| Note from webmaster '55 website: Jim Bell, class of '54 in picture
above, emailed me with the suggestion that '55 classmates might be
interested in a web page on the '54 website. In this page, from which I
have copied the below text and both pictures, Jim Bell relates his
recent
travels to Vietnam. Jim Bell was shot down in 1965 and ended up in the water at Ha Long Bay. Jim Griffin ('55) was shot down on 19 May 67. The plague in Hanoi (picture below) that commemorates his shootdown has the date 5-19-67 which is the shootdown date and also Ho Chi Minh's birthday. The Navy and AF hit Hanoi hard that day and we lost 5 aircraft in the process. The plaque the Vietnamese erected on a wall in downtown Hanoi was to commemorate the shoot down of Jim Griffin's RA-5C. Jim Bell's wife Dora was married to Jim Griffin. I urge all '55 classmates to visit Jim Bell's web page. |
Until now Southeast Asia has not appealed to us as a destination for travel. After all, during the Vietnam War Jim (Bell) spent spent some very bad times there--during what could have been the best years of his life. And Dora's first husband, Jim Griffin, died while a prisoner in Hanoi after his plane was shot down there in 1967. But in 2003 we decided to revisit the area to see how things have changed in the past thirty or so years.
Dora with Jim Griffin's plaque in Hanoi