North Iowa Area Community College will offer a program on the Vietnam War on Wednesday, March 21, at the VFW, 219 Main Avenue in Clear Lake from 3:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. The class is sponsored by NIACC’s Lifelong Learning Institute and the public is invited to attend free of charge, no registration is required. The class will be facilitated by Bennett Smith, history and political science instructor at NIACC.

The Vietnam War was a proxy war in the middle of the Cold War that cost 58,000 American lives and left countless more emotional, social and political scars that are still with us today. For those who served in Vietnam and survived the trauma of it came home to a country that had also been torn apart by the political divide over the War.

The objective of this presentation is to provide an overview of the Vietnam War, and then to hear directly from those who served about their experiences both in Vietnam and when they came home. Needless to say, this is a difficult topic for many people to address, and we hope to deal with the topic directly and with the respect that it deserves. More importantly we want to acknowledge the service and sacrifice of our Vietnam veterans and have the opportunity to thank them and pay our respects to them for their contributions to our country.

 Bennett Smith is an instructor in history and political science at North Iowa Area Community College. He is also an instructor in various lifelong learning programs including the NIACC Lifelong Learning Institute, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Iowa State University and the LIFE program at Rochester Community and Technical College in Rochester, Minnesota. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in speech communication and a Master of Arts degree in history from Iowa State University. He has also done graduate work at the University of Iowa in Social Foundations of Education.

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