The marines were very generous to everybody, giving candy to children and inspiring the sense of safety and hope for the future. They were truly the statement of freedom and democracy. There are many tragic images from the war and from my home town. But they were also some good memories and events which should not be overshadowed by the destruction of the war. Today i live in austin with two sons born here and my wife tanya. Im lucky. I am a chairman of magrabbit, inc. , a Global SoftwareCompany Founded 25 years ago in austin. We have several offices, but two offices that are dear to me, array, and da nang city. I am personally grateful for the soldiers who risked their lives in the vietnam war and also for the United States of america which had afforded me the opportunity to make the most of my life here in austin and this country. Ladies and gentlemen, David Hume Kennerly had been shooting in the frontlines of history for 50 years. At age 25 years, he is one of the youngest winners of the Pulitzer Prize, when he won for capturing the loneliness and desolation of the vietnam war. He went on to be an important president ial personal photographer, serving in the white house throughout president fords administration. Kennerly has served as a contributing editor for newsweek and politico. And he served as a contributing photographer for time and life magazine. American photo magazine named him one of the hundred most important people in photography. Now meet nick ut, a vietnamese american. He works as a photographer forbe the Associated Press more than a half century. He spent almost a decade covering the vietnam war. Beginning at the age of 16 16. He won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography for the terror of war. You may remember his iconic photograph of vietnamese children fleeing from napalm bombing during the vietnam war. It is also my pleasure today to introduce to our moderator, miss angela evans. The dean of the lbj school of Public Affairs at ut austin. She is a fellow of jack bicco region chair in Public Affairs. Miss evans is also a former Deputy Director of the Congressional Research service and is a fellow of the National Academy of public administration. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our panelists. [ applause ] good afternoon, everyone, and welcome. We are so pleased that youre here. And what were going to be doing today, this is how were setting this up. Obviously we have two very distinguished photo journalists and many of us who lived through the vietnam war and saw the war through their eyes and through their camera lens. They have chosen several photographs to be shown to the audience. Siri adams will take davids photographs first and well watch those and then were going to land on a photo, ask david some questions. Then were going to turn to nick and hes also chosen some photos to share with us and well do the same thing. So lets start with davids photos. David, why dont you talk to us a little bit about why did you get into photojournalism and why did you decide that you wanted to go to vietnam and shoot the war . Okay. I think we needed background music here, everybody is so quiet. It made me nervous. I got ive been a photographer since i was a kid. Im a native oregonian and grew up in a little town called roseberg. And all i could remember was wanting to get out of that town. And i was always looking over the ridge to the next place. And my career took a path from oregon to los angeles, to new york, to washington, d. C. , working for upi. And i during the course of the vietnam war, when it started, there was a brilliant photographer, Larry Burrows. Arnette and some of the other people knew him, i never met him, but he was an inspiration to me. He did a story called yankee poppa 13 for life magazine and it came out in 1965. I was a senior in high school. And the story was, to this day, it is still with me. I do a lot of lectures on photography and i particularly like to talk about this this story about a young helicopter crew chief and the first frame he has a smile, he has a carrying machine guns out to the helicopter and then during the course of this mission, they let off some vietnamese soldiers in the field and one of the other helicopters gets shot down. And they go out and rescue the helicopter pilots from the other one and the coverage of the magazine was this guy and hes screaming and there is one of his colleagues is dead in the foreground. But the picture that really did it to me was the last frame, was the same young guy bent over and crying alone in a hangar. The arc of the story, it was something arnett and everybody were talking about, stories you didnt see. And we were getting our information from life magazine and all of that. But i wanted to do that. I wanted to be able to cover a war. By the time i got to washington, d. C. , i was 23 years old. I was getting i had my first ride on air force one when i was as a upi photographer at 23. Im reminded of of that because i found the flight certificate the other day. That is the kind of thing the kind of job people want to get they go to vietnam to do Something Like that when they get back. But that wasnt what i wanted to do. And i felt like mr. Roberts on a supply ship in a back water watching the destroyers going into combat and i wanted to be on that ship. And finally i got the opportunity to do it. And one of the other things i mean, for me as a news photographer, it was my generations story. I had had four of my classmates from westland high school, people i knew who i had photographed them for the annual were killed in combat. There were vietnam army or army soldiers. And