When George Banda met Ed, they were both young men serving in Vietnam.

“Hey, where you from?” Banda asked.

Ed, all freckles and blond hair, said, “I’m from Wisconsin.”

“Wisconsin?” Banda said. “Where?”

It turned out they were both from Milwaukee.

“We got to be real good friends,” Banda recalled later. “We had a lot of plans. He was going to buy a GTO and I was going to buy a Mustang when we got back, and we were going to drive up and down the street and have a good time. He was going to come to my cookouts, and we were going to go to Packer games. We were going to visit each other’s families.”

Banda continued: “It never happened. He died at 7:40 a.m. on May 6, 1970.”

That quote — and a striking current photo of Banda, who served as a combat medic in Vietnam from November 1969 to December 1970 — is part of an exhibit, “Back in the World: A Portrait Exhibit of Wisconsin Vietnam Veterans,” that kicks off with a Veterans Day presentation and reception Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the Chazen Museum of Art. The public is welcome.

The photo exhibit — which runs through Jan. 3 at the Chazen, and then will travel around the state — itself serves as a kickoff for an ambitious project recognizing Wisconsin’s Vietnam veterans, culminating with a weekend-long celebration at Lambeau Field in Green Bay in May.

That month will see the premiere of a Wisconsin Public Television (WPT) documentary, “Wisconsin Vietnam War Stories,” and there will also be a companion book published by the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Wednesday night’s event at the Chazen will include a talk by WPT staff photographer James Gill, who took the photos featured in the exhibit.

For Gill, who grew up in Milwaukee and has been with WPT in Madison since 1980, it’s a project with roots going back nearly a decade.

At the time, WPT was in the early stages of preparing a four-part documentary, “World War II Stories,” and Gill was asked to attend the video interviews with veterans and take some still photos for promotional purposes.

Gill’s photos and the veterans’ recollections — the photos were captioned with their quotes — were compelling enough that an exhibit was organized at the Pyle Center.

The World War II project was a significant success for WPT, and it sparked similar public television efforts in other states around the country. WPT soon embarked on a project with Wisconsin Korean War veterans. Now, the focus is Vietnam.

That makes it more personal for Gill and others involved in the project, like Mik Derks, the documentary producer who will moderate a panel discussion of Vietnam vets Wednesday night at the Chazen.

“We’re all from that era,” Gill said.

Gill traveled the state to get his photographs. He shot at a Veterans Center in Spooner and a restaurant in Viroqua. He rented a hotel room in De Pere where five veterans showed up almost simultaneously. They didn’t know each other, Gill said, but the photographer was impressed by how quickly they bonded. All these years later, they greeted one another with a simple, “Welcome home.”

He photographed a Madison vet, Sue Haack, who told a chilling story of being welcomed to Vietnam by a general who said, “Sue, sit down. You’re the daughter I never had. Your job in Vietnam is only going to be six months. The guy who had it before you had 10 days left. He went outside the hooch and shot himself.”

Haack’s job involved handling the dead, how and when they died, the letters home.

In the end, all the vets, those who returned and those who didn’t, share something that is not divisible. Banda, the Milwaukee medic, said his friend Ed is still with him.

“Whenever I go somewhere,” Banda said, “he’s there. I talk to him.”

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