Results of the election of VVRP Directors by the membership, was announced at the annual meeting in July. In addition to the eight incumbants re-elected, two new candidates were elected for one year terms as Directors: Kevin Boylan and Mike Connolly.
Kevin’s US Army service in Vietnam was primarily in Darlac province in the Central Highlands in 1969-70. He was a member of VVRP Team XXVI and currently lives in Long Beach CA.
Mike hails from Chicago and served with the Army’s 1st Logistical Command, around Saigon and the Mekong Delta, in 1966-67. He’s been on 3 VVRP Teams, most recently Team XXVII.
New Directors
A new address for VVRP
Please send all correspondence and contributions to our new address:
Veterans Viet Nam Restoration Project
5 Indian Trail
Harrison, New York 10528
Elections
In August, for the first time in several years, there were no new candidates seeking election to the Board of Directors. In accordance with the VVRP By Laws, the incumbent eleven member Board was re-elected.
By a vote of the Board, the following officers were elected:
President – Wayne Purinton
Vice President – Ed Daniels
Secretary & Treasurer – John Stockton
Website Re-Launched
“…building the future, healing the past…”
After many years of reliable use the old website has been retired, and VVRP has launched an updated website to reflect our ongoing effort to serve veterans and the people of Viet Nam.
We’re pleased you are visiting the new site, at the same address: http://vvrp.org.
You’ll find much of the material that was on the former site, such as information on how to join a team, previous projects, site locator Google map, newsletter archives, how to donate, etc. There is also now this News Update blog where you can get current announcements and developments and post your own comments about specific blog entries.
VVRP would like to thank The Wood Agency of San Antonio, Texas for their generous support in designing and building this exceptional website for our organization. Our special thanks to Maren Senn, Sehoon Jung, Nathan Procknow, and Christina Medina for their enthusiastic and relentless effort on our behalf to complete this significant project.
We would be seriously remiss if we didn’t also thank our long time webmaster, Sheldon ‘Mac’ Dunn. More than a decade ago, Mac designed and built our first website and has voluntarily maintained it and entered all the content up until this past year. Without his assistance, this vital communication link to our community of veterans and devoted supporters would not have been possible.
As you explore our website please consider joining one of our teams or making a contribution so we can continue to assist veterans and the people of Viet Nam, by “…building the future, healing the past…”.
Team XXVI pitches in to build Ta Ri school
Team XXVI, with a total of 9 members, consisting of 6 veterans, one wife and two children of the veterans, arrived in Hanoi on 6 April. After 2 days of meetings and touring the capital city, the Team traveled to Hue for the weekend, and then made their way to the project site at Ta Ri on Monday. Over the next two weeks, the Team assisted the Vietnamese workers in building a new two room primary school, the first in this hamlet.
This small commune is a resettlement hamlet of ethnic Ka Tu, located in a remote mountainous region in southernmost Thua Tien Hue Province, west of the Bach Ma National Park. The Ka Tu had been living in the mountains along the Laotian border. The government has given them land and funds for housing to help them resettle in Ta Ri, located a couple of kilometers past the town of Khe Tre in Nam Dong District. It is across the river from Ta Rinh where team XXV built a similar school in 2010.
Funding for the project was provided by VVRP through the generous contributions of its donors, while the local Nam Dong School District provided the land, and utility connections.
Click photo to enlarge.
Breaking ground at Ta Ri
Early on the morning of 8 March and despite the still persistent rainy season, VVRP’s representative, Charlie Wishart, journeyed to the remote resettlement commune of Ta Ri, to participate in the 7:00 am groundbreaking ceremony for the community’s first primary school. In conjunction with the Nam Dong District government, VVRP is providing principal funding for construction of the facility consisting of 2 classrooms, a kitchen and lavatories.
In approximately 4 weeks the nine members comprising Team XXVI will arrive in this southernmost part of Thua Tiien Hue Province, tucked in the mountains west of Bach Ma National Park, to work together with the Vietnamese towards completing this important project for the children and families of Ta Ri.
Click photo to enlarge.