so i finally finagled my way into it. And i didnt want to be one of those kind of people who 20, 30 years later was making excuses about why i didnt go to vietnam. You have this passion. It sounds like you had this passion. And what surprised you when you got there . Were things different than what you thought you would find when you went there . Before i got there, and this was one of the worst days of my life, really, was i think people in my photographers per se particularly are under plain stuff. Its be there mentality. And right before i left, i was all set to go. A helicopter carrying Larry Burrows and andre uit who . The japanese. The japanese photographer. And kent potter of upi. I was on my way to replace kent potter and they got killed. One of my photo heroes was killed and it just scared the hell out of me. All of a sudden, this was not an abstract notion about going off to war, even though i had a lot of my friends that had been over there and come back. But it was i seriously thought that that maybe i didnt want to do this. And i dont admit i mean, on numerous occasions, i remember being terrified. But i finally overcame that and got to siagon. And i had not been overseas. The only country i had been to prior to that was the netherlands, which is not exactly vietnam. It had its fine points, certainly. [ laughter ] and i got there and it was so exciting for me. I must say, it was just the energy in saigon and going to the bureau, the upi bureau and all these people who had been there. Knowing i was setting off on something that i couldnt have anticipated. And i do remember within a week or so, i was up in icor on a convoy going down the road and there was a dead person on the side of the road. This is something you werent seeing in new york city. And once again, i had this feeling of great fear. I mean, it was just a dead person by the side of the road. I didnt even take a picture. But it was astonishing. All of the sudden its one of those were not in kansas anymore moments. But i pushed on. And i i have a real dedication, not only to my profession, but to telling stories and taking pictures of things so other people could see them. I dont take my pictures people ask me why im on facebook. Im on facebook because i like people to see what i do and see what i see. And that has been part of the drive of my career. One of the things that you talked about, as you start to get integrated into the society and the war and the fear, one of the things i asked david in the back and he said oh, this is going to be a touchyfeely question, and i said yeah, it is. You see all this emotional raw emotion. You see some of the worst of humanity. And how do you keep yourself whole . How do you keep your eye focused on the story you want to tell without getting really, you know, in despair, in deep despair . How do you really do this . How did you refresh yourself . It is a good question. I think a lot of my friends and a lot of people in this room, certainly veterans, and i will say this. This is this whole idea of photographing wars was not really about glorifying my profession so much as showing what is happening to other people. And i think that the ability to do that, the fact that i was in vietnam without somebody telling me to go, i wasnt drafted, i actually did do service to a degree i went into the National Guard to get out of going to vietnam. And i have one of those more interesting stories. I had to get out of the army to go to the war. The general who signed off on it didnt feel it was going to be creating an ugly precedent. But when i got over there and experienced a lot of situations, close calls and all that, i thought about this a lot, about why have i kind of been able to put it in the rear view mirror and other people cant. Really, its lucky for me. I have a lot of friends certainly in the military, and i think theyve had more of a problem with it. If youre in a situation, youve got to be there for 12, 13 months as a draftee or thats your tour in vietnam. You had no choice about what what was going to happen to you. Youre also the one with the gun doing the shooting. And i certainly was at much risk, any of us who covered the war were at risk. Thats what we did. Photographers had to be there on the front lines. I cant answer why. I covered actually a story the only story that ever gave me nightmares was jonestown. And if you saw that, i had the cover picture on Time Magazine of jonestown. And i had horrible nightmares from it. And i saw the dead body of jim jones rising to get me. I swear to god, i still it doesnt plague me now, but i remember the nightmare. And i have not had one bad dream about vietnam. The other night i had a bad dream about the North Koreans dropping the statue of liberty on me. That was weird. [ laughter ] but generally, my dreams are of not quite so substantial as that. So i im lucky. But i havent im incredibly sympathetic to people with problems. My own colleagues and certainly veterans, because from my class in high school. I had and in my career, ive just met so many people who have been in wars, up to and including the recent conflict. But i dont have a good answer for why i didnt suffer from the illeffects. One of the things i think about, there was so much controversy back home about the war. And a lot of opposition for the war and support for the war and as a photographer did that come into your mind in terms of the pictures of how that may sway either side in terms of how that person might view the war . Well, when i went to vietnam, it is maybe kind of hard to figure, because i was covering antilbj demonstrations. I remember when Hubert Humphrey came to