A Long-Overdue Tribute: The Dedication Of The Korean War Veterans Memorial

The Korean War is sometimes referred to as the "Forgotten War" because it seems to have receded from the national consciousness-eclipsed in large part by the continuing legacy of the Vietnam War. On July 27, the nation paid overdue tribute to the Americans who served in Korea when President Clinton and South Korean president Kim Young Sam helped dedicate the Korean War Veterans Memorial in the nation's capital.

The dedication came on the forty-second anniversary of the armistice that ended the hostilities on the Korean Peninsula in 1953. The Korean War began June 25, 1950, when seven North Korean infantry divisions invaded South Korea. Two days later. President Harry S. Truman authorized American air and naval operations. On July 1, the first American combat troops waded into battle. The brutal, bloody, bitter war came to a stalemate on July 27, 1953, when the warring sides signed the armistice.

Some 5.7 million Americans served in the military during the official Korean War "conflict period." About 1.5 million American men and women served in-country, fighting alongside troops from the Republic of Korea and 15 other nations under the umbrella of the United Nations. More than 33,600 Americans were killed in action; some 20,600 died in accidents and from other noncombat causes. More than 103,000 Americans were wounded in action. The Department of Defense lists 8,177 Americans still missing in action and unaccounted for in Korea; 389 American POWs remain unaccounted for. Nearly 226,000 South Korean troops were killed on the battlefield.

The armistice that was signed 42 years ago did not completely end hostilities on the Korean Peninsula. "It's the only war that isn't over," Greg Player, a spokesman for the Korean War Veterans Memorial Advisory Board, said in an interview. "It still goes on today. There are still troops on the DMZ. There's no true peace. We lost a guy this year, shot down. So the war continues. It's just kind of lingering."

On October 28,1986, Congress passed a law creating a presidential commission to coordinate the building of a memorial to "honor members of the armed forces of the United States who served in the Korean War, particularly those who were killed in action, are still listed as missing in action, or were held as prisoners of war."

The commission, made up of a dozen noncompensated members, fulfilled its duties. The group found a site for the memorial in the nation's capital called Ash Woods. It sits on the other side of the Reflecting Pool from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and near the Lincoln Memorial.

On June 14,1989, the commission selected a memorial design submitted by four Pennsylvania State University architects. The design was chosen during a national competition that drew more than 1,000 entries. The centerpiece of the memorial is a collection of 19 statues of battle-clad combat troops that seem to be moving across a triangular landscape toward an American flag.

The commission raised more than $17 million in private donations to pay for the memorial's construction. Most of the money came from American Korean War veterans and from Korean-American businesses. A special Korean War commemorative silver dollar produced by the U.S. Mint raised $6 million.

Ground was broken for the memorial on June 14,1992. The 19 soldiers, who represent all of the services and ethnic backgrounds of Americans who fought in Korea, are the work of sculptor Frank Gaylord. The memorial also features a 150-foot-long, highly polished granite wall etched with thousands of images engraved by graphic artist Louis Nelson from National Archives photos of support troops. Among those depicted are airmen, nurses, chaplains, artillerymen, sailors, tank drivers, supply personnel, mechanics, and cooks.

Inscribed on a large granite boulder at the memorial's entrance are the words "Our Nation Honors Her Sons and Daughters Who Answered the Call to Defend a Country They Did Not Know and a People They Had Never Met- Korea, 1950-53." The memorial also includes a reflecting pool encircling the flag pole and surrounded by a grove of trees and benches for visitors. An interactive, computerized listing of the war's KlAs, MIAs, and POWs is available to visitors.

The dedication came nearly 13 years after the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial-a situation that reflects the "forgotten" nature of the Korean War. Unlike the Korean War, the war in Vietnam became the most controversial overseas war ever fought by this country. It spawned a large antiwar movement and led to a momentous generational cultural cleavage. Vietnam, the first "rock 'n' roll war," has spawned thousands of books, dozens of movies, numerous plays, and one Broadway musical.

Vietnam forever will be associated with the decade of the 1960s and the tumultuous political and social changes that took place. Korea was fought during the 1950s, without rock and roll, without any type of broad antiwar movement, in an era when the generations did not go to war against each other over the merits of American participation in an undeclared war.

There have been very few Korean War films or plays. The volume of Korean War literature is minuscule compared with the literature of Vietnam-or that of World War II or the American Civil War, for that matter.

On the other hand, the Korean War never has been a "forgotten" war to the nation's 4.5 million Korean-era veterans-especially in the last decade. "At first, everybody just wanted to forget," Greg Player said. "And now, we're all in our 40s and 50s, and we want to remember."

"We, who were there, remember," said Korean War veteran Franklin Kestner in the introduction to his Korean War memoir. The Last Man.

The 1982 dedication and instant popularity of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial turned out to be an important factor in helping Americans remember the forgotten war by creating a national memorial to those who fought in Korea. The creation of the Wall, Player said, was the impetus for getting the Korean memorial off the ground. "Korea was very similar to the Vietnam War [in that] it was a 'conflict' and not a war," he added. "Once the Vietnam Veterans Memorial went up, it was a catalyst and really launched the Korean War Memorial."

The Wall also spurred another group of American war veterans into action on the national memorial front. The next memorial to be dedicated in Washington, DC, will be the World War II Veterans Memorial. Scheduled dedication date: sometime in 1998.



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The Last Full Measure of Devotion

One of the first was built in 1971 by a bereaved father on his own land, with his own funds, in a windswept valley deep in the mountains of northern New Mexico. The most famous was built in 1982 by a determined group of Vietnam veterans and their supporters on a 2.2-acre tract donated by the United States Congress in "the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial in the nation's capital. Hundreds of others-at least 500-have been built in state capitals, county seats, on city squares, town plazas, military bases, and college campuses in all 50 states, on Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and in several foreign countries.

