James Patterson is a former U.S. diplomat, life member of the American Foreign Service Association, and worked for the President Ford Committee at the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City.
The 2014 documentary “The Last Days of Vietnam” puts viewers amid the chaos of the final days of the South Vietnamese government and the fall of Saigon in 1975. News footage of North Vietnam’s assault on Saigon and the heroic response of U.S. military and embassy officials to evacuate South Vietnamese gives a realistic view of Black April, as the South Vietnamese refer to the collapse of their country.
In his 1979 autobiography, “A Time to Heal,” President Ford mentioned former President Woodrow Wilson.
My family has a long history of public service. Several family members, including my dad, served in the U.S Army during World War II and the Korean War.
After archivists at the Library of Congress thanked me for helping locate a lost video archive about the fall of Saigon, I wrote to several government officials requesting a review of all archives in the Veterans History Project. When I received no replies, I turned to Vietnam-era journalist Marvin Kalb.