Mary Jo Schnepf is on a mission, to make sure veterans of the Vietnam War receive a thank you and a welcome home they may not have gotten since returning home so many decades ago. She is a member of Cape Fear Blue Star Mothers, an organization that supports active- duty service members, veterans, and Gold Star families, and is a Vietnam War Commemorative Partner for the 50th Anniversary of the end of the war. We asked her to tell us about the event, and how it came to be.

“We’re inviting anyone who served any time from Nov. 1, 1955, to May 15, 1975, regardless of location, to come to the BEMC meeting room in Supply on Nov. 7 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It’s a drop in event, where we’ll present them individually with a specially designed Vietnam veteran lapel pin, and a heartfelt thank you. We’ll have refreshments, and organizations that support veterans, including Shallotte American Legion, Oak Island Elks Lodge, Lower Cape Fear Lifecare, and Richard H. Stewart, Jr., American Legion Post 543, will be there. Spouses and families of deceased or homebound veterans are invited to receive the pin and thank you as well.

I got our organization registered to distribute the pins when I learned about them at a Wreaths Across America mobile education exhibit, which is also a welcome home station for Vietnam era vets, in May 2023. Of the 76 Vietnam era veterans that visited, only one knew about the pin. I knew we had a problem. We presented 75 pins that week, and 125 more in the weeks that followed. Since then, we’ve given out 4,000 in just our area, and sent another 1,500 out of state by request.

Every time I present a pin, the reaction is that somebody actually cares. It’s very powerful, you can see it in their eyes. One man said ‘This is the nicest thing that’s happened to me all week. No, let me correct that, this is the nicest thing that’s happened to me since I served in Vietnam.’ That’s the impact these pins have. One of the ambassadors of the program who watched a presentation said to me, ‘you just helped him heal’.

We say, ‘from a grateful nation’, because in many ways we were an ungrateful nation. We couldn’t separate the warrior from the war. They were so young and gave so much.”