Robert Wideman was a Navy pilot during the Vietnam War. The now Fort Collins resident, attended a veterans’ group breakfast in Loveland at Mimi’s Café a few years ago. Being a member of that group, I attended regularly. On Wideman’s first visit, he introduced himself. He stated as he stood before the group, that he spent more than six years in Vietnam.
That raised some eyebrows and made us sit up in our seats. Most military spend one tour (a year), with some doing a second tour. On rare occasions, I think three times was possible. Wideman went on to say most of his six years in country were at the “Hanoi Hilton” as the prisoners of war used to call it. We all understood.
I met Wideman for coffee a couple of weeks after the veteran’s get-together. At the time, he said he had plans to write a book on his experiences. He did in fact collaborate with a writer to produce a book in 2016. The title is “Unexpected Prisoner Memoirs of a Vietnam POW.” He wrote it with Carla Lopez Lee.
