Raised on a farm in Kansas, Larry Laverentz chose to go to South Vietnam after finishing college to begin a life filled with adventure and service to others. This memoir presents stories of the many people he met along the way who were interesting or influenced his work and life, people who shared Larry's regard for honesty, unselfishness, humility, and the talent to laugh at oneself. The book is broken out into chapters with headings of the names of his parents, neighbors in his rural community and people tied to his Vietnam and post-Vietnam experiences.
Most people think of Vietnam as a tragic political mistake with the loss of more than 54,000 American lives. What is often forgotten is how many Vietnamese people lost their lives, their country, and their way of life. The author bore witness to these tragedies and describes a people and country with good people and a rich culture, heritage, and vitality.
These descriptions tell us how the Vietnam War was about more than just rock and roll music in American helicopters, NVA officers arguing in tunnels, and more profoundly the uncertainties of conflict and war. There are stories related to Vietnamese, U.S. military and civilian advisers, including volunteers with whom Larry worked. To this end there was American and other country support for programs that included hamlet self-help, agricultural, education and health. Dedicated individuals were filled with hope and joy and eventually became participants in elements of meaningful relationships, sacrifice, sadness, tragedy and heroism.
Along the way, Laverentz talks about what he learned and reveals his positive achievements as well as his disappointments and errors in judgment. Because he was in Vietnam for 6 years, as an agricultural volunteer and senior civilian adviser in a province, his Vietnam experience has had a profound effect on his life. The values and attitudes of having good parents, attending a small high school, participating in church activities, and living in a tight-knit rural community became the bedrock principles of the author's life. And that is the strength of this memoir. It is not just a story defined by modern society that remembers only the war in Vietnam. It is defined by how the writer celebrates the lives of the people he encountered, remembering their moments together, the lessons learned, and the journeys he experienced interacting with these people. The memoirs paint the human side of the Vietnam War.
This book is not an intellectual assessment of the complicated Vietnam and Southeast Asian wars and experiences. It is more about community, life and values involving good and interesting persons with whom Larry Laverentz interacted over a lifetime. In many ways, the story represents the author's background as a man of agriculture, a person of the soil. That is what gives the author a deeper insight into community and contribution amidst the chaos and tragedy of the Vietnam War.
Book available at Your Online Publicist
“The Not So Ordinary People on the Roads I've Traveled”
Author: Larry Laverentz
Publisher: Your Online Publicist
Publication Date: August 2022
Genre: Memoir, Cultural and Social
About the Author
Larry Laverentz grew up on a cattle feeding and crop farm in Northeast Kansas. After graduating from Kansas State University with a degree in Agricultural Economics, he worked as an agricultural volunteer in Vietnam between 1961 and 1963 with International Voluntary Services, the organization the Peace Corps was patterned after.
In 1964 he joined the U.S. Agency for International Development and served for three plus years as the senior civilian adviser to the Ninh Thuan Province Chief in administering U.S. support for the Vietnamese Pacification Program. Subsequently, he held various positions for twenty years in federal programs including refugee resettlement and other social service areas in the Kansas City regional office of the Department of Health and Human Services.
After early retirement from the federal government in 1991, he worked as a real estate sales agent for twelve years. In 2003 he began working as a contract employee in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington D.C. With ORR he was the first program manager for the Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program until he retired in 2014. Larry has a Master's of Public Administration from the University of Pittsburgh.
He and his wife live in Lenexa, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. Their son is the lead pastor of a church in Edmond, Oklahoma and their daughter has recently returned to the Kansas City area after serving as the Chief of Party for a major health project in Ghana.
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