Book Bag: ‘A Wartime Ph.D.’ by Judith Kelliher; ‘North to Market: Two Streets, Two Centuries’ by Lu Ston
A Wartime Ph.D. by Judith Kelliher (Jance Beetle Books/Off the Common Books)
In 1969, Bobby Kelliher was in his early 20s when he shipped out to Vietnam to begin his first tour of duty as an infantryman in the Vietnam War. And like a lot of people who served in that conflict, Kelliher, who grew up in a working class family in Springfield, came back to the U.S. with considerable emotional and psychological scars.
In “A Wartime Ph.D.,” East Longmeadow writer Judith Kelliher sets out to document her older brother’s story, one that had always been a mystery to her. As she explains in an introduction to her book, Kelliher was only 8 years old when Bobby went off to war, doing two tours in Vietnam from 1969 into 1970, and he never talked about his experience to anyone in the family.