portland, oregon in 66, i had just started in fact, this is literally my 50th year as a professional photographer. Nick has been with a. P. For 50 years and he is only ten years younger than i am. But i i didnt have a political dog in the hunt on that one. I think it is because i was brought up in a what i hope is not oldfashioned way, in the news business, where trying to be objective, we are not objective by nature. We are not objective by nature. We all see things differently. We are maybe watching the same incident but i did not have pro view war or antiwar feeling about it. To me it was a story. It directly impacted me. It was taking the lives of people i knew. My career has been based on curiosity. I wanted to see why. Whats going on over there . And by the time i got there, it is already 1971. And eddie adams, our friend and the guy who took the famous picture of general shooting the vietcong suspect, and a person i admired, but he was my competitor. He was ap, i was upi. He told me just before i left of all the good pictures have been taken. [ laughs ] the kind of guy he was, anybody knows him would understand that. When i won the Pulitzer Prize, something by the way that i did not know i had been put up for. The first i heard about it was the no anxiety award. I hadnt even given it a second thought. I got all these cables i was in saigon and one of them was from eddie adams that said i was wrong. Congratulations. Awe, that was nice. He went really overboard on that cable. But i didnt, you know, and how my pictures depicted. I am hoping that the picture i take really create awareness of whats going on. It is only one persons point of view. Like any photographers will tell you, we do the best we can to try to honestly portray whats happening, and other people can make up their minds. With nicks photo of folks running down the road, the picture can be used on both sides of the equation about look, this is what happens because of war, which is a really good point. But like whose fault is it, its all of our faults to allow that kind of thing to happen. I didnt look at it as a Political Tool as much as informational vehicle, really. Yeah. One of the things that i think about sometimes like your day, your typical day, there is not a typical day, obviously, you go out and shoot a lot of pictures. Which ones do you decide to send forward, and which ones do you decide to keep back . And have you kept back photos that only you will see and the rest of us wont . Well, i used to generally, my day was like a week or two going into the field. Somebody once asked me what was the worst thing about vietnam. I said it ruined camping for me. Seriously. I have never been camping with my kids and they still dont get why i dont want to go do that. But, i would just it was not today where you could upload photographs from a battlefield or where ever. But, we would ship our films if were up in da nang or somewhere and try to get people to handcarry the film back down to saigon. They would pick the pictures. I had nothing to do with it, really. Pretty much through my career. Now the digital era has changed that where in a bad way i think where editors are being cut out of the mix. I always felt like for writing or taking pictures, you really need a good editor. A professional editor is somebody who is very helpful. And you dont always agree with their choices, but the idea that the pictures went to saigon and were photos were picked there and transmitted out. It was not people say well, i remember like, tv brought the war into your living room, which it did. Vietnam was the first time. But if television isnt brought to your living room, the still photo is always taken directly into your heart. I mean there is a great show at the museum in washington dc about the vietnam war and there are a lot of these famous pictures. Nicks pictures were in there and eddie adams pictures. People will stop, and they just are fixated by the photographs. You dont get the same thing out of moving pictures. They both have their place. Though a lot of people dont remember. Eddies picture of the execution, there was an nbc camera i think nbc, right . Yeah. Who was there with eddie and has the film of the guy shooting the guy in the head, and nobody remembers it. And it was brutal. You dont want to see it and i am sure it is out there on youtube along with everything else. The still picture once you have seen it is just embedded in your brain, and thats why Joe Rosenthals iwo jima photograph i gave the eulogy at joes funeral. Ive known him since 1968 still to be the greatest photograph ever taken. Nick was there at the funeral of eddie, had already died. I said that nick was the last surviving member of the goddamnest pictures ive ever seen club. And the other two members were Joe Rosenthal and eddie adams. Iwo jima was about a great moment in american history, brave marines raising the flag over mt. Suribachi on iwo jima. And then the dark side of war which was napalm girl and saigon executions. But, those pictures are all three of them some of the most influential pictures ever taken. You can look at it anyway you want in terms of what they meant. How did you photograph change over the time that you were in vietnam . Did they change . How did they change . Well, there was never a day where i felt the war was a good idea. My pictures changed were any time you go some where for the first time, particularly going from the United States into Southeast Asia into saigon and then vietnam all around, every day was a new day. I think my pictures were actually better the first few months i was there because fell into what i call the familiarity hole. And one