'Path to peace'

When Bob Simpson returned in 1971 from his final tour in Vietnam, he enrolled at a college near East Bridgewater, Mass., where he lived with his wife, Linda, and their growing family.

On Simpson's first day of classes, his professor asked the veterans in the room to identify themselves. When Simpson and half a dozen others raised their hands, they were met with hostility. Simpson recalls, “He said, 'Get out. You're all a bunch of baby killers and I won't teach you.'”

Finding a job was tough, too, until he met noted union leader Jimmy Hoffa. “We were teamsters, and he was the only guy who would hire Vietnam vets,” says Simpson, who served as a combat medic in the Army. “We didn't come back to a very friendly country.”