LAUREL - On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, citizens and veterans came out to Yellowstone National Cemetery in Laurel to honor Vietnam veterans.
It's the final time for a special ceremony with the special pins for those veterans who have served.
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“Welcome home, thank you for your service,” Stephen McCollum, cemetery manager, said to veterans while giving them lapel pins.
From one Vietnam vet to another, U.S. Air Force vet McCollum gave a special lapel pin to U.S. Army vet Jerry Grimes.
“This has been done differently because they were treated differently when they came home,” McCollum said. “They weren't treated as heroes.”
Fifty years after the war ended, Grimes thinks about how he was able to get his friend's name on the Vietnam Memorial.
“I wrote people and sent into Washington, D.C., and soon enough they got (him) back on the wall because he was killed the day after he came back,” Grimes said.
Many Vietnam vets were forgotten when they returned home.
U.S. Marine Corps vet Tom Lowry was the keynote speaker for this ceremony and talked about the animosity he felt when he landed in California before receiving a stranger's kindness at the Billings airport.
“He says, I'll give you a ride,” Lowry said about a man he met in the 1970s. “We'll share the taxi and he says, 'Welcome home'. I would love to know who that guy was. He doesn't know how much that meant to me. Just to say welcome home.”
He says that man also paid for the cab.
Lowry talked about how some still deal with the emotions associated with the fighting and how they were treated after the war.
“The folks that are were wounded and mentally having problems with handling it are still walking around with the scars of the war,” said Lowry.
But veterans say they try to stay positive.
"It means a great deal," McCollum said. “We're all brothers and sisters who served and fought at the same time."
“And as stated in the Veteran of Foreign Wars closing prayer, grant that in life's battles we may be strong and brave,” Jim Brown, American Legion Post 17, said during a prayer.
And they have a message for other veterans.
“So all the rest of you vets that are out there, thank you for your service,” Lowry said.