of the hardest things for professional photographers or anybody in general is trying to overcome familiarity of being in a situation day in and day out. I give people an exercise now taking photographs. I call it the photo fitness workout where you go in your neighborhood and you take pictures of something you look at every day but you dont see. A professor photographer has to do that all the time. Granted, it wasnt like the same thing was happening all the time, but i was much more engaged with it early on. I dont think my pictures changed. I really think my pictures gotten better over the years. I have become more thoughtful about it. Some people would disagree with that. I really do think more about what im doing not as an artist, but whats a better way to tell the story. Thank you. I think ive gil nick a chance. Yes. Nick. To talk to our audience. What well do is look at the photographs that nick chose for us to view today. Nick meyers, one of the reasons you got into photo journalism is your brother was a photojournalist. And he was killed in the war and you were 16 when you started this. Talk to us as what you saw as your world in photo journalism in the war. My brother, he went back to assignments 1965. Then he went back to assignments again, six months later, october 16, 1965. Vietcong killed all the rangers and he killed my brother. Then after the before my family say your brother die. And then nick two days, we had a big funeral for all vietnam family. In 1966, i had a job for ap. That i come back a photographer. Autumn 66 before the fall of saigon. And, nick, we all know about your picture of kim fok. Can you tell us what happened that day before that picture was taken and what happened after that day. Viet cong locked their highway 1, about 25 miles west of saigon. Vdane june 7. Then june 8 early morning, 8 00 a. M. Morning. I show how the vietnamese refugees in saigon and a lot of bombs outside. I took a lot of pictures. The army about one mile. Then you know photography. You are in the picture. I went back to highway 1 again. I saw a vietnamese army. I hear two airplane coming. The first to dive is a37. The second one, a1 sky raider, they dropped all the bombs. I dont believe it napalm. I stand 100 yards away from my side. I dont believe everyone is there because theyre all gone. Afterwards i saw many people running and a few people in there. A grandmother carrying one baby. I see the baby like watch him, he died in the camera. I hold my camera, and you look black smoke. I shot a girl with her running. Myself, why is she maked . Run inside the pagoda and took a picture, keep running. And her left arm burned so bad, the skin on her back. And i think she died within minutes. I put water on her body right away. Her uncle helped the children to the hospital. I had my van there. The car with my driver. I put all the children in my van. She died, her brother, the picture on the left. Shes down on the floor. I kept on watching in my car and i know she will die. Its about 30 minutes to hospital. And when we get to hospital, nobody want to help her because they say sorry, we dont have enough medicine, and so many soldier and the farming people. Can you talk to the General Hospital saigon . I said two hour, theyll all die. I cant do anything. And i said if the kid dies, you will get in trouble tomorrow. Thats why i come back to saigon right away. With my film. With my editor. The picture, she looked at my pictures and said why you shot naked girl . I said no, she is burned. Look at her clothes. And we make one picture of 5x7. My boss, he looked at my picture. Why picture still here . We cannot show the naked girl. And they talked about it later my picture of saigon became in new york. And new york, the whole war in your picture. So there was a possibility of censorship because the first time they were looking at a nude girl so there was questions about that. As soon as they got over that, it was on the New York Times front page. And it changed it was a very influential picture in terms of the war. Yeah. So nick, tell us a little bit about how you how you felt about actually taking photographs of your people . Because many of your photographs are about people and their everyday living in a war of circumstance. Can you talk to us just a little bit about that approach to the war . I look up to my brother. He took a lot of pictures dying everyday. He bring picture, he show me why and me. Thats why i learned from him. I remember 1963 with american landing or da nang, not many, a couple thousand. Thats why i want to be a photographer. When my brother died, i said i want to become a photographer. When my brother died, i went to ap. He said you are too young, you are only 16. I go everywhere in vietnam, lao, cambodia, everywhere army, marine, over vietnam. Thats why i take picture every day. How does it change you as a photographer photographing your own people in some of these terrible situations . You know, the picture dont change much. I remember over 40 years ago. You carry 40yearold film. Black and white, color, they put four cameras. You like a soldier, and, the hair and shoes and everything is heavy. Its heavy for me. Every day a couple of everyday of a couple of miles, my body is so tired but i am a young man at the time. They happy a lot for my picture. Good. Thats why because vietnam war and american soldiers helped me and even vietnamese soldiers. I am going to ask nick and david one more question and well open it up to the audience. The question is making the transition. After you make the transition out of vietnam, and what did you how did that transition help you do other things in your life . David, you were talking about mr. Ford and where you were. Id like you to share that story with the audience. I think thats a profound story. When i came back from in 73, i was there a little more than two years. I actually had come back after i won the pulitzer. I had been in vietnam for a year and a half without going back to the states. I came back to the states and all i wanted to do was turn around and go back. I literally cut the trip short. I was not comfortable in the states. It was as if the war wasnt going on. I kept on looking around and thinking why were people more concerned about this. It was really uncomfortable for me. The only people that had any empathy for what i was going through is my friends who had been in vietnam. That was it. There were other photographers bill snead who just passed away was one of them, and dirk halsted, a mentor of mine. But i went back. And then as the war started to wind down, the story really was evolving in the United States with watergate and all that. So i came back. One thing led to another, what fast forward. I became president fords white house photographer. And what happened at this point was vietnam started unraveling. I was on sent on a i went on a trip with general Fricke Nguyen dispatched by the president to see if there was anything that could be done to try to stem the tide of advancing north vietnamese. They had taken over da nang and were starting to move south. And i went around individually i went to several places. I went over to cambodia. Air america flew me there. The place was totally surrounded and you couldnt get into phnom penh unless you had a special aircraft. In fact, the guy didnt even stop. You had to hop out in front of the terminal. He said he would take me over there, but he wasnt stopping. [ laughs ] jesus, next time im going first class, you know. But i saw what was happening. And the president wanted another point of view from someone who didnt have a dog in about the military. And strangely, there are two highranking cia agents, executives on the plane. And frank is here today, a young cia officer in saigon at the time who i met at the time. After i got back, the cia had always had an almost to the nth degree about straight scoop about what was going on. The military always had another point of view. Im not condemning the military. Its just to hear it inside the white house was a different points of view. I told the president when i got back that i thought my estimation from all my world experience was that vietnam he wrote this in his book by the way. So im not telling stories out of school. I am always careful about that. He quoted me as saying, mr. President , vietnams only got three or four weeks left, and anyone who tells you differently is bull [ bleep ]ing you. Three and a half weeks later it fell. There were other people thinking perhaps they could contain it and all that. But what we talked about was i was in the room when the president made the decision to end the war in vietnam. I was in the roosevelts room and under a portrait of teddy roosevelt, one of the most active u. S. President s ever, charged the hill. And the picture that sticks with me on that was there is the director of the cia and the deputy secretary of the secretary of defense state, kissinger, who was sitting here last night. Nelson rockefeller, joint chiefs and the president , and me taking pictures. No one was saying anything. It was right after the president made the decision to start the withdraw. And then it went into the next 36 hours or so. One of the stories we didnt hear from secretary kissinger last night which would have been really interesting for you all was how kissinger went out and announced that the withdrawal was a success, all the americans were out. And then went back and got a bulletin that said there are 25 American Marines on the Embassy Rooftop who hadnt been brought out. See, this is why i love being a photographer because there were some really interesting photographs of that moment. Ultimately he had to go and correct that one. But being someone who had been in vietnam as a photographer, when i went back on that trip, vietnamese friends were asking me to take their kids out. It was really emotionally difficult. And what i showed the president when i came back were the photographs that i took of refugees, of wounded people in phnom penh. And we put i put the photographs that replaced all those cheery photos in the west wing of state dinners and all that with these bleak black and white photographs i had taken on the trip. The night they went up, someone took them all down. And the president heard about that and got incredibly angry and said youve got to put those pictures back up. I want everybody in this building to know whats going on over there. And i think the pictures, because the subject of this is about the effective pictures on people. When i showed him what was going on, and i dont think anybody has ever made a report to the president of the United States like that, and a trusted person, that he really saw what was happening with the vietnamese people. And in part, in part, and people have told me this later, that he was so moved by it that he continued to see to it that more vietnamese were evacuated from vietnam. When i look at what is going on today in the world with refugees and all that and this phobia about refugees coming to this country, it makes me sick, really, because the Vietnamese Community [ applause ] the Vietnamese Community has been one of the strongest elements of american society. Nick and i have pho frequently and we both live in california. It is vibrant. Im working right now on a project