We are talking, of course, about memorials to those- living and dead-who served in Vietnam, another noteworthy chapter in the legacy of the nation's longest and most controversial overseas war. When, how, and why America came to honor those who served in Vietnam is an instructive part of the ongoing saga of the impact of the Vietnam War on American society.

It is not widely known, but Americans publicly remembered those who served in Vietnam while the war was still being fought. In the summer of 1966, for example, the city of Chicago officially named a 10.5-acre park on Lake Michigan for a local hero: 18-year-old Army Pfc. Milton Lee Olive III, a Medal of Honor winner who died in Vietnam in 1965. The city subsequently named a junior college and a portion of the mammoth McCormick Place Convention Center in honor of the former 173rd Airborne trooper who lost his life smothering a grenade in what Olive's platoon commander called "the most incredible display of selfless bravery I ever witnessed."

Other early efforts include the Veterans Day 1966 dedication of a memorial in Grass Valley, California, to honor Gary Ames Miller, a local Marine who died in the war. That memorial, consisting of a plaque set in a round core of hard rock, is dedicated to Miller and to all Vietnam veterans. In December 1967, the citizens of Wentzville, a small town in eastern Missouri, strung a 30-foot tree with lights to honor the town's military men serving in Vietnam.

On September 15,1968, when it came time to name its new football stadium, Dunedin High School in Florida choose to honor 13 former students killed in the war. Dunedin H.S. Memorial Stadium was dedicated that day with marble plaques engraved with the 13 names. Before the war was over, nine more names were added.

An engraved stone dedicated November 11, 1968, at Maynard Evans High School in Orlando, Florida, honors 18 men from Maynard who died in Vietnam. A simple gravestone, inscribed "Died for Their Country," was placed in front of Maryland's North Carroll High School in 1971 to honor four graduates who died in the war.

One of the first of dozens of on-base military memorials honoring Vietnam veterans became a reality on May 29, 1968, when Florida's Eglin Air Force Base dedicated the 23-acre Memorial Lake to USAF personnel killed in the war. In 1969, the Algoma Optimist Club in Algoma, Wisconsin, put up a brick monument and flagstaff at the intersection of two state highways and dedicated the structure to that town's residents who served in Vietnam.

The most famous of the early Vietnam veterans memorials, at Angel Fire, New Mexico, was christened the Vietnam Veterans Peace and Brotherhood Chapel by Dr. Victor Westphall, who built it with family funds on family property in 1971 as a tribute to his son, Marine lieutenant Victor David Westphall III, killed in Vietnam in 1968. Now known as the DAV Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Angel Fire's gleaming, white-winged chapel sits on a hill in the shadow of 13,000-foot Wheeler Peak. Also on the site is a modem, 6,000-square-foot visitors center housing a large display of war memorabilia, a small library, and an audio-visual display about the monument. Dr. Westphall, now 79, lives on the premises.

In 1971, Westphall was turned down when he went to his state and local governments for help with a memorial to Vietnam veterans. He was not alone. One of the many unfortunate consequences of the divisive national debate over the Vietnam War was the nation's general indifference-mixed with hostility- toward those who took part in the fighting. As all Vietnam veterans know, that woeful state of affairs lasted until the early 1980s.

Novelist Philip Caputo expressed the feelings of many veterans in the form of a cri de coeur to his friend, Lt. Walter Neville Levy, a fellow Marine who was killed in Vietnam in September 1965. "As I write this 11 years after your death, the country for which you died wishes to forget the war in which you died," Caputo wrote in his memorable 1977 memoir, A Rumor of War. "Its very name is a curse. There are no monuments to its heroes, no statues in small-town squares and city parks, no plaques, nor public wreaths, nor memorials. For plaques and wreaths and memorials are reminders, and they would make it harder for your country to sink into the amnesia for which it longs. It wishes to forget, and it has forgotten."

The amnesia began to lift in the early 1980s. The prime catalyst for the change-in which the nation began in earnest to separate the warrior from the war-was the overwhelmingly positive reception the nation gave to the American hostages who returned from Iran in January 1981. The national embrace of those hostages caused many Americans to reexamine their less-than-accepting views of Americans who served in Vietnam.

Two months later, the American Legion finally got around to honoring Vietnam veterans. At March 16,1981, ceremonies at Arlington National Ceremony, the Legion's national commander presented the organization's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal, to those who died in Vietnam. That event marked the first time any of the nation's big, old-line veterans organizations officially recognized those who served in Vietnam.

Six months later, on Veterans Day 1981, residents of South Boston dedicated a black stone monument bearing the names of the 25 men from that blue-collar neighborhood who were killed in the war. The dedication was officially recognized by President Reagan and by all five branches of the military-another first.

A handful of state and local memorials went up in 1982. Then, on Veterans Day of that year, came the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial-the Wall-on the Mall in Washington, DC. The memorial's widely publicized dedication, which took place during an emotional, five-day "National Salute to Vietnam Veterans," served to heal wounds of the war and to enhance the image of Vietnam veterans.

The Wall, which quickly became one of the country's most popular tourist attractions, spawned a national "urge to install reminders of the past," wrote architectural critic Jane Holtz Kay in The New York Times in March 1989. The "memorialization of America," as Kay put it, included tributes in granite and bronze to musicians, writers, athletes, politicians, astronauts, and other revered figures.

