The Vietnam War through a veteran’s eyes: Family travels to Texas Tech to view uncle’s memorabilia

LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – A wish that’s been decades in the making came true for a late Vietnam veteran Thursday, when his family came from all over the country to see the war through his eyes at Texas Tech.

It was one of D. L. Swafford’s final wishes, before he passed about 10 years ago, for his family to see his collection at The Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive on campus.

A Lubbock Marine veteran, Swafford donated a collection of his memorabilia in 1992, just a few years after the center opened its doors at Texas Tech. It included everything from photos, to letters back home and even a pair of shoes.

Swafford’s sister, Mary Ann Smith, says his body suffered from the effects of Agent Orange, among other chemicals used in the war.

“I found the one [letter] where his hands were blistered from putting the pins on the bombs, and that got on his hands and ate him up, and so he was in the hospital and there’s that letter over there telling it,” Smith said.

Smith says her brother called her the family’s keeper, writing a poem about his “sis.” Smith read a portion of it, which is included in a memoir Swafford wrote, “The Other Side of Me: Memoirs of a Vietnam Marine.”

“Well, what of the family? It seems we’ve drifted apart. It’s I who will love them and keep us together, she promised with all of her heart,” Smith said.

So, Smith felt it was her responsibility to get the family to Lubbock for this very special moment.

“All of this is why my brother D. L. wanted all of this done, and I just now got to make it come true,” Smith said.

Family came in from Oklahoma to Maryland to view “Unca D’s” collection.

“To realize that there is a place here at Texas Tech that’s actually taking the time to preserve it and to tell the stories, to digitalize all the information and to give it to the families personally, from the photos, to the letters, to the information that they have, it’s pretty cool that they’re doing that,” Swafford’s niece, Brooke Brooks said.

Keith Brooks, Brooks’ husband, is also a Marine veteran. He says while they are from different generations, he can relate to Swafford’s experiences.

“It’s definitely enlightening… We didn’t really write a lot of letters; we had email on my last deployment and stuff like that. But to be able to see it through his own, his lens and stuff, was pretty amazing,” Brooks said. “Because you can read stories about Vietnam all day, but that had the personal touch, so I’m learning a lot just from today.”

Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive Director Steve Maxner says personalized collections like this one are the lifeblood of the archive.

“You can go to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., in College Park, Maryland, to get the government’s perspective, the official military records. You could do the same thing going to archives in Vietnam, although there’s are far more restricted and less accessible,” Maxner said. “But in terms of telling that human story of war, that human experience, these are the kinds of collections that we have.”

Maxner encourages any veterans and surviving families to contact the center to share their collections or to view the ones they have, to help connect more families with real stories from the Vietnam war.

The center is also raising money to one day display its artifacts in a museum on the Texas Tech campus.

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