Cliff Buchan
News Editor

There is no better place to start than at home, Diane Finnemann believes.

That’s why the Forest Lake woman has asked the Forest Lake City Council to consider a proclamation declaring March 29 as Vietnam Veterans Day.

It’s an effort that Finnemann hopes will gain statewide momentum.

Finnemann approached the city council about the proclamation earlier this month and the matter will go back to the council for additional consideration on Monday, July 23.

If the city council is in agreement, and Finnemann believes they will be, she will carry the proclamation idea to the Minnesota State Legislature for consideration next winter.

Mayor Stev Stegner has pledged his support to the proclamation, Finnemann said last week.

With its March 29 date in 2008, the Vietnam Veterans Day is in conjunction with the 35th anniversary of the last 2500 troops being withdrawn from South Vietnam.

That move brought an end to the longest war in the history of the United States.

The military involvement in Southeast Asia was an 11-year engagement for American troops.

The proclamation will call attention and pay tribute to the 58,195 U.S. troops killed in the war and the 1072 Minnesota residents who lost their lives in Vietnam.

Finnemann said this week she plans to contact State Sen. Ray Vandeveer and State Rep. Bob Dettmer, both of Forest Lake, and urge them to get behind the proclamation idea at the state level.

For Finnemann, it is a personal war that claimed the life of a brother, Wallace “Skip” Schmidt.

He survived the combat of Vietnam but returned home with what later was learned to be post traumatic stress disorder. He took his life in the early 1970s as a result of PTSD.

If Minnesota lawmakers come on aboard with a statewide observance, the state would join Tennessee as the second state to declare a Vietnam Veterans Day on March 29.

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