It also included an explosion of memorials built to honor Vietnam veterans. "I came back from [the Wall's dedication in 1982] dedicated to putting up a memorial to our area service people," former VVA Chapter 79 president Ned Foote told The VVA Veteran. As was the case in many areas of the country, Foote and other VVA members were instrumental in conceiving, funding, and building a memorial-in this case, the Adirondack Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which was dedicated at the Adirondack Community College in Glens Falls, New York, on November 2, 1986. Foote echoes the sentiments of many of those involved in building memorials when he says the dedication of his local memorial was "the most moving experience of our lives."

A survey released in November 1986 by the I Project on the Vietnam a Generation uncovered 126 memorials to Vietnam veterans. The survey found that 27 of the
memorials were put up before the Wall was dedicated; 61 were built in the three years after the Wall's dedication; and 38 were scheduled to be built. Today, more than seven years since that survey came out, scores of other memorials have been dedicated.

It would take several issues of this newspaper to describe the hundreds of memorials to Vietnam veterans that have gone up in the last 11 years. So what follows is a brief, selective look at some state and local efforts, many of which have involved the active participation of VVA members.

You can find memorials to Vietnam veterans in all fifty states. There are eleven in Idaho alone, including the Vietnam POW/MIA Memorial, a sculpted bronze eagle dedicated July 4, 1976. State memorials are in place or in the planning stages in nearly all the states. Ground-breaking for one of the latest, Hawaii's state memorial for veterans of the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, took place July 27, 1993, at the Hawaiian State Capitol. What will be one of the most ambitious state memorials-the $5.6 million New Jersey Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Holmdel- will be dedicated on Veterans Day 1994.

Perhaps the most celebrated state memorial is California's imposing, 3,750-square-foot state edifice that was dedicated December 10, 1988, across from the State Capitol Building in Sacramento. A group of veterans, spearheaded by double-amputee Herman Woods, came up with the idea for this memorial in 1983. The state legislature provided the land, and $2.2 million was raised from the public.

The California Vietnam Veterans Memorial, designed by Michael Larson (a Marine Vietnam veteran) and Thomas Chytrowski, is multifaceted: Its main feature is the listing of the names and hometowns of 5.822 servicemen and women killed or missing in action in Vietnam. A series of bronze reliefs line the inner walls of the memorial, which is configured in the shape of broken concentric circles. Inside is a bronze figure of a combat soldier sitting on his helmet, cradling an M-16, and looking up from a letter he is reading.

The imaginative Kentucky Vietnam Veterans Memorial-a 24-foot giant sundial whose shadow falls on the engraved names of the 1,065 Kentuckians who died in Vietnam on the anniversary of their deaths-has become one of the state's most visited landmarks since it was dedicated on Veterans Day 1988. Designed by Helm Roberts, the monument is located a block from the State Capitol building in Frankfort. In front of the sundial, where the shadow does not fall, are listed the names of 22 Kentucky MIAs.

The Oregon State Living Memorial is located in Portland on the grounds of the 12-acre Hoyt Arboretum in the shadow of Mount Hood in Portland. Dedicated on
Veterans Day 1987, the memorial consists of a winding walkway along which are scattered five alcoves representing different periods of the war. Besides listing the names of the Oregonians who died in Vietnam, the panels also tell stories of life in the state during each period. The memorial includes spacious lawns, a central outdoor room, and a final alcove listing the names of 40 Oregon-born MIAs.

Perhaps the most famous of the hundreds of city memorials is the 70-foot-long, 16-foot-high, New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a translucent glass block structure containing etched excerpts from 83 letters written by or sent to soldiers in Vietnam. The half-million-dollar memorial, built with private funds, sits near the southern tip of Manhattan Island. It was dedicated during two days of ceremonial events. May 6 and 7, 1985, that included a ticker-tape parade honoring Vietnam veterans.

As part of its fund-raising activities, the New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission, which was set up in 1982, published Dear America: Letters Home From Vietnam (Norton, 1985). That book was the basis for the memorable, award-winning documentary film of the same name that appeared in 1988 on Home Box Office and in movie theaters around the country. Part of the proceeds from that film went to the NY Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission.

Another noteworthy city memorial sits in front of the San Antonio, Texas, Municipal Auditorium, not far from the Alamo. The memorial, known as Hill 881, was dedicated on Veterans Day 1986. It honors the memory of the Americans who perished in a vicious battle for that piece of real estate in April 1967. The imposing, five-ton bronze statue of a soldier ministering to a severely wounded buddy at the memorial's center is the work of former Marine combat artist Austin Deuel, who was a first-hand witness to the bloody battle.

Originally, they called it the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Mobile). It is now known as the Moving Wall: A portable, half-size replica of the original Wall. The traveling version was first displayed in Texas in 1984, and since then, it has made stops in more than 200 cities across the country. There are also at least two state moving walls in Alabama and Ohio.

The original Moving Wall was built in 1983 by three California Vietnam veterans-John Devitt, Gerry Haver, and Morris Shears. "I wanted everyone to see those names on the wall," said Devitt, a former First Cav helicopter door gunner who now spends his time transporting the Moving Wall around the nation.

Devitt and company secured permission from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation in Washington to construct their wall using the original blueprints. For portability purposes, the wall is built of aluminum. But its shiny enamel paint and raised letters closely emulate the original. "It was important that the letters be raised," Devitt said. "It gives people the opportunity to touch the names, to feel the names."

The Moving Wall generates the same types of response that the original wall does. Thousands come to pay their respects, and dozens of volunteers stand guard to help visitors locate names. Many leave mementos at the Moving Wall, all of which are collected and stored in a California warehouse. Although Devitt and company built a replica a couple of years ago, the wall's itinerary is booked solid. For information, write to: Vietnam Combat Veterans, Inc., Attn: Memorial Fund, 1267 Alma Ct., San Jose, CA 95112.

