every word. Dozens of students leaned forward in their seats, trying to hear him. "I waited for him to come off the helicopters that were landing at our base camp the next day, but Warren wasn't on any of them. His company had been overrun 1. overrun - A frequent consequence of data arriving faster than it can be consumed, especially in serial line communications. For example, at 9600 baud there is almost exactly one character per millisecond, so if a silo can hold only two characters and the machine takes by a battalion of Viet Cong Viet Cong (vēĕt` kông), officially Viet Nam Cong San [Vietnamese Communists], People's Liberation Armed Forces in South Vietnam. four hours after he wrote me that letter. "I was coming home alive, and Warren was dead," Miguel said, his voice cracking Voice Crack was a Swiss electronic free improvisation group. Formed in the late 1972 by Andy Guhl and Norbert Möslang, Voice Crack were initially a free jazz duo. They began incorporating pre-recorded tape effects and live sound processing, and by 1983 they eliminated any . They were boys when they left, men when they returned - if they returned. They didn't want to go, didn't want to fight, didn't want to kill, but they had to because that's what war is all about. Fighting. He hoped these kids would understand that, Miguel said. Hoped that they appreciated how fortunate they were to be sitting here now without a war to fight - with a clear path to opportunity and education, if only they would take it. Hoped that the next time they meet a Vietnam vet they'll do something too many people in this country failed to do. Say thank you. "That's all we ever wanted," Miguel Oropeza says, as 100 students rise and applaud him. He smiles. He got it right. CAPTION(S): PHOTO Photo Miguel Oropeza wipes away tears while recalling the loss of a friend in Vietnam. David Sprague/Daily News |
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