The ceremony in March marking National Vietnam War Veterans Day at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the mall in Washington, D.C., held special significance in two ways for Rabbi Resnicoff. In addition to offering the same prayer he had delivered back in 1982 when the monument—known as “The Wall”—was first dedicated, he received one of the inaugural Service Beyond Service awards.
Jim Knotts, an Air Force veteran of the Persian Gulf War who serves as president and CEO of the nonprofit Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund that built The Wall, initiated the award, and 49 Vietnam veterans from across the country were honored in its first year. “The award was created to highlight the kind of positive impact for our country that Vietnam veterans have had after the war,” Knotts says, “and in so many different ways Arnie is a perfect example of what this award means.”
Resnicoff began his military service in high school as an enlisted reservist in a submarine unit, then attended Dartmouth through Navy ROTC and immediately after graduation deployed to the Mekong Delta. Following his Vietnam tour and an assignment with naval intelligence in Europe, he left active duty to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary. He returned to the Navy planning to serve four years in the Navy Chaplain Corps; he wound up serving for 25 years.
“The stereotype of Vietnam vets,” Resnicoff says, “is of people who were so severely traumatized by the war that their lives were ruined, but there are many, many veterans who learned leadership during Vietnam or had natural leadership quality who came home to do amazing things across the country. I remember when we came back from Vietnam, veterans were so mistreated.”
Today, he says, veterans are treated with respect. “I can’t remember the last time someone found out I was a veteran and didn’t say, ‘Thank you for your service.’ I’ll never get tired of hearing that. I always feel honored by those words.”