Like the original Wall and the traveling replica, nearly all state and local memorials honor Vietnam veterans by listing the names of those killed and missing and by representing their service with words or statues. But some memorials are in different forms, for example, longtime VVA member Geoffrey Steiner's herculean effort to plant the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Forest on a 100-acre parcel of land he owns in Cushing, Minnesota, about 120 miles north of Minneapolis.

Steiner, who did a 1967-68 tour with the Marines, started on his goal of planting a tree for each American who died in Vietnam in 1980. He has personally planted more than 30,000 trees, and his once-lonely effort has now been officially recognized by the state of Minnesota. Steiner has received aid from the fund-raising efforts of several VVA chapters. A member of Chapter 214, Steiner has served as Minnesota's VVA chaplain. He says he purposely chose not to work with stone or sculpture. "What we're trying to do is heal the people," he told a reporter. "This is a living memorial."

Since 1989, VVA Chapter 392 in Portland, Oregon, has been actively involved in another massive tree-planting endeavor-planting 60,000 trees throughout Oregon to memorialize those who died in Vietnam. More than half the trees-which are being donated by the state Department of Forestry-are in place. Chapter 392's partners in the effort are the Lions International of Oregon and ReTree International, a big timber company whose president, octogenarian Frank Lockyear, conceived the idea of a memorial forest.

The North Carolina Vietnam Veterans Highway Memorial also uses living trees to honor those who lost their lives in Vietnam. Dedicated on Memorial Day 1991, the memorial features 58,000 loblolly pines that were planted along a 12-mile stretch of Interstate 85 in Davidson County, between Lexington and Greensboro. The trees also encircle the highway memorial's centerpiece, a brick wall nearly one hundred feet long and eight feet high. Each of the wall's 1,600 bricks is engraved with the name of a North Carolinian who died in Vietnam.

The Tar Heel State also has a more traditional Vietnam veterans memorial in Raleigh, the state capital. Dedicated on Memorial Day 1987, it consists of a large, bronze sculpture of two combat infantrymen carrying a wounded buddy and bronze plaques dedicated to the state's Vietnam veterans.

Several other states have used roads to honor Vietnam veterans. Delaware's I-495, for example, is officially known as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Highway, and Vermont's I-89 shares the same name. On October 20, 1982, Vermont officials dedicated a 12-foot-high granite monument in an I-89 rest area near the town of Sharon. The memorial lists the names of the 138 Vermont men killed in the war.

During the war, on May 31, 1969, local officials in Evansville, Indiana, and in Henderson, Kentucky, renamed the twin bridges that connect their cities to honor those killed in the war. The spans are officially called the Bi-state Vietnam Gold Star Memorial Bridges.

On May 30,1993, Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke cut a ribbon and officially renamed the city's heavily traveled Hanover Street Bridge the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Bridge. That historic event-the first time in the city's long history that a bridge was renamed to honor an individual or group-was attended by more than 2,000 people, including 40 Gold Star mothers, 20 color guards from a half dozen veterans organizations (including seven Maryland VVA chapters), an Army National Guard band, and reporters from the city's four TV stations. The dedication capped months of hard work by the members of VVA Chapter 451 in Maryland's largest city.

Chapter member Ed Vogel conceived of the idea of renaming the bridge while it was being renovated in 1992. "That way, the bridge could serve as a gateway to the Maryland Vietnam Veterans Memorial," which was dedicated in 1989 across the Patapsco River from downtown Baltimore, chapter president John Averella told The VVA Veteran. Vogel chaired a 15-member bridge dedication committee that convinced the City Council to rename the bridge. The committee raised $9,000 to pay for new highway signs, two large brass plaques, and the big dedication-day ceremonies. "From a single idea six months earlier, to an event that we will remember for a lifetime, all this was made possible by members of our chapter and the support of their families," Averella said.

Most people associate the nation's college campuses with antiwar activity. While many colleges and universities were indeed centers of antiwar ferment, it is also true that tens of thousands of graduates from those same campuses served in Vietnam. A few of the nation's colleges have honored their alumni who gave their lives in Vietnam with on-campus memorials.

On Memorial Day 1986, the University of Kansas (UK) dedicated the first free-standing Vietnam memorial on a major non-military college campus. The University of Kansas Vietnam Memorial is a 65-foot-long, L-shaped, limestone-and-concrete structure that lists the names of 55 UK alumni who died or are listed as missing, in Vietnam. It is inscribed with these words: "Lest we forget the courage, honor, and sacrifice of our fellow students."

UK administrator and history instructor (and VVA member) Tom Berger, a former Navy corpsman who served with the Marines in 1966-68, spearheaded the effort to build the memorial with fellow veteran John Musgrave. Their efforts were aided greatly by the university's student council, which conceived the idea and raised $10,000 for its construction. Another fund-raising boost came after UK grad Jim Lehrer sent a "McNeil/Lehrer News Hour" team to the campus. A segment on the memorial that ran on the popular PBS-TV show "really helped fund-raising," Berger told The WA Veteran. "The exposure helped a great deal."

The Jayhawk State leads the nation in on-campus Vietnam veterans memorials. Besides the UK memorial, there are free-standing tributes to Vietnam veterans at Washburn University in Topeka and at Kansas State University (KSU) in Manhattan. The Kansas State Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated on November 10,
1989, was built with private donations, and it sits near the KSU World War II and Korean memorial on campus. Inscribed on circular limestone block walls are the names of 42 former K-staters who died in the war.

VVA member Bill Arck of Chapter 344, who served in the Air Force, led the effort to build the memorial. Arck, who directs KSU's Alcohol and Drug Education Service, received plenty of help, including support from KSU's Air Force ROTC. The project "was, at times, a controversial issue on campus," Arck told The VVA Veteran. But all controversy ended when the memorial was completed, and it is, Arck proclaims, "one of those things in my life I am most proud."

