Fort Worth has a debt to repay.
We still owe our Vietnam War veterans.
We ignored them when they came home. We even canceled a Veterans Day parade.
It was one of the most shameful moments in the history of a city built on defending America. After only a few scant onlookers turned out in 1980, the 1981 parade was canceled for “lack of interest.”
Make it up to the Vietnam veterans this week. Go to the parade down Main Street at 11 a.m. Nov. 11.
This year ends the 50-year tribute to our heroes from that war.
They were the patriots America forgot.
The 1980 parade had only drawn about 200 people to then-dank and depressing downtown Fort Worth on a chilly, damp Saturday.
Coy French, commander of a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post, described the crowd as “winos sitting on the curb and a few construction people.”
The TCU football team was playing a home game. But the Horned Frogs were 0-8 and only filled half their stadium.
More than 2,000 veterans and 45 units of bands and color guards paraded past two blocks of chain-link fences and barricades for what would become the Worthington Hotel and Sundance Square.
But the rest of Main Street was still lined with rundown hotels and seedy bars.
Parade chairman Doyle Willis Sr., a decorated World War II veteran and former Texas state senator, said sadly that people must be watching “televised football games” or out golfing or fishing.
“People used to come from all over the county,” he said.
“It just breaks my heart,” he said.
The parade crowds and patriotic spirit had been declining since World War II, and moreso in the 1970s. We still had conflicting emotions about Vietnam.
The embarrassment spurred Fort Worth to action. By the next February, a new parade was organized for 1982.
Gov. Mark White led the way, and a crowd of 5,000 lined Main Street.
The parades began in jubilation in 1919, when Fort Worth celebrated the one-year anniversary of the end of the first World War and welcomed back the heroes from U.S. Army Camp Bowie. Until 1954, the holiday was named Armistice Day.
The parade down Main Street Nov. 11 is dedicated to Vietnam veterans.
This year ends the 50-year tribute to those who served before 1975.
Fort Worth and Tarrant County are also raising money for a memorial to 237 heroes who died in Vietnam.
The Tarrant County Vietnam Memorial Foundation wants to dedicate the monument on a future Veterans Day. It would be at Veteran’s Memorial Park, 4120 Camp Bowie Blvd., near the old World War I headquarters for Army Camp Bowie.
The website is headlined, “Never to be Forgotten.”
Never again.