Street View is a monthly column taking a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
At age 19, Sam Creed was one of 1.7 million people drafted to serve in the Vietnam War — and one of the 2.7 million people who served in Vietnam between 1961 and 1975. But when he returned to America after his time in the Air Force, reactions weren’t what he expected.
Creed says that while he was at Arkansas State University, a professor called on him in class while he was in his uniform. “He said that it was my fault that I was in Vietnam and that I should’ve protested and gone to Canada.”
“We were called baby-killers,” Creed says. “Most of us just quit talking about being Vietnam veterans.”
This feeling persisted for many years. But after a former prisoner of war reached out from Nashville’s chapter of the Vietnam Veterans Association, Creed worked to create Vietnam Veterans Association Chapter 240 in Sumner County.
Amid discussions of some sort of local monument in the early 1980s, Creed had an idea: renaming a stretch of Tennessee State Route 386 between Goodlettsville and Hendersonville. Construction on the new highway was underway. What if the state named it in honor of Vietnam War veterans? He proposed the idea to the other veterans in Chapter 240. “They were exuberant about it,” he says.
The naming process was a grassroots endeavor, but it gained traction quickly, Creed says, moving from the Sumner County Commission to the Tennessee Department of Transportation to the state. The road was officially dedicated as Vietnam Veterans Boulevard in 1987. Creed and his 8-year-old daughter were the first people to drive on the new road, followed closely by then-Gov. Ned McWherter.
These days, the legacy of a road like Vietnam Veterans is complex. While many veterans feel it offers long-overdue recognition, the war itself was deeply unpopular: By 1973, 61 percent of Americans believed that sending troops into the country was a mistake. The U.S. lost roughly 58,000 troops in the war; the Vietnamese lost more than 3 million people. Humans, animals and the natural environment are still feeling the devastating effects of the U.S. military’s use of Agent Orange, and many veterans continue to suffer from PTSD.
For many veterans, there was a tension between the political and the personal — a war that was chosen for them by the government, and their personal experiences coming back from that war. For Creed, the way forward was clear: “We would not allow another group of veterans to come home to what we did.”
After Vietnam Veterans Boulevard was named, Creed spent much of his life educating people about Vietnam, through school visits and later as a high school history teacher. He toured schools talking about the veteran experience with a truckful of props, says his daughter Allison Steinquest.
In 2012, Chapter 240 worked with the Tennessee General Assembly to add 25 new signs to the road, each with the name of a Sumner County resident who died in the war.
But after nearly 40 years, a new sign has emerged on Vietnam Veterans Boulevard: a sign reading “Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway,” honoring the late right-wing influencer and founder of conservative nonprofit Turning Point USA. While the signage didn’t officially rename the highway (it is technically an honorary marker), its message hit Creed hard. He says the state legislature and Tennessee Department of Transportation didn’t consult with any veterans before the sign went up.
“It feels like we’ve been stepped on again,” he says. (Creed tells the Scene, however, that he does not oppose Kirk’s beliefs or the messages of Turning Point USA.)
The sign placement is certainly odd. Kirk — who was killed in September of last year — was not from Tennessee, he did not have any apparent connections to Sumner County, and he never served in the armed forces. One of his most famous connections to local issues is also fraught at best: At a Turning Point USA event just a week after Nashville’s Covenant School shooting, Kirk told the crowd, “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
But views on Kirk aside, Creed — and other local veterans — just want the sign somewhere else. “It breaks up the whole point of Vietnam Veterans Boulevard,” he tells the Scene.
State Rep. Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville), who sponsored the bill for the Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway sign, has called Kirk a “patriot” who “died exercising the very freedom that veterans have served to protect.” He told Fox 17: “This does not change the name of the highway or take away from the service and sacrifice of those who have fought to protect the freedom of speech for all Americans.”
Initially, it didn’t look like the sign would move. Creed himself was skeptical, telling the Scene that the veterans’ group did not have the political power to do anything about it — despite other Vietnam veterans telling the state legislature to “take this bill [memorializing Kirk] and put it really where the sun doesn’t shine.”
Sumner County War Memorial
But on July 7, things changed. Steinquest says Creed got a call from Garrett, who promised to move the sign somewhere else.
Steinquest, who spent a lifetime watching her dad educate people about the war, wants people to keep thinking about what Vietnam Veterans Boulevard means — a way to remember Vietnam. “I hope people keep learning,” she says. “And I hope people don’t let it just be a story in the books.”
“American history is worth knowing,” Creed says. “Vietnam was a very politicized war, but we were just young men doing our duty,” says Creed.
“We were young,” he tells the Scene. “We were very young.”
Garrett’s office has not responded to the Scene’s request for comment on his plans to move the Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway sign.