On June 11, 1993, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, dedicated a memorial to its alumni who died in Vietnam. The memorial, a metal plaque with the names of the dead (including 27 from Vietnam), sits in Anabel Taylor Hall, the university's chapel, along with memorials to Comell alumni who died in other wars. That memorial also consists of a $100,000 scholarship fund for children of Vietnam veterans.

Among the many military college memorials is the Marion Military Institute Alumni Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated November 10, 1989. The stone monument lists the names of 21 students of the Alabama junior college who died in Vietnam, and it was built with the support of VVA members throughout the state.

VVA members in northern New Jersey helped the students at Passaic County Technical and Vocational High School in Wayne. The students designed, raised funds, and helped build the county's Vietnam veterans memorial, which sits at the school's entrance. The memorial, dedicated in 1992, honors the 82 county men who died in Vietnam.

VVA chapters have been instrumental in helping build memorials in at least two prisons: The Muskegon Correctional Facility in Michigan and the Roxbury Correctional Institution in Maryland.

Chapter 31 took the lead in soliciting funds, materials, and labor, and it donated the flag that flies over the Muskegon County Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which was dedicated September 7, 1986, inside the correctional facility. The memorial consists of two brick walls in a V-shape and lists the names of county men who were killed or are missing.

VVA Chapter 172 in Cumberland, Maryland, donated the plaque that is the centerpiece of the Roxbury memorial-an oval brick structure with four flags, including the POW/MIA banner. "It's not so much a memorial to the dead as a tribute to the ones still alive," said John Worsham, a Vietnam veteran serving a life sentence who led the memorial effort at Roxbury.

VVA's California State Council is supporting a proposed veterans memorial scheduled to be built at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi. The memorial, for which ground was broken last November, will honor men and women veterans from all wars.

Memorials to American Vietnam veterans, erected on foreign soil, are primarily on U.S. military bases. In June 1977, the Freedom Tree was planted at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany to honor those missing in action in Vietnam, dark Air Force Base in the Philippines has a Peace Garden, dedicated to KIAs and POWs. Memorials honoring those who fought with the United States also stand in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

The most recent is the National Vietnam Memorial that was dedicated October 3, 1992, in Canberra, Australia. At the invitation of the Australian government, several hundred American Vietnam veterans marched in a parade and took part in the dedication ceremonies.

The first Canadian Vietnam veterans memorial is scheduled to be dedicated this fall in Melocheville, Quebec. The memorial, a landscaped park and monument, honors the roughly 30,000 Canadians who served in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

On Veterans Day 1993, the national media, zeroed in on the long-awaited dedication of the Vietnam Women's Memorial on the grounds of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. Sculptor Glenna Goodacre's 2,000-pound, six-foot-eight-inch bronze sculpture of three uniformed women tending a wounded male GI now sits in a grove of trees 300 feet southeast of the Wall, overlooking the entire memorial.

The women's memorial, which received longtime support from VVA-honors the more than 11,000 women who served in Vietnam. That includes eight women- Eleanor Grace Alexander, Pamela Dorothy Donovan, Carol Ann Drazba, Annie Ruth Graham, Elizabeth A. Jones, Mary T. Klinker, Sharon Anne Lane, and Hedwig Diane Orlowski-who died in Vietnam and whose names are engraved on the Wall.

In 1967, a year after Carol Drazba died in a helicopter crash, officials at Scranton State General Hospital put up a bronze plaque in the facility's main lobby to honor the former Army lieutenant.

Six years later, on Memorial Day 1973, the people of Canton, Ohio, dedicated a life-size statue of Storon Lane, the first American servicewoman who died as a result of enemy action in Vietnam. Lieutenant Lane, an Army nurse, was killed during a rocket attack at the 312th Evac Hospital in Chu Lai on June 8, 1969. The Sharon A. Lane Memorial at Aultman Hospital (her nursing school alma mater) contains the inscription: "Born to Honor-Ever at Peace," and includes the names of 109 local men killed in Vietnam.

Author's Note: Much of the material for this article was provided by WA members, many of whom have taken leadership roles in. building state and local Vietnam veterans memorials.

Other important sources include: Vietnam War Memorials: An Illustrated Reference to Veterans Tributes Throughout the United States (1988) by Jerry' L. Strait and Sandra S. Strait; "Report on the Survey of State and Local Vietnam Veterans Memorials Nationwide," November 11, 1986, published by the Project on the Vietnam Generation; "State Honor: Vietnam Memorials Guide," a survey of state memorials published in the Reserve Officers Association's The Officer (November 1991); and "Handbook on Vietnam Veterans Memorials," published in 1987 by the Friends of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.



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Magic Moments Near The Wall: The Memorial Day Writers Project

It's happened every Memorial Day and every Veterans Day since 1993 in a white tent pitched on The Mall in Washington, D.C., a stone's throw from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. A group of Vietnam veterans known as the Memorial Day Writers Project opens the tent's doors and invites veterans and others to read their poetry, tell their war stories, and sing war-related songs.

"Anyone who has been affected by war and has something to say in a literary vein is welcome," said Mike McDonell, a former Marine and a co-founder of the group. McDonell, a poet who teaches English at Northern Virginia Community College, takes a head count of MDWP members prior to each event. Then he sets up a loose performing schedule that's always augmented by people who show up unannounced.

"What we're all about is getting other veterans to come and share what they've written," he said, "other veterans and anybody touched by the war. It's therapeutic as hell; it's also art. We share our stuff and we ask them to share what they have."

