Reesa Eisler News Today

The Red Cross sent 627 young women to Vietnam as "Donut Dollies," bringing coffee and sandwiches and games (but not donuts) to front-line troops. The experience changed them.

"What I've wanted to do all this time was just to say, 'Thank you,' " said Jim Roberts, now a 75-year-old retired computer sciences professor.

It took half a century to get a chance to say the words. Just “thank you.” That’s all. For Jim Roberts, this desire had become a fixation, part of a years-long process of coming to terms with the darkness he’d seen as an Army lieutenant in the Vietnam War.