Anita Bryant on Vietnam War

“By Thanksgiving, 1967, we still had not made any really final decision about whether or not we'd return for another tour of Viet Nam. Bob and I thought back to the previous Thanksgiving, when I sang for troops at Ford Leonard Wood, Missouri, America's largest training post. Many of the men in that audience were in Viet Nam by now, I knew.”

“You sense a strong sense of mission among the fighting men in Viet Nam, an enormous compassion for all victims of Communist atrocities, especially the children, and a religious conviction that surely must resemble the "faith of our fathers." On Christmas Eve, we traditionally closed our show with my leading the cast and troops in singing "Silent Night." Afterwards, I'd cry my eyes out. There in Viet Nam, in the muddy, battle-scarred camps where we played to jam-packed audiences, "Silent Night" became one of the most poignant and meaningful songs I ever delivered to any audience. I can close my eyes now and see some of those faces. Always, as I looked at them through a blur of tears, I wondered how many of them would never see another Christmas.”

“The Road to Viet Nam, and to the other important places Mr. Hope visits at Christmas, had to end for Bob and me after the 1966 trip. That year Bobby and Gloria became old enough to understand that Daddy and Mommie were gone quite a few days. They cried for us a lot, Farmor and Farfar said, and really seemed to suffer from our absence. "Anita, I think it's time we decide to spend Christmas at home," Bob said gently. We were quiet for a bit, remembering this and that: Christmas Eve in a Saigon hotel room, where we spread our pictures out on the bed and reminisced about home... the U.S. Army major who had thanked us for coming to Viet nam at Christmas, saying, "I know how it is to leave your children, ma'am. I have five kids of my own"... the young sergeant we met in a mess hall in Cu Chi, who proudly showed us pictures of his firstborn son, whom he'd never seen... the years in the eyes of those rugged Green Beret guys as they joined me in singing, "Glory, glory, hallelujah"... Billy Graham's Christmas message to the troops from the Book of John, Chapter 3, vers 16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."”