ZIPPO SIGHTING: “‘Off the record,’ said Bradford Edwards, though
this seemed an odd thing to say when stating the obvious. ‘Off the
record, I’m a little obsessed with the Vietnam Zippo.'”

Thus opens a New York Times article datelined Ho Chi Minh City.
It appeared in the Times’ print and online edition, and we received
one of each.

Benjamin Yeager of Bradford dropped by with a clipping and Dike
Artley of Cary, N.C., sent us the electronic version which had been
forwarded to him by his daughter, Meredith Artley who lives in
Paris, France, and is the digital development director for the
International Herald Tribune and director of International Strategy
for the New York Times. Dick is a former resident of Derrick City,
and a graduate of BHS class of 1957.

Continuing with this story:

“Edwards, 52, is an American artist whose father was a fighter
pilot over Vietnam when he was a child, a distant, mythical figure.
Edwards missed the war himself but he spends most of his time now
in Vietnam and his obsession, obviously, has to do with more than
little silvery boxes.

“He collects the metal lighters by the hundreds; he studies
them, he celebrates them as tiny icons of the human condition. He
searches for deeper meanings in the epigrams carved into their
shiny sides by the American soldiers who left them behind.

“With grave whimsy, he turns them into art.”

Author Seth Mydans adds: “For 10 years, he said, he bought them
off the streets of Ho Chi Minh City where they were sold as
souvenirs until the supply of genuine wartime lighters ran
out.”

The story adds: “If Vietnam and his warrior father remain an
enigma to him, the answer, perhaps – if it is not blowing in the
wind – can be found scratched on the sides of Zippo lighters.

“In his obsessive art, Edwards has found scores of ways to
present the Zippos – more than 100, he says – using lacquer,
mother-of-pearl, silk screen printing, metal etching, stone
carving, graphite drawing, silver leaf, photography, mixed media
and more.

“With the help of Vietnamese masters in these arts, he has
arranged them in grids, created steel-plate poems with them,
photographed mass layouts of them from two stories up and used them
to build an oversize working abacus.

“It all means something. ‘The Zippos were the witnesses,’ he
said, ‘and I am simply the messenger.'”