Jewett City — In his safe at home, folded in a small plastic bag, Darryll Stevens keeps a precious emblem from South Vietnam: a bright yellow flag with three red stripes across the center.

Stevens told the story of how he came into possession of that flag to more than 200 people Saturday afternoon.

He was a young man, 22 years old at the time, and a welder for the Navy. While leaning over the railing of his ship, a man on a South Vietnamese patrol boat, which was fueling up, gestured to Stevens to come over. Stevens looked left and right, and then headed to the boat. While on the boat he saw the South Vietnamese flag and asked if he could have it as a souvenir.

"He goes for an American cigarette," Stevens recalled. "So I gave him two packs of Marlboros and he gave me the flag. I folded it up and put it in my pocket, and never showed it to anyone on my boat."

Stevens was one of several speakers at a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the start of the war at the Jewett City chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

He said afterward that he wanted to share the story of the flag because "a lot of families have probably never seen the South Vietnamese flag," and he wanted to let them know that their family members who came home, or in some cases never made it home, would "never, ever be forgotten."

Stevens said he would like to find a good home to display the flag and keep it preserved. He's thought about giving it to the Smithsonian Institution.

Stevens' wife, Joanne, was present at Saturday's event, and said Stevens had the flag "folded up and put away all these years."

The couple married in January 1970, after Stevens returned from a tour in the Mediterranean. They wanted to get married so they could live together in Virginia, where Stevens was stationed. They moved to Virginia during a weekend at the end of March, and when Stevens returned to work that next Monday, he got orders to go to Vietnam. Stevens' father was working in Virginia at the time and he drove her home, Joanne Stevens recalled, "and I cried the whole way — right, Dad?" 

"Every last bit," Stevens' father, who was sitting next to Joanne, said.

David Greene, commander of the Jewett City VFW, organized Saturday's event to give back to his fellow Vietnam veterans. Greene served with the Army on a M42 Duster, a small lightweight tank, from 1966 to 1967.

"When I got home, I didn't want to have anything to do with anything regarding the Vietnam War," he said, until about 15 years ago when he got involved with the VFW. "I told myself to just get over it."

Alan Geer, who also served in the Army, was a company clerk "thinking that would keep me out of the Vietnam War." But one day while in Fort Jackson, S.C., for basic training, he and several others were led to a building where they were told they were going to Vietnam.

"Everybody ran outside and called mommy and daddy and said 'Oh, we're going over to Vietnam,'" Geer recalled.

While Geer didn't want to go to Vietnam, he doesn't regret it.

"I got to see that half of the world from a different perspective," he said.

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, spoke at the commemoration about how Vietnam veterans have paved the way at the Department of Veterans Affairs for the support that the veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq receive today.

Art Ivanick, an Army photographer during the war, took several thousand photographs while he was serving in Vietnam. And during Saturday's commemoration, he presented a slideshow of some of those images.

"It was a job that I just kind of fell into," he said. "I was waiting for orders and sketching in my sketch book, and a staff sergeant came up behind me and was watching me sketch and asked me if I wanted a job as an artist. And I said, 'Sure.'"

It became impossible, Ivanick explained, to sketch in the field. So, he started using a camera to take pictures to base his artwork on, and that work eventually expanded into photo assignments.

His favorite image from the slideshow is a picture of two Army men who were a part of the 82nd Airborne Division. The man in the forefront of the picture is significantly taller and bigger than the man walking behind him. The taller soldier has an M60 machine gun slung over his shoulder, while the shorter soldier has a full pack on his back.

"The big guy with the M60 looks like it was a walk in the park and the other guy looks like he's going to die if he takes another step," Ivanick said, remarking on the contrast between the two.

Of course there were more difficult moments to photograph — two minutes after taking a close-up shot of an Army helicopter taking off, he watched it crash after it failed to clear power lines. Everyone on board was killed.

The helicopter went down in the Saigon River, he said, where it was located several days later.

"I had the very unfortunate job of photographing the wreckage with the bodies tangled up in it," Ivanick said.

"You can imagine what bodies look like after three or four days in the water... That really sticks with me. I titled that picture 'Last Takeoff,'" he said.

While in Vietnam, Ivanick often felt like being a photographer and an artist was "not doing enough." But coming back and showing veterans his work, he said, "they seem to get so much out of seeing the pictures that I think it was worthwhile doing that job."

j.bergman@theday.com

Twitter: @JuliaSBergman