It has been 25 years since Chris Martin read the story that changed her life.
It was a remarkable story, Martin recalls, written by another young woman, about her last days in Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. Beautifully written and full of detail, the story described panicked refugees, anguished mothers, resigned soldiers, and a young reporter’s overwhelming sense of loss on leaving Vietnam.
Martin must have read it at least 20 times. She carried it in her knapsack until it got dog-eared and torn.
And she carried it in her memory, through her own career as a journalist and into graduate school. There, her two research interests — media coverage of Vietnam and the history of women in journalism — brought Martin face to face with Laura Palmer, the reporter in Vietnam whose story had impacted her so greatly years before.
This week, Martin will realize another lifelong dream: She will join some 50 Vietnam war correspondents in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) for a historic reunion and the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. There, she will conduct research for a book and a documentary with colleague Maryanne Reed on women correspondents of the Vietnam War.
Earlier this month, Reed and Martin, now dean of the West Virginia University Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism and co-director of Poynter’s summer reporting and writing program for college graduates, assembled a panel of seven women correspondents — including Palmer — to share their Vietnam experiences. For some of the women, it would be the first time they had seen the others, or talked at length about Vietnam, in 25 years.
For Martin, the panel was a culmination of more than a decade of work. In 1988, when she was a graduate student at the University of Maryland, Martin met and interviewed 10 women who had covered the Vietnam War. Their stories, like Palmer’s, inspired her and changed her outlook as a journalist.
“I have carried these women’s stories with me for 12 years,” she says. “I wanted to give them a chance to tell their stories as a group. And then maybe new generations of young women and men will hear the stories and find their lives changed, redirected, and inspired.”
Blast From the Past
They call it the greatest story of their era and the defining one of their generation.
For many of the women journalists who covered it, the Vietnam War was a pivotal experience that profoundly shaped and influenced their personal and professional lives.
“Saigon feels like my hometown because it is where the rest of my life began,” says Palmer, now an author and independent producer for ABC’s Nightline.
Today, ranging in age from 50 to 66, the women on the panel represent an entire generation of newspaper, television, and radio correspondents whose coverage of the war spanned the mid-1960s to the fall of Saigon in 1975. Their work, along with the work of other women correspondents such as Frances Fitzgerald, Ann Bryan Mariano, Ethel Payne, and Kelly Smith Tunney, paved the way for women correspondents of the 80s and 90s who covered such conflicts as such as Gulf War and Bosnia.
Vietnam was, essentially, a watershed for women reporters, says Martin. In all, 467 women correspondents, including 267 Americans, were accredited to cover the war. Never had women chronicled war in such numbers or with such lasting impact. The unusual nature of Vietnam — an undeclared guerilla war, where the military imposed little censorship and offered easy accreditation — made it a “golden opportunity” war for women, she says.
“It was the first war where freelancers could seriously compete with the media elite for big stories,” she says. “Many journalists carved out tremendous reputations without any support from a network or a newspaper.”
At first glance, it is hard to imagine some of these women as war correspondents. There’s Edie Lederer, the impeccably groomed and expensively dressed socialite who launched her career as a foreign correspondent with the Associated Press in Vietnam. There’s Jurate Kazickas, the striking, 6-foot tall freelance reporter who covered combat for print and radio outlets. And there’s Anne Morrissy Merick, a soft-spoken, petite woman who forged her career in journalism’s male arena as one of the few female network television field producers for ABC in Vietnam.
Listen to their stories, though, and it quickly becomes obvious that these women share the same sense of adventure. They were poised to capitalize on the journalistic opportunities the war presented. The stories they produced ran the gamut of topics from combat to politics to human interest.
On the Frontlines
When Kazickas arrived in Saigon in 1976, she was 24, green as grass, and totally broke.
Having quit her job as a researcher for Look magazine just weeks earlier, she managed to win $500 on the television quiz show Password. With that, she bought a one-way ticket to Saigon.
Armed with letters of accreditation from three obscure publications in the states, Kazickas received her press card and became a bona fide war correspondent.
“I was right there next to The New York Times guy and The Washinton Post guy, on the bombers, and on the aircraft, and on the helicopters,” she says with a hint of smugness.
Although each of the women had her own reason for going to Vietnam, most shared idealistic notions of somehow influencing America’s stance on the war. Many also recognized the career value of being on the frontlines to report the story that captivated the country.
“I think that we all believed we could provide some extra dimension or insight into what we had all been reading and watching about this war that had dragged on for so long,” says Lederer. “That was really the motivation for all of us. We didn’t go there concerned every single moment that we would be killed. To us, this was a great adventure.”
It was a great story and whoever wanted to get ahead in the business went to Vietnam, says Morrissy Merick. It was one way to make a giant leap as a journalist.
“It’s made all the difference for me,” says Denby Fawcett, who wrote battlefield stories for the Honolulu Advertiser. “I went to Vietnam just a lowly surf and came back as a career journalist.”
Tad Bartimus, now a nationally syndicated columnist, says her experience in Vietnam as a resident war correspondent for the AP defined the rest of her career as a storyteller.
“I fell deeply in love in Vietnam,” she says. “I made my closest friends. I discovered myself there. These are the things I carry around and these have been the underpinnings of my life.”
Reflecting on the Past
Following the panel, Martin says she received dozens of phone calls from students expressing their admiration for the women correspondents and their stories.
Many said that the women’s stories gave them courage to pursue their goals, Martin says. Others said the discussion reaffirmed their decision to be journalists.
“There is a context to women in journalism,” she says. “It wasn’t always this easy for women and there are people who paved the way. Knowing this makes you understand your job better as journalists.”
The students of West Virginia University were not the only ones who benefited from the event.
For Tracy Wood, who had not seen any of the other women correspondents since leaving Vietnam, the level of involvement she felt came as a surprise.
“It has been so long and this hasn’t been a big part of my life for 25 years,” says Wood, now the investigations editor for the Orange County Register in California. “I felt more emotionally connected than ever.”
It was liberating to open up and talk about things that no one has mentioned for a long time, says Fawcett.
“We — meaning all the war correspondents, not just the women — are part of a big family,” says Lederer. “The code is there. This family is a family for life.”
