In a black-and-white photograph, a young man wears a steel pot helmet with looped string tucked into a band wrapped around the shell. He gazes past the camera with a grin on his face.
The year is 1966. The young man is Cpl. Joe Beaver Jr., United States Marine Corps. He is about 19 or 20 years old and fighting a war in Vietnam.
The photograph was taken by Bob Schieffer, then a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. One of the first Texan journalists to do boots-on-the-ground reporting in Vietnam, Schieffer’s mission was to find, interview and photograph locals fighting in the war.
That picture, along with other photos, paintings and letters, is on display at University of Texas at Arlington Special Collections in an exhibition of Schieffer’s work titled “Our Man in Viet Nam.”
The exhibit has a special significance to the community and to a journalist who went on to have a storied career that included anchoring a national television news show and moderating presidential debates.
“I covered a lot of stories, but I never felt the way I did — I never got the response that I got — when I would ask kids, ‘Hi. I’m Bob Schieffer from the Star-Telegram, and your mother asked me to find out how you’re doing.’” Schieffer said at an opening dinner Saturday night. “I remember kids, they would absolutely break into sobbing tears.”
The collection began when Schieffer reached out to university archivist Sarah Pezzoni.
He wanted to know if the UTA library, which holds the Star-Telegram’s entire photo collection, had the negatives of the photographs he took in Vietnam.
The library didn’t, but the two started talking. Schieffer ended up donating letters, notebooks, prints and negatives he’d held on to all those years.
“From there, Bob proposed an exhibit of his photographs, naturally, and at this point, I was kind of pinching myself on a regular basis,” Pezzoni said. “I could not have been more excited by this idea.”
Schieffer proposed that he paint portraits of a few of the men as a gift to their families. Those paintings are included in the exhibit, hung side by side with the men’s photographs.
In the center of the wall, a painting by Schieffer uses brushstrokes of black, white and shades of gray to form an oil paint facsimile of the photo he took of Beaver.
During the planning of the exhibition, Pezzoni reached out to Beaver’s wife, Dee, and shared some of the photographs, including the one of a grinning young man with string in his helmet.
“Is this you?” Dee asked him.
It was. Beaver had never seen the photograph before.
Beaver, who was wounded three times in Vietnam, joined his family during Saturday night’s events. He shared a detail from nearly 60 years earlier.
He recalled that the string tucked into his helmet was used to rig booby traps from hand grenades.
“I hadn’t ever noticed it, until tonight,” Beaver said. “It brings back memories.”
For those too young to remember Vietnam or who learned about it through textbooks and films, the exhibit offers a more personal look into history and the people who lived it, said John Wang, dean of UTA Libraries.
Instead of focusing on politics or a national perspective, it focuses on individuals, he said.
“This is not about dogma,” Wang told attendees. “It is about humanity.”
Schieffer hopes visitors to the exhibit will understand the sacrifice made by those portrayed. Knowing them changed him and made him proud to know them, he said.
His time in Vietnam was also the beginning of a philosophy he would carry with him in how he approached journalism, and one he insisted be reflected in the exhibit.
It’s not about him — it’s about them.
If you go
What: “Our Man in Viet Nam” exhibit
When: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday through April 4
Location: University of Texas at Arlington Special Collections, Central Library, 6th floor
Admission: Free. Parking at the nearest garage, the Maverick Parking Garage, is $4 per hour.
McKinnon Rice is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at mckinnon.rice@fortworthreport.org.
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Great Job McKinnon Rice & the Team @ Fort Worth Report for sharing this story.
