Just when I thought this collection was only mildly interesting....

Very sobering day of processing on Friday. I spent most of the morning finishing organizing the box of recital and concert programs and moved on to the not-quite-so-massive box of student enrollment forms.

To my surprise, I found a couple of enrollment forms and school absence-excuse notes for a couple of guys I used to work with on staff at the South Plains Council Boy Scout summer camps a few years ago.

That afternoon, though, I came across several letters from some of her former students who had been drafted and sent overseas during the Vietnam War. One letter to PFC. George McGhee was still closed and stamped "Returned to Sender - Verified Deceased". 

I was not sure if I was actually allowed to open sealed mail, so I asked my boss if it was ok. We decided to open it for the first time in 45 years. We also looked him up in his regiment's database. 

It wasn't long going through the rest of the considerable amount of correspondences Mrs. Record had stashed away before I cam upon the letter that the first was supposed to be a reply to.

PFC. George William McGhee was a member of the Lockney High School Band (but never specified what he played) before he was sent off to Vietnam. According to his last letter, he had 30 days until he would go on furlough. He had no idea why he was fighting, but had accepted that he had to do it for his country. The fact that he wasn't that much older than me really hit home. Though I won't get bogged down in my personal views on the Vietnam War in this post, I will say that the numerous letters from Mrs. Record's students that served just go show how much of an impact she had and how close she was to her students. I can only imagine the heartbreak she must've felt getting back a reply she had sent 9 days before PFC McGhee died. 

Vietnam seemed to be a recurring theme Friday. Along with these letters I found, my Vietnam Archive friend, Bobby, and I think he may have found an original run of a pretty well known picture from that time period:

We suspect that whoever donated the group of newspaper clippings was not intending for later readers to see that picture, since it was on the back of a much cleaner-cut map of the status of the Vietnam conflict at the time:

All in all, it was a very interesting day at work and I almost forgot that it was time to leave when 5pm rolled around, though I'm sure I'll encounter plenty of more interesting stories in the 4-5 years I'll likely be working here.