In March of this year, history teacher Zach Wood received a phone call from an unfamiliar number. Swiping up on the call, he soon heard the voice of a man with a thick New Jersey accent.
“Is this Zach Wood?” the voice asked.
Once Wood confirmed he had reached the right person, the voice introduced himself as Joe Belardo, a U.S. Army veteran who had served in the Vietnam War.
For Wood, this conversation was starting on familiar footing. Speaking with military personnel, especially veterans, has become a significant part of his life since 2020. It was then that he began interviewing veterans and posting their stories on his YouTube channel: Oral Histories with Combat Veterans of America. Belardo had gotten Wood’s contact info from one of his interview subjects: Lieutenant General Ron Christmas. But this conversation soon shifted into unexpected territory. Belardo was not calling to set up an interview. Instead, he was calling to invite Wood to be a keynote speaker at the Vietnam Veterans Reunion for the National Dusters, Quads, and Searchlights Association in Washington, D.C.
Since Wood was informed that he was requested to speak at the reunion in March, he had plenty of time for preparation, but with that time came a mounting panic as pressure to live up to expectations loomed.
“So that’s a build-up of about six months of research and preparation for traveling, expenses to be involved, but also what I was gonna say to these people about their experience in Vietnam to have it be monumental and moving,” Wood said. “How do I give a speech about their service that honors them but also honors those that are on the wall? How do I do that when I don’t have that military connection?”
Wood is considered a well-loved teacher at Davie High, known best for his outgoing personality and witty jokes. He admittedly has his less serious moments, but this doesn’t mean he takes the subject lightly. As a history teacher, Wood has a strong desire to educate himself and others on details of the past.
“For me, I look up to Vietnam veterans,” Wood said. “I don’t just study about them for my own passion, but I’ve brought it to the school now where I run a club. For me, being asked to speak in front of people that I look up to as heroes—it was, realistically, terrifying. I was worried that my speech wouldn’t match up or that maybe it wouldn’t live up to the expectations that they have.”
Wood’s love for history stems from childhood. While he was unable to serve in the military himself, his grandfather was a World War II veteran. He loved to hear his grandpa’s stories about World War II, even if he had heard them “a thousand times.” While his connection with his grandfather spurred a youthful passion for military history, he didn’t begin making connections with veterans outside of his usual circle until 2020 when COVID-19 hit.
“It took me six years before I started reaching out to Vietnam veterans,” Wood said. “I was teaching from home and I was very bored, so I went onto Facebook and I put out a message: ‘If there are any Vietnam veterans that would like to talk, I would like to listen.’”
As Wood continued to pursue his idea, he created a podcast: Veterans Talk: Oral History with Combat Veterans of America, as he also continued producing content for his YouTube channel. Initially focused on relaying the stories of Vietnam veterans, the channel eventually grew to include interviews with veterans of all kinds of military backgrounds. It was all this time spent talking with these men that put him on the list of General Christmas.
Wood arrived in D.C. on the day of the reunion and his much-anticipated speech where he met several people ranging from men who had seen combat to wives who were a driving force to push them to seek the help they needed after the war.
“I met what people would consider war heroes, people who got valor medals for what they did in combat,” Wood said. “But I also met people who, in their own words, ‘They just did their job.’ They didn’t go above and beyond. They did the job that they were told to do, that they were assigned to do, and that’s all that they did, and they came home.”
After meeting people and getting to know their stories, Wood made his swift entrance to the stage, where he quickly began charming the crowd with his humor and gratitude.
A multitude of men’s stories were told on stage. One in particular deeply impacted Wood as he met him in the early stages of his endeavor. His name is Bud Shoemaker.
Shoemaker is a man Wood met while searching for a Vietnam veteran as he was tasked with reaching out to a veteran and interviewing them for a project in a college class he took on the Vietnam War. Wood recounts that in the beginning stages of their interviews, Shoemaker began by telling him his funny stories, one, in particular, being a time Shoemaker recalled an anaconda slithering into his foxhole, startling him to the point where he began shooting off, causing everyone in the perimeter to begin shooting into the distance.
Wood then goes on to explain as the two continued to talk, Shoemaker began opening up about his experiences on a more serious level, such as when he was injured in April of 1968 in Operation Pegasus.
While Wood delivered the speech, there were moments he became emotional as he showed his true love and passion for keeping these key moments of the past unforgotten. As he explained to his audience, so much of his emotions about the war have come from the years he has spent learning the stories behind the statistics. Midway through his speech, he recounted a trip he made to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 2015 to illustrate the change he experienced in just a few short years.
“Seeing the wall at the time was very moving, but I didn’t have the connection I did,” Wood said. “I saw names, I understood the sacrifice, but I didn’t really know. When I went back in 2023, it was different. I no longer saw names. I saw faces. I recognized names because I had told their story.”
Near the end of the speech, Wood highlighted numerous accomplishments of the veterans in the rooms, emphasizing that through their actions, they had “saved hundreds, if not thousands, of countless lives.” He noted the reality that for all they had done and all they had achieved, they returned home to a country that did not welcome them back with open arms. He emphasized the critical role that so many have played in the lives of the veterans in the many years since this conflict.
While the opportunity to travel to this event and deliver this speech was undeniably memorable for Wood, the chief goal motivating all his work with veterans is to bring light to these men’s memories, ensuring their stories never go untold and they will not just be names engraved on a wall—they will be remembered as people.
