Brian McKinsey's catharsis began five years ago when his mother gave him a box of letters he sent her when he served in Vietnam.
He had not spoken about his experience until he began reading the letters. McKinsey enlisted in the Marines in 1969 and served a year as a radio operator in Vietnam.
"It invited me to go back and face my past," McKinsey said.
Now excerpts of those letters are part of the Vietnam Symposium exhibit on display at the University.
McKinsey put together the exhibit and coordinated the Voices and Visions portion, which includes letters from Vietnam veterans.
Letters combatants write home to loved ones are possibly the only true testimony of war, he said.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
"Letters penned home are first-hand accounts of the day-in, day-out life of a combatant and with that, you see all the emotions - fear, bravado, loneliness, pain," he said. "Letters from any war written home are unlike what history will write later and what the media will write later."
In turn, he said things they received from home held incredible meaning as well.
"If anything could pick you up, it was letters from home and care packages," he said.
Each of his fellow Marines would share letters and care packages, and everyone knew each other's family from letters, he said. McKinsey called the atmosphere communal.
"They would be like, 'McKinsey got another care package. Get over here. His mom makes the best chocolate chip cookies,'" he said.
All would share the pain inflicted by Dear John letters, he said.
Manny Garcia, author of An Accidental Soldier, spoke about his book at the UNM Bookstore on Oct. 16 as part of the symposium. He said getting letters from friends and family was his only connection to the real world.
"Anything from home was very important," he said. "It was a connection to the sane world - the real world. It was a feeling you hadn't been forgotten."
McKinsey said for many veterans, including himself, they didn't talk about their experience when returning from the war, especially because they weren't received well by their country.
"I felt like a stranger in a strange land, like America wasn't my home," he said.
Garcia said he felt like a fugitive coming home.
"There were no parades, no cheering, no girls to kiss," he said. "It was not how soldiers came home in movies."
Garcia said he wasn't able to express his experiences until he was healed from them.
Garcia enlisted to be a parachutist, but served three years as a paratrooper.
He said the experience was negative, but one that shaped him for the rest of his life.
"It made me who I am," he said. "It became a point of reference for the rest of my life."
For years, McKinsey said he wondered why so many jobs seemed meaningless.
"I realized for me and my buddies, when I was 21, I had the most important job I'd ever have," he said. "It was trying to keep each other alive. There's nothing more important in life."
He said he hopes the exhibit will get the public and veterans talking, leading to mutual understanding and healing.
June 1970
"Happiness is 63 days left in Vietnam! We're still out on the op in the Que Sons ... now on Nui Da Beo a little further south and overlooking LZ Ross. Man, now that I'm short and constantly thinking of coming home ... I have all kinds of weird dreams. What a hassle when I wake up in the morning and there I am in the bush."
December 1969
"... so much for Christmas. I'm now out in the bush set in somewhere on top of Hill 848. Cold, cloudy and rainy ... only a few hundred meters of visibility due to the low ceiling ... no resupply or medevacs flown for the last five days. The weather broke on the 20th ... most importantly the supplies got out and the medevacs got into the rear."
