Kat Fitzpatrick | Teacher, Presenter, Author
For over a decade I have told my Vietnam story to numerous people. With each conversation, I notice a keen interest, an aching confusion, and a longing for a new relationship to the word, “Vietnam.” It is, after all, not only a war.
The Vietnam Era is a difficult topic. The freshness of the stories I have to share—my family’s time there just before the Fall of Saigon and my father’s extraordinary evacuation of over 1000 people at the end of the war—bring a new vibrant energy to a time period we must not forget.
My presentations blend historical context, heartfelt emotion, and one-of-a-kind ephemera to engage students not only in the historical era but with the experience of connecting our personal stories to the wider world.
Kat Fitzpatrick, Keynote Speaker, Round Lake Veterans Day Service, 2023
Kat Fitzpatrick with her father on Vung Tau Beach, 1974. "It will be a great adventure for our whole family," he'd said in a letter earlier that year. The plaque was given to him by one of the Vietnamese employees that he helped evacuate out of the country at the 11th hour on April 30, 1975.
