New President of Vietnam Veterans--She’s Been There

WASHINGTON —  Mary Stout joined the Army despite her father’s entreaties that the military was no place for his youngest child and only daughter. She was promptly whisked away from Columbus, Ohio, and plunked down in Ft. Ord, Calif., where she fell in love with a Vietnam-bound soldier. Immediately, she also volunteered to go.

“I thought if we were going to be married, I ought to know what Vietnam was about,” Stout, now 43, explained.

The former Army Nurse Corps lieutenant harbors no regret or resentment for her year in An Khe and Chu Lai, but today she feels the Vietnam War was “a big mistake.”

“We should never have gotten involved,” she said evenly.

The sentiment is not that unusual, but Stout, despite her own protestations, is. She is the incoming--and first female--president of the Vietnam Veterans of America, a 30,000-member organization that is holding its third national convention here this week.

Mary and Carl Stout were lucky in Vietnam. Both made it back safely, married in 1967, and, by managing to have twins born a year and a day after their first child, had three daughters in little more than a year.

Carl Stout stayed in the military (from which he recently retired), moving his family so often that Mary Stout had to attend three colleges to finish her undergraduate degree in social welfare. She busied herself with volunteer projects, taught health classes in military clinics, headed a community child care center and taught skiing in Army winter survival courses.

At first, while the war in Vietnam still raged, Stout said she found it impossible to watch television news. “It hurt too much,” she said in an interview. “I needed to cut myself off.”

And “for a long time” after she got back, Stout defended America’s involvement there. “It had to be right for us to be there because I was there and my husband was there,” she reasoned.

But gradually she found her view changing. She began reading about Vietnam, especially about its history and politics. Her position today--that “we had all those wonderful military and diplomatic minds, and they blew it”--in no way isolates her from the mainstream of the only federally chartered organization devoted exclusively to the issues of the veterans of this country’s longest war, Stout said.

“I think a lot of Vietnam veterans feel that way,” she said.

It Was a Matter of Survival

“When you were over there, it was survival,” Stout went on. “But what we are dealing with now is the aftermath of feelings, the sense that ‘I did the best I could as a military person, but I’m not sure I did the right thing as a human being.’ ”

In 1981, just two years after the veterans’ group was founded, Stout wandered into her local chapter office in Columbus, Ohio. Photographs taken in Vietnam hung on the walls, alongside provincial maps and other memorabilia. She felt instant camaraderie. “It was like coming home.”

Soon she was rising through the organization’s ranks. When she and her family moved to the Washington area four years ago, Stout signed on as membership director. Two years later she became the group’s national secretary.

Stout’s march to the presidency is by election Saturday, one of the major, if not pro forma, events at the convention, which continues through Sunday. Stout has only token opposition, and the convention, for the most part, is a sea of green “MARY” buttons.

Like many of her fellow Vietnam veterans, Stout prefers to talk about the present, not the past. In her case, this means a $48,000-a-year job running an organization that provides legal and other advisory services for its members as well as serving as the primary advocacy group for Vietnam veterans in Congress and state legislatures.

“Beyond that, part of what we do is inform the public of the ongoing problems of Vietnam veterans that have yet to be solved,” she said. She ticked them off: compensation for “problems associated with Agent Orange”; judicial review of claims to the Veterans Administration; continuation of veterans’ centers, many of which are in financial jeopardy; and “concern for homeless veterans.”

Homeless Veterans

Almost “one-third of the homeless are said to be veterans,” Stout said. “About half of those are Vietnam veterans.”

She insists that in running the Vietnam Veterans of America, her gender is irrelevant.

“We have a generation that has been involved in the women’s movement,” she said. “They came home from the war and found very changed women.”

So much so, she believes, that “the Vietnam Veterans of America is the only veterans’ organization where this could happen, where a woman could even hope to run for president. Members of our organization respect dedication and commitment and being a veteran, regardless of gender.”

Nevertheless, the group’s press material bills her as “an expert on women veterans’ issues.” And she is quick to note that one top priority for female Vietnam veterans is to add a sculpture of a female veteran on the site of the Vietnam Memorial.

As for her own three daughters, Stout said they have moved far too often even to dream of military careers. “But I would encourage a daughter of mine to go, even to a trouble spot, if she felt she needed to go,” Stout said. “I would worry about them, but I wouldn’t talk my children out of it.”

Indeed, for all her strong feelings about the error of Vietnam, Stout remains adamant about the need for a “strong military force.” And “if there is a need to intervene,” Stout said, “we should.”