with a vietnamese who was a ph. D, worked for nasa. Was involved with the mars rover program, on and on and on. But im really happy that had some minor role to play in that. Thank you. Nick, how about you . How did you make that transition out to where you are today . Before the fall of saigon, i had my ap, refugees vietnam, da nang, everywhere. I da nang to the airport. Then i took a lot of pictures there, i follow them. From there to dalat, every. And then vietnam like play coup with the general, a friend of mine, general. He told me i had to leave. I said why. He said nick, very dangerous, last day. Thats it. Vietnam over, he told me. He told me theyre sending vietnamese over. Oh, my. You see a picture leaving. Yes. I chopper a helicopter. I see people die running from pleiku. So many. Like 30 people hang on the helicopter. A lot of people fall down on the helicopter, you know. Nick, was part of your family left behind . I had to send my family to saigon. Theyre old people, you know. My father passed away a long time. There are a couple still alive today. I go back to vietnam almost every year to cover a story for ap. I travel with some former u. S. Marines. And my story, i covered da nang, ho chi minh trail and hanoi and vietnam. I land my story. You keep continuing to go back home. Yes. Good. Well, this has been a pretty special afternoon for me. I hope its been for you. Wed like to take some questions. [ applause ] thank you, thank you. Yes, sir . That picture there, is that kim phuc there . Yes. I will mention this several iconic pictures and how they were interpreted when you used. Eddie adams is a particular instance where i think he continued to regret the way that picture influenced the outcomes, particularly the reputation of general malone. Do you have any comment or opinions on how your pictures ended up . Unlike the written journalists we just talked to, you had no control over how people looked at your pictures. What is the exact question . I didnt hear well. Unlike the journalists in print, you had little control about how people viewed and used your pictures. Do you have any feelings about, for example, in the picture of the napalm girl, you had people confessing to be responsible for that happening when they were nowhere near what happened, no where near the event. I think thats the beauty of photography is everybody can make up their own mind about it. I mean, we take the pictures and put them out. With nick, he and i have talked about this at some length, he took the photograph because it was happening. It wasnt to make a point or political point. That picture has been controversial certainly, but i think we appreciate that our pictures can agitate, can make people get emotional about it and say whatever they want. I havent intended to cast any aspersions on your work. , no we didnt get that. It was a good question. Thank you. All righty. First of all, thank you very much for coming here today. Im a ph. D student in journalism here at ut. Working on a dissertation actually on photo journalism. And my question for both of you is kind of tied in to what im intrigued with is the comparison between being the reporter with the camera and the artist with the camera. How much are you conscious conce composition. Here new a war circumstance and its happening all around you and yet you go to raise that camera in front of you. What are you trying to see . What are you trying to isolate for thats something that comes into your mind when you do that . Thats why god created cropping. [ laughter ] composition, for me its really important if you can do it, its the rare case where a picture is framed perfectly like the girl running down the road or anything. Is that what you were talking about about how you see it like artistically . Artistic is not a word that goes through my mind at that moment usuall usually. [ inaudible question ] as i said earlier, nick and i are both professional photographers. Were both actually i spent five years as a wire photographer. Really our job is to show you something that we saw. You know, its that simple. I mean dont you think . Pictures show a story. Every now and then. Every now and then. Sometimes not always the right story. Yes, sir . Thank you very much for coming today. I really appreciate it, its quite fascinating. Very interesting. My question was, when you were in country, there are any areas that you were specifically forbidden to go to or simply explicitly told that you should not or were there any subjects or areas you felt were off limits that perhaps that wouldnt be beneficial for your camera . Well and i know were talking about like the coverups on the government side and all that. My experience was i found the military incredibly helpful to go wherever i wanted to go, hitch a ride on a chopper. If you were stupid enough or excited enough to try to get into action you could get there and if there were americans or vietnamese soldiers, i never had one instance where i wasnt able to go where i wanted to go, see what i wanted to see and one of the profound experiences that i had was when id show up in the field with a group of american g. I. S that first when they got over the shock of seeing somebody that didnt have to be there showing up and questioning our intelligence, im sure, they were happy to know that there was someone there telling their story, to show the world what was going on to them and i had almost 100 really good cooperation from the government. That didnt extend to what reporters were the briefings that were going on in washington and all that but by the time i got over there and it was the last time, by the way, this has not