(NEXSTAR) – Bravery and suffering during and after the Vietnam War weren’t reserved for troops alone. In our series of specials and interviews marking the 50th Anniversary of the fall of Saigon, reporters from Nexstar – the parent company of this news station – are looking at the lasting impacts of the war that are still being felt today. For many, the scars left behind are still experienced through loved ones who returned from the war with physical and psychological trauma.
As part of our comprehensive coverage of the conflict, we sat down with surviving spouse Cindy Hollender-Stancliff to discuss how the war changed life for her and her husband John. John’s PTSD made it difficult to separate his war experience from life at home, for Cindy this was an extension of the persistent presence of the war in her life.
“I had been associated with the war all my life. I had lost a friend who was on our street to Vietnam. So it got me very interested. Plus our war was one that we saw on television every day,” Recalls Hollender-Stancliff.
In our interview, she discusses her husband’s battle with post-traumatic stress and alcohol, and in doing so offers an authentic portrait of the ripple effects the war left on American families. You can see that interview in the video player above.
In a second segment, Casey Byington, the daughter of a Marine veteran, discusses her father’s wounds suffered in 1969 and the life he created for himself after months of hospitalization, including the “mask” he wore in public to become a great father and live a normal life. She advocates for veterans to get help and to seek expertise in navigating the bureaucracy around PTSD treatment.
“I don’t know how veterans do it on their own. You have to have somebody for you, fighting for you, in your corner, understanding all of these loopholes,” says Byington, who has helped her father find help in recent years.
The interviews are meant to complement the cornerstones of our coverage, a pair of hour-long broadcast specials looking back at the war. The first – Vietnam: A Lost Generation – is available online and is airing on Nexstar stations nationwide. A second special on Operation Babylift, will dive deep into the chaotic effort to evacuate Vietnamese orphans at the end of the conflict. That special will be released in early May.