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From: Jim Price 156th Avn. Co. Can Tho Oct '66 - May '68
jprice@mail.ifas.ufl.edu
Date: 2/28/2003
Time: 2:45:08 PM
Remote Name: 169.139.246.74
Friends chuckle at realizing the irony of my connection to Vietnam and a strawberry. Maybe some of you Can Tho guys can appreciate the connection. Here it is: I was a guard for the 156th Aviation Co. in Can Tho from October 1966 until May of 1968. Now I work for the University of Florida in agricultural research and am involved in a team that develops new varieties of strawberries for Florida's $170 million strawberry industry. Our varieties are suitable for Florida and much of the tropical and subtropical world. We developed a variety we named 'Sweet Charlie' after Charlie Howard, then recently deceased, who made the original genetic cross and also named it after the fact that its fruit are exceptionally sweet. I checked recent world-wide sales and found that in one year 20,000 'Sweet Charlie' transplants were sold in Vietnam. I have to imagine that somewhere in Vietnam there is an about 55 year old former Viet Cong growing our 'Sweet Charlies' and concluding that my team and I named them after him as a gesture of reconciliation.
Jim Price 156th Avn. Co. Can Tho Oct '66 - May '68 jprice@mail.ifas.ufl.edu