Major new Vietnam exhibit in Columbia showcases SC voices from controversial war

On March 29, 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, Steve Flaherty of Dentsville, a sergeant in the U.S. Army’s elite 101st Airborne Division, was hunkered down near a hellish firebase in the A Shau Valley on a hill called “Bloody Ridge.”

Flaherty, a Japanese-American orphan adopted by a U.S. soldier from Columbia after World War II, had been a star athlete at Dentsville High School. Rather than take an offer from the Cincinnati Reds to play baseball, he joined the “Screaming Eagles” to repay his adoptive country for the opportunities he had as a naturalized American.

In recent days that March, Flaherty had penned four letters to his family back in South Carolina. He hoped to send them home in the next post. But before he could mail them, he was presumably killed by artillery fire, the firebase was overrun and the letters fell into North Vietnamese hands

“Our platoon started off with 35 men but winded up with 19 men when it was over,” he wrote prior to his death. “We lost platoon leader and whole squad. ...

“If Dad calls, tell him I got close to being dead but I’m O.K.,” he added in the letter to his mother. “I was real lucky. I’ll write again soon.””

Those letters are among the more than 150 artifacts on display at a major new exhibit at the S.C. Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum in Columbia. The exhibit is presented in conjunction with the federal Vietnam Commemoration Committee.

The Relic Room is located in the same historic textile mill building that houses the S.C. State Museum. Curators of “A War With No Front Lines: South Carolina In Vietnam 1965-1973” aim to illustrate the museum’s commitment to preserving South Carolina history in all wars, not just Confederate artifacts.

Next year, the museum also will feature a special display on World War II art in the main museum and a retrospective of Fort Motte, which stood in Calhoun County during the Revolutionary War.

The Vietnam War exhibit opens Friday, Veterans Day, and will run through Memorial Day 2024. Admission to the Relic Room museum is free for everyone this Friday and Saturday.

“We’re a lot more than the Civil War,” museum director Allen Roberson said. “We’ve been planning this since 2018.”

Displays and speakers

The Vietnam War exhibit includes:

• A display of the names of all 894 South Carolinians killed in Vietnam and portraits of the eight South Carolinians who received the Medal of Honor during the conflict

• A 12-by-14-foot diorama of a Vietnam War firebase

• Dozens of weapons and other equipment and artifacts from the conflict.

• An M-16 military assault rifle split in two to show its inner workings.

• Kiosks featuring oral interviews with 65 S.C. Vietnam veterans. The interviews were conducted by historical consultant Fritz Hamer of Columbia, a former curator of history at the State Museum and a former staffer at the Relic Room.

• The uniform of U.S. Gen. William Westmoreland, a Spartanburg County native who served as U.S. forces commander in Vietnam. Westmoreland was Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1965 but became a divisive character later as the country soured on the war.

• The uniform of Admiral James Stockdale, the senior U.S. prisoner of war in Vietnam, a Medal of Honor recipient and Ross Perot’s running mate for vice president in 1992.

In addition, the museum’s ongoing outreach programs, such as Lunch and Learn, will focus on Vietnam. And the museum will host a series of guest speakers including Lloyd “Fig” Newton, a retired four-star Air Force general and South Carolinian who flew 269 missions during the war, including 79 over North Vietnam.

He was awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses and 17 Air Medals.

Most importantly, “I returned safely, unlike some of my colleagues, my friends,” Newton said.

‘A dirty and cruel war’

About 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam, and 58,220 perished. Those who survived often returned home to derision and hostility from those they had vowed to protect.

“This is a dirty and cruel war,” Flaherty wrote to a Mrs. Wyatt prior to his death in March 1969, “but I’m sure people will understand the purpose … even though many of us might not agree.”

Flaherty’s letters have special, international significance.

In 2012, 40 years after Flaherty was killed, the letters were turned over to U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The letters were delivered to Panetta in return for the diary of Vietnamese soldier Vu Dinh Doan.

Included in the transfer were letters written by two other American soldiers killed in Vietnam.

They were the first exchange of documents between the two governments since the end of the conflict in the 1970s.

“He decided to enlist in the Army and go fight for his country in Vietnam, and he didn’t make it back,” Kenneth Cannon of Prosperity, Flaherty’s uncle, said at the time. “It was very hard to take. It was hard. ...

“He never let us know how afraid and scared he was,” Martha Gibbons, Flaherty’s sister-in-law, said at the time. “He was in danger. We knew it was bad. We just didn’t know how bad, I guess.”