happened since where we just had a free hand to go where we wanted to go but there was never any if you had the with ahere wherewithal to get into somewhere did you ever have an instance where you were kept out . No, it helped me a lot. We had a military media pass, saigon, everyone goes to vietnam, da nang, you know you catch a c130 or c 123, you fly right away. We dont have any trouble and even in kay schon we dont have trouble. The big problem is when you got there. So easy. Getting there wasnt the problem. Today more difficult. Afghanistan, i think from the vietnam war i dont think theyre the media has more freedom to travel with the soldiers. We have time for one more question. Clarification question. I wasnt clear what happened to the young girl that was burned so badly. Did she survive . Is she still alive . Whats could you tell us something about that. Thats a picture of her, by the way, the photo was taken, kim phuc. Shes still alive today. Shes 54. She lives in toronto, canada. I talked to her one week, she wanted to come here this week but she spoke in boston yesterday and she married, had two children and she travelled everywhere in america talking about her picture. And shes still suffering from those burns. She still has great pain from the burns so i want to thank this has been a privilege to be on the stage with you all and i really want to thank you for coming and i want to thank you as well. I have a few announcements okay, i just you can come up afterwards perhaps and ask because what were going to be doing now is right after this theres going to be a ceremony of the pinning of vietnam vets so there f theres any vets in the audience to go and theyll be awarded the win and id like to also recognize the vietnam vets in the audience if theyre here. Can you please stand so we can celebrate you. [ applause ] so thank you all very much for coming, we really appreciate it. It was the last question if you want to come up we can take that question. Thank you. [ applause ] [ indistinct conversation ] [ indistinct conversation ] [ indistinct conversation ] [ indistinct conversation ] saturday night at 8 00 eastern well take a look back at past Democratic National conventions starting with the 1960 convention in los angeles with the Democratic Party selecting john f. Kennedy as their nominee. Today our concern must be with our future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do. He went on to become the youngest person elected president. Well also feature notable female speakers, including u. S. Representative from texas Barbara Jordan who spoke at the 1976 convention in new york city and became the first africanamerican woman to be a keynote speaker. Our concept of governing is derived from our view of people. It is a concept deeply rooted in a set of believes firmly etched in the National Conscience of all of us. Then the 1984 convention in San Francisco with former new york congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro who was the first woman to be nominated for Vice President by a Major Political party and ann richards who in 1988 was the state treasurer for texas. She spoke at the convention in atlanta that year and later became the 45th governor of texas. Also the 1992 convention in new york city with arkansas governor bill clinton accepting his partys nomination. In the name of all those who do the work, pay the taxes, raise the kids, and play by the rules, in the name of the hardworking americans who make up our forgotten middleclass, ive proudly accept your nomination for president of the United States. [ cheers and applause ] past National Conventions next saturday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. The first time our nations history that a woman will be a major partys nominee. [ cheers and applause ] at the Democratic National convention in philadelphia Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman nominee of a Major Political party for president of the United States. Live coverage of every minute of this Historic Convention begins monday on cspan, the cspan radio app and cspan. Org. Coming up next on the presidency, Smithsonian National portrait gallery Senior Historian david ward. He chronicles Abraham Lincolns life through photographs and portraits and discusses details in the images that reveal idiosyncrasies, like what his clothes reveal about his health or why he chose certain photographers. The university of st. Mary hosted this 90minute event. Good evening, my name is brian le beau and im the pro vest for the university of st. Mary and id like to welcome you to the 18th university of st. Mary lincoln event featuring Smithsonian National portrait galle gallery david seward who will speak on how Abraham Lincoln used photography for politics. And a special welcome to the crew from cspan television who will be covering this event for later broadcast on cspan tv. As a reminder when we open the floor to questions please be sure to use the microphones. If you dont, you will not be heard on television and youll miss your big media event. Our speaker tonight, david ward, joined the National Portrait gallery in 1981. He oversees the Permanent Collection galleries including states devoted to the antebellum age 1820 to 1860 as well as the ongoing exhibit 20th century americans. Among his many accomplishments too many that i can go into completely tonight david was cocurator of an Award Winning exhibition, hide, seek, difference and desire in american portraiture. Hes currently working on rehanging the hall of president s not the president s, the hall of president s. [ laughter ] and the american origin space along with curating new exhibits