Jerry and Edd Dyer

CROSSVILLE, Tenn. — Families and children, gripping little flags, listened for the loud hum of motorcycles and crowded shoulder to shoulder Saturday waiting for a homecoming 35 years in the making.

Many of the graying veterans walked spiritedly down the street, waving and accepting thanks. Others limped or hobbled with canes. They wore black leather and Army greens and held signs that read, “Never again will a group of veterans abandon another.”

Edgar Sherrill, 71, stood with his wife, Marilyn, and watched hundreds of motorcyclists speed past the crowd. It was a different mood, he said, from the last Vietnam veterans’ parade he remembers.

“I was a lieutenant in New York, and I marched in an 80-man parade and people threw water balloons at us from a fifth-story building,” said Mr. Sherrill, who served in the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1968. “I though it was awful.”

Despite Saturday’s chilly drizzle and charcoal sky, over 1,000 Vietnam veterans and hundred of onlookers gathered in this small town on the Cumberland Plateau to celebrate March 29 as Tennessee’s first official Vietnam Veterans Day.

Staff Photo by Allison Kwesell -- US Army Troops lead a tank down Crossville Tenn.'s Main Street during a parade to commemorate Vietnam Veterans Day in Tennessee. The parade and events were organized by the Vietnam Veterans organization of Cumberland County, Tenn.

Tennessee is the first state to name a day to mark Vietnam military service, and organizers of the event in Crossville said their parade was the first official homecoming celebration for Vietnam soldiers. An event honoring Vietnam veterans also was held in Soddy-Daisy on Saturday.

“We never got a homecoming,” said Scooter Dyer, the Crossville native who helped create the event. “We got spit at and called baby killers. This is our day from now on in Tennessee.”

Mr. Dyer and his friend, Dann Dunham, worked for over a year petitioning Gov. Phil Bredesen for the holiday and developing the two-day event.

As one of three brothers who served in Vietnam, Mr. Dyer, 60, said he became determined to honor Vietnam veterans when he attended the World War II memorial dedication in Washington, D.C., in 2004 and realized the importance of honoring military service.

Recognition offers closure and pride, he said, things he and his friends were not offered by the American public, which was embroiled in a political debate over Vietnam when the war ended in the early 1970s.

On Saturday, Mr. Dyer and his two brothers, Jerry and Edd, who stood near him during the parade, fought back tears watching the timid smiles of old soldiers and young cadets trying to walk in step.

“It breaks my heart,” said Jerry Dyer. “I took my uniform off in the plane (on the way back from Vietnam). Nobody wanted us at home.”

Charlie Hobbs, president of the Chattanooga chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, the largest chapter in Tennessee and third-largest in the country, attended the event with many Vietnam veterans from Chattanooga.

“The parade was really something emotional, seeing young people,” he said.

Afterward, the crowd moved to the Crossville Community Center where music and speakers were planned. Crafts and Vietnam War paraphernalia were sold out of tents around the center. In the mix of the crowd, tall men with tough leathery skin wrapped their arms around one another and called each other brother.

“Vietnam veterans have a unique camaraderie because of the lack of treatment,” he said. “That’s the way we feel about it. We’re just a big family.”