Long history

The Relic Room was founded by the S.C. General Assembly in 1896 as a repository for artifacts from what is officially titled The War of Rebellion. It was intended to house the most significant artifacts from South Carolina’s participation in the Civil War, particularly battle flags, most scarred and tattered, being returned to the state from Union soldiers, institutions and northern governments as an act of reconciliation.

It is the third-oldest museum in South Carolina, behind the Charleston Museum and the Gibbes Museum of Art, and one of only 14 of the state’s 100 or so museums to be accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

The Relic Room originally was housed in the S.C. State House, in a cloak room off the S.C. Senate. The museum relocated to the War Memorial Building adjacent to the University of South Carolina in the mid-twentieth century.

In 1998, the museum became an agency of the South Carolina Budget and Control Board and in 2002 moved to the Columbia Mills Building — the first all-electric mill in the United States. It is located at the end of a wide hall opposite the entrance to the State Museum.

The museum expanded in 2007, converting the old mill’s former cistern into a new gallery to host special, large-scale exhibitions, such as the Vietnam presentation. Other major exhibitions have included:

• In 2007, a comprehensive exhibit on World War I;

• In 2011, an exhibition of battle flags from individual companies during the Civil War;

• In 2013, South Carolina at the battle of Gettysburg;

• In 2015, the 150th anniversary of the burning of Columbia;

• In 2017, paintings and artifacts from 19th century artist Xanthus Smith.

The museum also has an expansive archive collection available to researchers by appointment, such as the financial papers of Confederate purchasing agent Colin J. McRae, materials from South Carolinians who served in the Spanish-American War, images of South Carolina troops stationed on the Mexican Border in 1916 and the collection of the crew of the WWII light cruiser, the USS Columbia CL-56.

The museum’s “Confederate” moniker belies the fact that it is a bona fide, first-class, accredited museum housing precious artifacts from the Revolutionary War through Iraq and Afghanistan, most donated to the museum by families and service members for perpetual protection.

Fraught with controversy

By museum standards, the Relic Room is tiny, only 13,000 square feet of exhibition space compared to the State Museum’s 95,000 square feet of exhibition space. Yet, the museum is responsible for about 8,000 historical artifacts, only 45% of which relate to the Civil War.

And the vast majority go unseen. “We have no space,” museum director Roberson said.

The museum is tucked away and understated. “Historians like a quiet life, and usually they get it,” British documentary filmmaker Simon Schama once said.

And the museum fastidiously avoids the minefield of partisan politics.

“We don’t do politics,” Roberson said. “We let the artifacts tell the story.”

But in 2015, the museum was thrust into the national spotlight when, in the aftermath of the mass murder of nine Black parishioners of the Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, the Confederate flag was lowered on the State House ground.

And as cameras and press from around the world looked on, there stood Roberson, sweating in a dark suit in the July heat, receiving with white-gloved hands a modern nylon banner neither Confederate in the historical sense nor a relic of military significance.

They also handed him a big challenge.

Strong mandates, no funding

The State House Confederate flag was to be housed from then on in the Relic Room. The General Assembly placed a raft of specifications and requirements for displaying the flag and funded none of them. But the museum did its duty, storing the flag in a paper-lined, acid-free box alongside actual Civil War relics until arrangements could be made for its display.

(The Confederate flags removed from above the rostrum in the Senate and House and from above the State House have been displayed in the State Museum since their removal in 2000.)

Relic Room officials first rolled out a $3.5 million plan that would have fulfilled the state’s mandates for the flag, building an entire new wing in adjacent, vacant mill space, which would have allowed many flags and articles in storage to also be displayed.

That plan was rejected by the General Assembly as too expensive, and a follow-up, bare-bones $350,000 plan to fulfill the mandate was not acted upon.

Eventually, the museum simply framed the flag and displayed it in the main gallery at its own expense, awaiting further direction and funding.

The museum’s attendance dropped from 24,694 in fiscal year 2015-2016 to 19,469 the next. Then an extended closure due to a broken water main and the advent of COVID-19 further lowered that total to 11,808.

But as the flag controversy waned, the flood damage was repaired and COVID restrictions relaxed, attendance rebounded to a near-record 27,142 last fiscal year.

Museum officials hope the new Vietnam War exhibit will continue to boost visitation. And, more importantly, they hope it will shine a light on the sacrifice of the service members who fought in the war and explore the ramifications it has on our lives today.

“It’s been 50 years, so for many Vietnam is ancient history,” said Hamer, the historical consultant. “But it still has an undercurrent in our foreign policy today. How did we get involved in it? How did people survive in those difficult conditions? We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past.”

This story was originally published November 10, 2022 at 5:30 AM.