War In Vietnam

Proud to back those who wage war on terror I'm generally not the type of person who writes letters to the editor, but the article "Bank, war protests in D.C. go peacefully" (April 22) and accompanying photo compel me to comment. Next to the article about a peaceful protest in Washington was a photo of a young woman holding a sign reading: "Open your eyes, America. The `war on terrorism' is a war against the poor." I realize this was the work of an idealistic young person who means well.

Dearest Anne:For weeks even months I have been praying only that I be shown what I must do. This morning with no warning I was Shown as clearly as I was shown that Friday night in August, 1955, that you would be my wife. ... And like Abraham, I dare not go without my child. Know that I love thee but must act. ...NormanOn the last afternoon of his life Norman R. Morrison stopped somewhere between Baltimore and Washington to mail a letter to his wife.The evening rush hour was in full swing that chilly Tuesday on Nov. 2, 1965, when Norman, driving an old, borrowed Cadillac with his infant daughter behind him in a car crib and a gallon jug of kerosene beside him in a wicker picnic basket, paused briefly to post the handwritten, one-page letter.

Elliot Goldenthal's "Fire Water Paper" was commissioned for a performance last year to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War in April 1975. But when the composer sat down to write his Vietnam oratorio three years ago, his inspiration came not from his memory of the war's end but from a newspaper account of an event that had horrified him when he had read it as a 13-year-old in 1967.A young Vietnamese girl, Nhat Chi Mai, who was only a few years older than Goldenthal himself, had immolated herself as she held a picture of the Virgin Mary in one hand and one of the Buddhist goddess of mercy in the other.

WATERLOO, Iowa - The old woman sat in her dusty pink easy chair, watching the news and getting angry all over again. On her refrigerator were unflattering photos of the president, his mouth frozen in monkey-like frowns. "Say NO to war with Iraq," said the sign propped in front of her mobile home, its words large enough to read from the nearby convenience store parking lot. She had said "no" in as many ways as an 85-year-old woman can, which in her case meant attending rallies, giving speeches, calling congressmen, writing letters and traveling 100 miles from home to boo the president's limousine.

DIEN BIEN PHU, Vietnam -- Hoang Thi Mai, a sweet-faced mother of four, removes her rubber thongs and slips fully clothed into a large pond twice a week to do battle for a slippery, wiggling tilapia, a fish native to Africa with the delicate taste of flounder. It will be supper for her extended family of eight in a single-room home of mud and thatch in Vietnam's verdant northern mountains.More than a meal, the fat black fish also symbolizes the first step in a solution to one of the globe's most enduring problems.

Princeton, N.J. -- Edward Witten, who may be the smartest man in the world, seems slightly puzzled by the question put to him: How, his interrogator wants to know, would he describe a typical day in the life of a theoretical physicist? The question is followed by a long silence, one that threatens to turn uncomfortable. It fills his large, corner office at the Institute for Advanced Study, a theoretical research center that is home to a small group of the world's finest thinkers.Which is what Dr. Witten is doing right now: thinking before he answers the question.

SYLVIA STRAUS HESCHEL, 94 Pianist, wife of theologian Sylvia Straus Heschel, a pianist and the widow of the prominent theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel died Monday in New York, her daughter said. Rabbi Heschel taught Jewish ethics and mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where he combined scholarship with a strong moral passion that led him to march with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and to oppose the war in Vietnam. The Heschels' daughter, Susannah Heschel, said her parents met during World War II in Cincinnati, where her mother was studying the piano and her father, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Poland, was teaching at Hebrew Union College.

25 years agoA federal probe into organized crime in Anne Arundel has linked a series of tavern fires to attempts by gangsters to monopolize the licensing and supply of restaurants. -- The Sun, March 9, 1973.Three Naval Academy graduates who were prisoners of war in North Vietnam returned to Annapolis yesterday and received a roaring welcome home from 4,200 midshipmen. -- The Sun, March 27, 1973.Three predominantly black elementary schools -- Pumphrey, Annapolis and Parole -- will have to integrate further, according to the federal government.

Arthur Lord, 60, an Emmy Award-winning television news producer who as NBC's Saigon bureau chief risked his life to evacuate more than 100 Vietnamese in the last days of the war, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. A cause of death was not released. During his four-decade career, Mr. Lord covered the wars in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, the Apollo moon landings and the Iran hostage crisis. He won two Emmys and a Peabody. Mr. Lord, a New York native, began working for NBC in 1966 after three years in the Air Force as a public information officer.

President Clinton will make the commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy on May 25, the White House confirmed yesterday.The president will address the Class of '94 -- wracked by the largest cheating scandal in academy history -- at the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, said White House spokesman Ernie Gibble.Lt. Cmdr. Paul Weishaupt, a Naval Academy spokesman, said that while the academy has yet to receive official word of the president's attendance, word of the commencement address came during a Clinton news conference this week.