Kat Fitzpatrick, daughter of a CIA Operative will speak at Brookside Museum in Ballston Spa on Thursday, September 25 at 7pm on her family’s experiences in Vietnam leading up to the American evacuation in 1975. Her father, James Welch, arrived in Saigon during the summer of 1972 after a tour of duty in South Korea. He led a CIA sponsored organization broadcasting to the North Vietnamese during the time the Paris Peace Accord agreement was signed in 1973 to bring an end to the decade-old conflict. Kat’s mother and their seven children relocated to Tiawan before rejoining their husband and father in Vietnam in August 1974.
Fitzpatrick’s quest to understand the impact of this lost war on both her family and America motivated Kat to compile her stories in her recently published book For the Love of Vietnam. “Though I’ve written and presented about it for over a decade, I still find myself in awe at the events of fifty years ago–both our family’s stories and the many stories of the Vietnam Era.”
Kat’s ultimate goal was to uncover her father’s legacy, his courage and tenacity during this perilous time. “I grew up with the stories about my fathers evacuation of 1000 people at the end of the war, but it became normalized. Only as an adult after numerous friends urged me to write about it, did I really plumb the depths of what happened.”
That motivation led her to visit Vietnam in 2015 where she retraced her father’s steps – from the super-secret radio station her father led from a location known as House 7, to the seashore at Phu Quoc, staging point for freedom for Vietnamese families under his protection.
Fitzpatrick’s story offers memories, but not a moral.”I only hope that through my sharing, more conversations about Vietnam open up and more healing occurs. As one Vietnam veteran said to me at the Memorial in D.C. There are a lot of names on that wall. People can’t forget, they have to remember.” My hope is that my stories are a way to help us all remember.'”
Fitzpatrick’s’s book For the Love of Vietnam will be available for purchase and signing after the program. This event is sponsored by the Saratoga County History Center at Brookside Museum.
