As soft Vietnamese music floated through the second-floor classroom at Marquette Elementary School, Laina Breidenbach was busily drawing a picture of her home.

"I would like to show the kids in Vietnam where I live and how I live," said the soft-spoken 9-year-old, as she sketched a front yard tree. "Then they could show me how they live. And then, I think, we would see that we are not so different and, I think, we could be friends."

Thanks to an exchange program organized by Madisonian Mike Boehm, a Vietnam War veteran who has become an international leader in efforts to build peaceful relations between the United States and its former foe, Laina may well have an opportunity to realize her dream. Boehm has organized an "Art Penpal" program in which children in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai are exchanging drawings with children living in Madison.

Last week, he brought pictures of farms, fishing boats and village scenes, which had been drawn by Vietnamese children, to show Madison third- and fourth-graders. And the Madisonians drew pictures of this city that Boehm will take with him when he returns to My Lai later this year. The Art Penpal program is a small but vital component in a broad effort by Boehm and a growing group of prominent allies to forge a relationship between the people of My Lai and the people of Madison that few could have imagined 30 years ago. Since March 16, 1968, the name "My Lai" has been synonymous with the horrors of war. It was on that day that American soldiers, led by Lt. William Calley, massacred 504 Vietnamese men, women and children. Calley was eventually tried, convicted and jailed for his actions; the war ended and most people in the United States and Vietnam began to try to put the memories of what had happened in My Lai behind them. But Boehm, who has visited Vietnam frequently in recent years, has long believed that the former warriors must recognize that true peace will only come through a process of reconciliation not just between former warriors but between whole communities, and even nations.

Boehm hopes the Peace Park, which will be dedicated on March 16, 1998 -- the 30th anniversary of the massacre -- will help the people of Vietnam and America finally heal the wounds of war.

Boehm's effort has drawn unprecedented international support. The advisory committee for the My Lai Peace Park now includes such authors as Gore Vidal, Alice Walker, Studs Terkel and David Halberstam, along with former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, Jonathan Schell and Gloria Steinem. Former US Sen. George McGovern has leant his name to the cause, saying, "The Vietnamese-American Peace Park is a wonderfully healing concept, worthy of the support of all who wish to convert the tragedy of misunderstanding and conflict to cooperation and peace."
A prize endorsement for the project comes from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Says Boehm, "I very much admired what Archbishop Tutu has done in South Africa with the truth and reconciliation commission, which is seeking to heal the wounds that were inflicted by the apartheid regime. I've always thought that what they are doing is what we should be doing here in the United States -- as a way of healing the wounds inflicted by Vietnam. So one night, when I was lying awake in bed trying to figure out how we were going to pay for the Peace Park, I just decided to call South Africa. So I called at 3 a.m. our time and I just started tracking him down."

The energy that Boehm, a carpenter, brings to his full-time volunteer venture is inspired by a belief that it is indeed possible for former combatants to discover a common ground of mutual respect and cooperation. "When people think of My Lai, they think of piles of bodies. I'm trying to break people away from that image," Boehm said. "One of the reasons we haven't dealt with these painful memories is because we feel overwhelmed by them. It's too much for us. But kids can see beyond the past better than we adults can. That's why I've tried so hard to involve them." And involve them he has.

The memorandum describing the Peace Park, which was signed by Boehm and the local representatives in My Lai, envisions "a place for children to entertain and a place where people can meditate over the past with its suffering and losses and also to hope for a better future."

Boehm sees the forging of warm relations between the children of My Lai and Madison as a part of building that better future. He has spent hours with children in both communities, telling them about one another, and encouraging a communication that has taken the form of the drawings that are now being exchanged.

Kate Hagen, an art instructor at Marquette Elementary School, has invited Boehm into her classes, and she has been dazzled by the response of the children to his message. "Kids have a natural curiosity about other kids in far-off places," she says. "Mike is giving them an opportunity to follow that curiosity and to create something that is very special."

There was no denying the curiosity of the children at Marquette last week, as they peppered Boehm with questions about what games the children in My Lai play, and what kind of houses they live in, and what their parents do and what and what and what.

Boehm patiently answered each question, and then told the third-graders, "What the children in My Lai want to know is what you are like -- what things do you like to do, what do you like to eat, what games do you play?"

With that, the class was off and drawing. Jeffrey Sanders drew a picture of himself at a computer. Ben Altschul portrayed himself passing a football. Rachael Cooper did a self-portrait. And Boehm watched with delight as the children broke through what he calls "that separateness, that looking at other people as different, as less than us, that leads to the sort of violence that took place in My Lai.

"To achieve reconciliation, it's not enough to simply give economic aid," says Boehm. "Our lives are intertwined and we have to recognize that. One way to do it is to bring children together. That's how we prevent future My Lais."

To 8-year-old Rachel Rabson-Beeson's view, that is an entirely possible dream. As she finished her self-portrait, she said she knew that America and Vietnam once fought a bitter war that resulted in killings in places like My Lai.

"But that was a long time ago," she said. "Now we can be friends."

Mike Boehm, shown (top) with the children of My Lai, has been active in an international effort to build a Peace Park in that Vietnamese hamlet. One of the initiatives he has developed is an "Art Penpal" program in which the children of My Lai and Madison exchange drawings of themselves, their homes and their communities.