McDonell, a member of VVA Chapter 227 who served with the 11th Marines in Vietnam in 1967-68, conceived the idea for the group with his good friend, the poet and playwright Clyde Wray, in the fall of 1992. "We wanted to put together a reading for veterans to commemorate Memorial Day," McDonell said.

From that conversation a group of vet writers-Wray, McDonell, Ed Henry, Rod Kane, and Roger Dorsey-and Tom McLean, a songwriter and musician, got together and put on a well-received show at Market Place Gallery in Washington augmented with traditional Vietnamese music by Kim Hoan.

"It was going to be a one-time thing, but word got out and people invited us to perform," McDonell said. The group put on performances at Franklin and Marshall College and Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. Then, on Veterans Day 1993, McDonell, Wray, and company were invited by the Friends of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to share that now-defunct group's tent near The Wall.

"We took care of the tent for them," McDonell said, "and they let us read there throughout the weekend."

MDWP's been there every Veterans Day and Memorial Day since. The group also does readings in other venues and cosponsors, with Chapter 227, the annual Vince Kasper Awards for Excellence in the Arts. The awards-which MDWP founding member Ed Henry calls "the most rewarding thing we do"-are given to two deserving Northern Virginia high school students each May. The awards arc named in honor of former MDWP member Vince Kasper, a poet and photographer who died in 1994.

In recent years, MDWP members also have read at the Vietnam Women's Memorial. "We usually end their program for them on Veterans Day and Memorial Day with poetry, prose, and sometimes a song," McDonell said. "This past Veterans Day a veteran came up at the last minute and did an a cappella version of 'Amazing Grace.'"

Back at the MDWP tent, the group's members regularly experience something special, what McDonell and crew call "a magic moment." "It happens every Veterans and Memorial Day," McDonell said. "It's that time during the weekend when somebody-a person we didn't plan on-comes in and reads a poem or tells a story that grabs the audience and floors us."

There were several magic moments on Veterans Day 1999. The MDWP dedicated that day's readings to the memory of Rod Kane, who died Nov. 3 of pneumonia, after years of battling a hereditary lung disease. Rod "Doc" Kane was perhaps the group's best-known member.

His book, Veterans Day: A Vietnam Memoir, a novelistic account of his life as an Army medic and his often tortuous postwar problems, received wide critical acclaim when it was published in 1990. That included a high accolade from Catch 22 author Joseph Heller, who characterized the book as "a breathtaking and triumphant achievement, a daring effort of commanding power, written with splendor, biting wit, [and] passion."

"We dedicated the [1999 Veterans Day] program as a memorial to Rod," McDonell said. "A lot of his friends came and everybody did something extraordinary. It was a wonderful hour of people telling stories about Rod, reading poems, and reading selections from his book. That whole hour was a magic moment."

To Realize A Dream, Many Lent Their Skills, Time, And Commitment

Unless we came home on a gurney, most of us who served in Southeast Asia returned to The World alone, as individuals, our 12- or 13-month tour of duty completed. We were in the jungles or rice paddies or firebases one day, back on the streets of Boston or Brooklyn, Baton Rouge or Bakersfield, 48 hours later. We left behind our buddies, with whom we had spent the most intense times of our lives. For us, the war was over; for them, the fighting, the bleeding, and the dying went on.

None of us was accorded a welcome home into the bosom of a grateful nation. How could we have been? Despite the battles won, despite me drumbeat of invariably favorable body counts by generals and overly optimistic pronouncements by cabinet secretaries and presidents, in a war marked by an absence of victory the only embraces most of us received were from our families, some neighbors, a few close friends. Mom and Dad were thrilled to have us home and safe. They didn't ask many questions, though, and were perplexed that we didn't relate to Dad, who had served in the Battle of the Bulge, or Uncle Mike, who had frozen at Chosin.

When the fighting finally ceased, when America succeeded in extricating its forces from Vietnam, most Americans wanted to forget the war had ever happened. In me process, a nation hungry for heroes ignored those who had fought. Any acknowledgment of service rendered to country-not to mention real acts of heroism on the field of battle- fell by the wayside; In the eyes of many, those who had done their nation's bidding were pariahs.

The unfortunate stereotype of the whacked-out Vietnam vets-as-victims or dysfunctional baby killers warped by what they had seen and done in Southeast Asia, emerged and gained prominence in the media. Stereotypes, of course, are based on a thin sliver of reality. But this reality blasphemed almost all who had served. The vast majority had served honorably and well. Many served with distinction. We returned home, married, raised the next generation, went to work, contributed to the community. Yes, many suffered the emotional scars of war, exacerbated by the lack of thanks from a nation grown increasingly restive and weary of a war gone on too long without resolution; and many suffered as well from a bureaucracy that had to be dragged kicking and screaming (or so it seemed) to acknowledge these scars.

Many veterans, though, were ashamed even to admit that they had served. While some questioned the war, all of us knew we were just as worthy, had fought just as bravely as had our fathers and uncles and grandfathers before us, had done our individual and collective best under difficult and trying circumstances. We also knew, in a country torn asunder by me politics of me war, that the only recognition we would get we'd have to give ourselves.

Some, like Bobby Muller and his colleagues who founded VVA, chose to focus on fighting the good fight for better benefits, for recognition of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and diseases caused by exposure to Agent Orange as compensable conditions borne of service in Southeast Asia. As Lynda Van Devanter, who was VVA's first national women's director, put it: "Our primary purpose was to reach out to Vietnam veterans and insure that the federal government meet its mandate to provide appropriate support systems for vets with service-connected injuries or needs."

Others sought recognition for me valor and me sacrifices made by Vietnam veterans.

