A little while ago, three
early ‘60s Davis High School yearbooks belonging to James (Jim) Rowe, DHS class
of ’64, were discovered in an unlikely storage place. They and other items
relating to him were given to the Hattie Weber Museum of Davis. I have read
those materials and offer the following observations and images.
Jim Rowe was born to Helen and Gray Rowe in Davis in 1946
and died in combat in Vietnam in 1968 at age 21. His name is on the Vietnam Memorial
wall in Washington.
He grew up on the 600 block of E Street (at 631 E), just a
block north of where I have lived for many years. His parents were prominent
Davis citizens in their era. (His father received the Covell Citizens Award in
1950.)
That proximity and knowing his mother a little from my Old
North research initially stirred my interest in these newly discovered
materials.
But as or more important, I was born a decade before him and
was a young professor in the mid and later ‘60s. This means, among other
things, that I knew a number of male undergraduates much like Jim Rowe and I
lived with them through the agony of Vietnam.
Among the important reasons we “do history” is not only to celebrate
our wonderful accomplishments but also to try to face up to our horrific
mistakes.
Looking at the Jim
Rowe materials, I have been reminded that: his death at that time and in that
way did not have to be and should not have been.
The images reproduced here are a modest effort to try to
help remember that lesson and to renew a resolve not to keep making the same
mistake.
