2020

My brother-in-law is a veteran of the Vietnam War. Through him, I met Jim, a fellow veteran, at a Thanksgiving gathering for a local veterans’ group in Concord, California. Jim has always been an art enthusiast, and he even took many personal photographs of the war during combat. He was also incredibly proud that a photograph of him from the war is in the permanent collection in the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. After surviving the war, one of the first things Jim did was attend the Art Institute in San Francisco. He has also created many wood carving statues of his comrades who either lost their lives or were injured during the war.