One of them, Jan Scruggs, had served as a rifleman with the 199th Light Infantry Brigade in I Corps in '67-'68. Scruggs, who was hit by shrapnel from a grenade, is duly credited as the initiator, the moving force, the passionate gadfly behind the effort to create and build a memorial honoring those who answered their country's call and paying tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice or remained missing in action.

Scruggs was not the only player on the court. Several others played notable roles as well. On the twentieth anniversary of me dedication of The Wall, it is fitting and timely to recognize those who toiled long and hard to create this memorial. What they succeeded in achieving, despite the naysayers, became an instant icon, a place of healing, of reconciliation, a place where grown men cry without embarrassment.

Any naming of names, of course, has the potential to offend through omission. In To Heal a Nation, Jan Scruggs and co-author Joel Swerdlow offer a "Roll Call of Honor," a roster of "unselfish people who gave of their time and talent to insure that the names of over 58,000 Americans would be in a place of honor." There were some, though, who played core roles in creating The Wall, as well as several matchmakers, conciliators, and catalysts who played critical roles at different times during the process.

If Scruggs was the dreamer of the dream, two of his first converts, Bob Doubek and Jack Wheeler, were its enablers. They were, Doubek notes, a threesome from very different backgrounds: Scruggs from Scotch-Irish tenant-farmer stock; Doubek, the grandson of Czech immigrants; and Wheeler with roots in America dating back to before the United States was born.

Doubek, who served as an Air Force intelligence officer in Vietnam, came to Washington in 1971 to attend law school at Georgetown. There, he recalls, "I felt a sense of denigration from the 'best and the brightest.' When the Vietnam War was mentioned, if it was mentioned at all, it was that you were a loser to have been caught in that trap."

"But some of the best people I've met in my life" he says, "I met in Vietnam. They had a quality of character born of their experiences in the war zone."

Bob Doubek felt that Vietnam veterans needed and deserved to be recognized for their service. At an April 1979 meeting at which Jan Scruggs shared his vision of a memorial containing the names of those who had been lost to the war, Doubek was the only one who bought into the concept He took Scruggs on-"on a halfway pro bono basis"-and incorporated the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity. He quickly realized "what a gargantuan undertaking this project would be. We had to raise funds, find people to lend their time and talents, get a site. The depth of the challenge was enormous."

Doubek became the first paid employee once the VVMF had funds. He took a significant pay cut to become its executive director, its detail man, its consensus builder.

When Jack Wheeler first heard of the dream, he instinctively knew that it was a really strong idea. "It can be done" he told Scruggs. "Let me call some people." What was needed, he knew, was the commitment of "guys who had served in Vietnam who were in positions of influence."

He was a graduate of West Point, Yale Law School, and Harvard Business School. Although he had established a memorial at West Point to those who had served in Southeast Asia-"It was a good practice drill for the national memorial," he says-Wheeler was disturbed by the national amnesia over the Vietnam War. "We wanted to show the integrity of our experience,' he says. "And we, a group of rookies, got together, raised the money, ran the design competition, built the memorial, and gave it to the country."

Wheeler, who served as chairman of the VVMF's board of directors, is widely credited for his political savvy and managerial know how. "He was the lead tank," says Tom Shull, a White House aide who worked closely with him. "He made extraordinary personal sacrifices" to realize the dream.

Wheeler went on to design the model for the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program and became the first director of the VVLP in the Reagan administration. He wrote the book, Touched with Fire: The Future of the Vietnam Generation. He currently serves as president of the Vietnam Children's Fund and uses his expertise to turn around troubled charities.

Sandie Fauriol, who directed the fund-raising effort for the WMF, came to the role almost serendipitously. "Bob Doubek asked a friend to recommend a fundraiser," she recounts. " 'I only know one: Sandie Fauriol,' the friend replied." And Fauriol, an Army brat, won the job.

"I was just a shepherd doing God's work," she says. She was more than a shepherd, though. She directed, Scruggs writes in To Heal a Nation, "a flawless, creative, and unquestionably successful campaign." She also took the reins of the five-day National Salute to Vietnam Veterans, during which The Wall was dedicated.

"I used to go around with Jan," Fauriol says. "He would tell the stories and cite the need for the memorial and then I would do the asking." She recalls traveling to Texas without Jan to make a presentation before the director of the Houston Endowment. "The man never blinked or moved a muscle throughout my presentation. When I asked him to consider a donation of $7,062- that's $22 for each of the 321 Houstonians who died in Vietnam-he said simply, 'I'll consider it.' Two weeks later, a very thin envelope arrived. In it was a check from him for $50,000 in honor of your efforts for all Vietnam veterans.'"

In no small part because of Fauriol's efforts, the VVMF raised some $9 million from more than 600,000 individuals. She is quick to heap praise on others, particularly Paul Thayer, then chairman of LTV Corporation in Dallas, who chaired the fund's corporate advisory board. Scruggs adds Karen Kendig Doubek-she and Bob Doubek met and married while working with the VVMF- who did yeoman work as assistant campaign director and later as deputy director of the National Salute to Vietnam Veterans.

Among other key staffers: Col. Don Schaet, USMC (Ret), served as the VVMF's first executive vice president; Col. Bob Carter, USAF (Ret), became the fund's executive vice president in April 1982. Kathie Kielich served as the fund's administrative aide.

