Jodie L. Talley

My name is Jodie L. Talley, historian and documentary filmmaker in the History Department of Georgia State University, and my mother was the executive producer of Welcome Home and founder of Welcome Home Inc. It took over ten years after the Vietnam war for the events to take place, over ten years for me to grow up and research/write a succinct history of the events, and then a few more years for this site to go up. I regret all the lost time. I was finally prompted into creating a book and website after some other well-meaning folks decided to establish a Welcome Home Day group and produce welcome home events that they claim are the first ever to welcome Vietnam vets home. I am thus saddened first and foremost that Welcome Home has remained unknown to some, and also that these other producers, who are organizing events in Branson, MO, would both make their claims and also charge vets a great deal of money to attend their own tribute. (Vets received free tickets to the real Welcome Home just for showing their discharge papers). In 1999 I completed an award-winning honors thesis for the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) History Department on the making of Welcome Home, and I have now turned that into this book. As it so happened, a great many culturally prominent Baby Boomers—celebrity actors, bands and musicians, politicians, writers, activists, sports heroes, and others—came together in a remarkable crystallized effort to make the shows a phenomenal success both as an entertainment mega-event and as a cathartic and historical generational experience, so the story is important and also fascinating. Beyond the Wall includes interview excerpts with Peter Fonda and Jon Voight, HBO president Chris Albrecht, Senator Chuck Hagel, and others. The story opens with background on both my mother (erstwhile hippie college girl who protested against the Vietnam war) and Allman Brothers bassist Lamar Williams (African-American, Mississippi-born Vietnam vet and family friend who died tragically of Agent Orange-induced cancer). Lamar’s untimely death ignited the fire in my mother’s heart to make the Welcome Home events happen, and this book is dedicated to them both. I approach my subject matter with the mindset of a documentary filmmaker, allowing the “characters” to present themselves as much as possible. At every opportunity I include direct quotes and excerpts from era histories, interviews, speeches, poetry, song lyrics, and other such material, which permits the Boomers to speak for themselves and affords the work as much panache and depth as possible for a relatively succinct work. Due to time and content constraints at UCLA I had to limit the number of personal stories in Beyond the Wall; however, each story adds to a literary mosaic that captures the experience of the Baby Boom generation and the Vietnam era in particular. Chapter by chapter, the times and the generation come to life, showing Boomers in every light—humorous, tragic, triumphant, searching, revolutionary, but always unique and always, always part of their own greater whole. Therefore, this work is not only important for remembering the events (especially for the vets who did not attend the shows or see them on TV), but also potentially useful for younger generations to understand the Boomer generation and the Vietnam conflict. I need to conduct more research and oral histories and find a way to at least transcribe the content of the events so I can to post them to the home website. (The original event tapes are not easy to get to.) This process will take time and effort (and I have been immersed in another book/documentary project), but I am committed to keeping the sites and history alive as a web memorial/tribute to remember the Welcome Home events and the soldiers they honored. Your support is greatly appreciated to help keep the work going. Finally, if you have personal memories of Welcome Home or even pictures to share for the home website, these would be greatly appreciated, and all feedback most welcome.