Tom Geerdes and Hannah Campbell

Tom Geerdes and Hannah Campbell

Interview transcript

HC: What was the biggest change about you from Vietnam?

TG: I was not really worried anymore about being socially acceptable. From the day I got out I didn’t shave or cut my hair for probably a year, and people that I knew from before I left, even some of my cousins, didn’t think too much of me after I got back. So, I took a long bicycle trip.

HC: Went off and got by yourself.

TG: Yea, I rode straight North up through Minnesota, cut across and rode all the way to the West coast. Took me about six weeks.

HC: Do you think that you sorta healed from Vietnam on that trip?

TG: It helped a lot but ah, really, I actually didn’t heal from Vietnam until quite a number of years later. I had a Janitorial business and I was doing floors at Sears, and ah, they had a Vietnam movie on there and something just broke, and I cried, I sobbed like a baby for a couple of hours while I finished those floors. Just sobbed like a baby. Cause it was several good friends I lost. It was just too much devastation that I saw over there. Just too much hurt, and I really didn’t really plan on coming back.

HC: I’m glad you came back.

TG: Yea, me too. Me too.