Jack Wheeler, says Doubek, "brought in all these top-notch guys" who played vital roles as the project took form and gained substance. Other volunteers showed up, rolled up their sleeves, and worked. Among them are:

* Bob Frank, a certified public accountant, served as the VVMF's treasurer, a post to which he brought an extraordinary business talent, as Scruggs noted in To Heal a Nation.
*Ron Gibbs, who served as an Army captain in Vietnam, played many roles in achieving passage of the enabling legislation, in fund-raising, and on the design competition.
*George ("Sandy") Mayo, also a Vietnam veteran, was one of the earliest volunteers and one of the calming voices on the WMF board. "He brought a sense of reason to some very difficult moments," says Fauriol.
*John Morrison, who had been wounded in action, Scruggs noted, "took on many difficult tasks and without fail showed his integrity, wit, and courage."
*Dick Radez, a banker who graduated from both West Point and Harvard, "provided invaluable advice and assistance in the development of a comprehensive plan for financing the memorial," wrote Scruggs. "His later work in developing a political strategy to keep the memorial from being destroyed was particularly significant."
*John Woods, who also had been badly wounded in Vietnam, "used his expertise as a designer/ structural engineer to both build and defend the memorial," Scruggs wrote.
*Art Mosley, one of Jack Wheeler's West Point classmates, researched the question how to build a memorial, and "pushed for a world-class jury for a world-class competition," in Wheeler's words.

Among those involved in the competition:

The jurors-landscape architects Garrett Eckbo and Hideo Sasaki; sculptors Costantino Nivola, James Rosati, and Richard H. Hunt; architects Retro Belluschi and Harry Weese; and Grady Clay, editor of Landscape Architecture-along with the VVMF's professional adviser, landscape architect Paul Spreiregen, were conscientious in fulfilling their responsibilities.

The memorial established the career of a young architecture student at Yale, MayaYing Lin, whose design won the unanimous endorsement of the jurors and whose instinct-to use reflective black granite for the wall, and to orient the names of the dead in the order they were lost to the war- helped achieve the incandescent nature of the final product.

Her design, says Jack Wheeler," was the right solution and a work of genius." Credit also ought to go in part to her professor at Yale, Andrus Burr, her fellow students in that class, and to two Manhattan architects, Carl Pucci and Ross Andersen, whose suggestions, Burr noted in a letter to Bob Doubek, were incorporated into Maya's presentation.

Sculptor Frederick Hart, whose entry lost in the original competition, was commissioned to conceive and produce the Three Fightingmen sculpture that was added to the memorial.

In the political arena, the memorial had more than a few key supporters in high places, as well as a bevy of conciliators, counselors, and catalysts:

*Sen. Charles Mathias, a Maryland Republican who served in the Navy during the Second World War, was an opponent of America's involvement in Vietnam. He nevertheless embraced the concept of the memorial from the start, introduced the legislation in the Senate that designated two acres on the Mall at Constitution Gardens for the memorial, and rallied his fellow senators behind the effort.
*Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican who had served as Secretary of the Navy for much of the war, used his contacts and good office to raise some of the first significant monies for the effort, and worked tirelessly to bring together the proponents of the design for the memorial and those who felt betrayed by it.
*In the House, Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt, a Republican from Arkansas, introduced a bill similar to Mathias' to grant land for the memorial.
*Major Tom Shull, a young White House fellow on the staff of Richard Darman, deputy to President Reagan's chief of staff, Jim Baker, played a critical behind-the-scenes role in eliminating the final bit of official opposition to the proposed memorial (by Interior Secretary James Watt, who withheld approval for the construction permit for an unseemly long time). As the deadline for breaking ground at the site neared critical mass, as opponents to the design, led by Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, an early supporter of the WMF who despised the design, galvanized their opposition, Shull brought a model of the memorial to the Roosevelt Room in the White House. There, after its power and simplicity won over key staffers (including Baker, Darman, presidential confidante Edwin Meese, and President Reagan himself), Shull reached out to contacts at Interior to change Watt's mind-and to get the construction permit issued without any further delay.
*Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran who was then deputy administrator of the VA, was one of the Reagan administration's few public voices to speak out on behalf of the memorial.
*Brigadier Gen. George B. Price describes himself as an "adviser and catalyst" during the process; others have called him a very settling influence. At a critical meeting during which opponents cited black as the color of shame, Price, one of this nation's highest-ranking African-American officers, reminded the room that black is indeed not the color of shame. "Color meant nothing in Korea and in Vietnam," he said. "We are all equal in combat. Color should mean nothing now." This stifled all mention of a white wall. Price believed that "Maya Lin's design captured the essence of what we wanted to accomplish. When the two refinements-the Frederick Hart sculpture and the flag pole-were added, we collectively achieved our goal."
*Gen. Michael Davison planted the seed of compromise between the proponents and opponents of the chosen design at that meeting by suggesting the addition of a statue and a flag and by improving the inscription on the memorial. Says Wheeler of Davison: "You wanted to live up to his integrity and the dignity he projects. His presence alone made it hard to misbehave."
*J. Carter Brown, who as chairman of the Fine Arts Commission had worn the mantle of Washington's arbiter of excellence, led the commission in endorsing the proposed design, then wouldn't cave to the pressures to undermine it. "He kept us from disfiguring the memorial," said Gen. Price.
*Episcopal Bishop John Walker, Wheeler notes, "committed to opening the doors of the National Cathedral for the reading of the names. For me personally," he added, "Bishop Walker called me and told me, 'I want you to know that I'll support you.' That meant a lot."

Among the matchmakers: Stuart Feldman, a Washington lawyer and proponent of fair treatment for veterans-he was instrumental in forming the Council of Vietnam Veterans, the precursor to VVA, with Bobby Muller-invited Scruggs to a planning session for a National Salute to Vietnam Veterans week. Joe Zengerle invited Bob Doubek. And two kindred souls met.

The arms and legs of the effort were the volunteers who folded the flyers and stuffed the envelopes and licked the stamps.

In the end, though, those who deserve thanks, offers Jack Wheeler, are all who served in the Vietnam War. They served with honor and with dignity and with integrity despite the turbulence and turmoil of one of the most wrenching episodes in the history of America.



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