Two of the last American news correspondents out of Vietnam Associated Press special correspondent George Esper and Pulitzer Prize-winning special foreign correspondent for the AP Peter Arnett, will share their memories of Americas longest war with residents of the Kanawha Valley Monday, Feb. 21, at a 7:30 p.m. forum in the Charleston Marriott Ballroom.

Vietnam Revisited: Twenty-five Years After the Fall of Saigon marks the second in a free Festival of Ideas series being sponsored by The Charleston Gazette and West Virginia University.

In November, the sponsors brought Capitol Stepsa Washington-based satirical troupe to Charleston to perform before a full house at the University of Charleston Auditorium.

While the Nov. 10 event was full of rapid-fire skits and laughter, the Feb. 21 forum takes on a more serious tone as the world acknowledges the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The historic event occurred April 21, 1975.

Esper, who has been with AP for more than 40 years and is one of only a select few to hold the title of special correspondent, covered the Vietnam War from 1965-75. He is the author of The Eyewitness History of the Vietnam War, a book focusing on the human side of the crisis.

This semester, the former Saigon bureau chief and award-winning journalist is teaching at the WVU Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism as the first recipient of the Shott Chair in Journalism.

A 1953 graduate of the School of Physical Education, Esper happened into his writing career while managing and tutoring the football team and working in the WVU Sports Information Department. He wrote a column for the student newspaper, The Daily Athenaeum, and worked as a sportswriter for the Morning Herald in his hometown of Uniontown, Pa. He joined The Pittsburgh Press shortly after graduation and the AP Pittsburgh bureau in 1958.

While with AP, Esper also covered the war in Iraq and U.S. peace missions in Somalia and Bosnia. He returned twice to Vietnam in the 1980sand plans another in spring 2000to report on American veterans who returned to Vietnam to visit their old battlefields and heal old wounds. He also wrote a series of stories on Amerasian children and Americans missing in action.

The Communist government that forced Esper to leave Saigon in 1975 allowed the AP to return permanently in 1993. This time Esper returned to Hanoi to reopen the AP Bureau. He remained there as bureau chief for a year before returning to home base in Boston in 1994.

A member of WVUs Academy of Distinguished Alumni and PE Hall of Fame, Esper has also covered high profiles stories in the U.S. including Floridas Hurricane Andrew, the Great

Midwest floods, the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the People’s Temple

murder-suicides in Jonestown, Guyana, and presidential primaries.

Considered by his peers as the”Canadian Mountie”of the AP because he always gets his story, Esper has worked with some of the most respected and celebrated journalists in the world, including fellow panelist Arnett.

Arnett is currently with ForeignTV.com, a website devoted to international news, but is probably best known as an AP special correspondent and, most recently, CNN senior correspondent.

He and Esper covered the Vietnam War, refusing the safety of evacuation and were among only a handful of journalists who remained in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon.

His consistency in reporting won him more than 50 prestigious journalism awards in both print and broadcast, including the Pulitzer Prize, an Emmy and several Ace Awards.

His philosophy as a journalist is summed up in his account of his career as a correspondent through the Gulf War, Live From the Battlefield.

Arnett began his journalism career on the daily Southland Times in his native New Zealand, as a copy boy who grew up listening to short wave radio reports on World War II and the early Cold War years. Quickly mastering the trade, the worked on a political weekly and a sensational tabloid before traveling to Southeast Asia to try his hand at crisis reporting.

In Thailand he was hired by the Bangkok World and began stringing for AP and the London Daily Express.

He soon accepted a job as AP correspondent in Jakarta, Indonesia, and later Vietnam, where he worked alongside Esperknown as”two of the best reporters of the war.”He, like Esper, stayed the course for the duration of the Vietnam War, and has returned to Vietnam several times while preparing broadcasts and writing books.

Afterwards, Arnett was based in APs New York City bureau, covering presidential elections and many national events such as the Atlanta child murders and the Iranian hostage crisis.

He joined CNN in 1981 as a national correspondent just months after the cable network went on the air, and in 1986 was CNNs bureau chief in Moscow and later in Israel. He then jumped at the chance to cover the Iraqi conflict with Bernard Shaw and John Holliman in their exclusive coverage of the first 17 hours of Saddam Husseins bombing of Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War. He left CNN in May 1999 after 18 years with the network.

The Feb. 21 forum will be moderated by interim dean of the School of Journalism Christine Martin, a prestigious 1999 Freedom Forum Award recipient. Professor Martin also chairs the news editorial sequence and is director of the writing program.

“This reunion of the last two reporters to leave Vietnam is truly significant,”Martin said.”As we mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the legacy of that long war continues to shape our news, our history and our lives. George Esper and Peter Arnett covered Vietnam, from nearly start to beyond finish staying five weeks after the fall. They are the witnesses to the war, and the keepers of its sad and still baffling history. This unique reunion brings us all closer to seeing and understanding Vietnam and its quarter-of-a-century impact.”

Admission to the Feb. 21 forum at the Mariott is free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis.