Arts of War on the Web

The Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Monument held its groundbreaking ceremonies on Monday, March 25. The monument, which will honor the service of Texans who served in the military during the Vietnam War—including the 3,417 who died in service—will have a prominent place on the grounds of the state Capitol in Austin.

The day before the groundbreaking, scores of volunteers participated in a Reading of the Names of the 3,417  at the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum. The volunteer readers included President Johnson’s daughters Luci Baines Johnson and Lynda Johnson Robb, several Texas lawmakers, and many veterans and family members of those who died.

At the groundbreaking ceremony itself a container carrying personalized, hand-embossed dog tags for each of the 3,4176 was entombed. Journalist and author Joe Galloway, a Texas native who received the VVA  Excellence in the Arts Award in 1999, delivered the Keynote address.

The monument itself, designed by New Mexico sculptor Duke Sundt, is in the final stages of production. The 14-foot tall bronze monument (below) will feature five infantry figures posed atop an eight-sided base depicting scenes in bas relief. “They represent diversity,” said Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Committee Chairman Robert Floyd. “It will be the first monument to represent diversity: a Hispanic-American, African-American, Asian, Native-American and Caucasian.”

A new monument (above) honoring all of those service personnel who have given their lives or have been wounded in action will be dedicated on March 8 at the  front entrance of the Warrior Hope and Care Center on the Marine Corps Base, Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina.  The organization Hope for The Warriors commissioned the creation of the monument.

The monument is the work of the acclaimed artist and sculptor John Phelps, a Vietnam veteran who received VVA’s Excellence in the Arts Award at the 2009 National Convention in Louisville. Phelps, whose son Chance was killed in action in Iraq in 2004, based the work on a photograph of two Marines, Chris Marquez and Dane Shaffer, carrying fellow Marine Bradley Kasal to safety in Iraq.

“I am honored to work with Hope For The Warriors in creating this monument,” Phelps said.  “I express myself through my art and this monument is a labor of love for me.  Love for not just my son but for my growing Marine Corps family.”

For more info, and to find out how to purchase bronze or resin miniature replicas of the sculpture, send an e-mail to rcork@hopeforthewarriors.org Proceeds from replica sales will support programs at the Warrior Hope and Care Center.

When it is completed on the grounds of  the Texas Capitol building in Austin, the Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Monument  will honor all Texans who served in the Vietnam War. The monument will feature a fourteen-foot-high of an infantry patrol, surrounded by bas-relief panels depicting military personnel who supported them, including a radio operator and a medic.

The Vietnam Veterans Monument will take its place on the Capitol grounds among other monuments honoring Texans who served in the Texas Revolution, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Korean War.

The Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Monument Committee, which is made up entire of  Vietnam veterans and was set up by the Texas Legislature to build the Monument, has an excellent web site that features an interactive map of Texas veterans in their communities. It also contains stories submitted by individual veterans. The idea of the web site is to create a “living monument” that preserves the stories of  Vietnam veterans. The Committee is working with Texas Tech’s Vietnam Center on this effort.

The site also includes a video, “Texas Remembers,” narrated by Joe Galloway, the former Vietnam War correspondent and long-time veterans’ advocate.

Our friends at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in Washington, D.C., are working on a book project in honor of the 30th anniversary of the dedication of The Wall this fall. The book will include photos taken by Vietnam veterans during their time in country as well as artwork created by Vietnam veterans.

If you have photos or artwork you’d like to share, contact Lisa Lark at VVMF before May 1 to have your work considered.  The phone number is 313-410-8477. The email is: lisalark@vvmf.org

If you do, be sure to report that you read about the project on Vietnam Veterans of America’s Arts of War on the web page.

The dedication of Arlington National Cemetery’s Jewish Chaplains Memorial plaque took place on Monday, October 24 at the Memorial Amphitheater. A reception followed at the Women in Military Service For America Memorial.

The memorial honors the fourteen Jewish chaplains who have perished in the nation’s wars from World War II to today–and whose names had not been inscribed on any monuments on Arlington’s Chaplains Hill. That omission was discovered four years ago by  Ken Kraetzer, the host of  the “American Legion Veterans Segment” show on WVOX radio in Westchester, N.Y. Kraetzer then worked with Jewish War Veterans of America and the Jewish Welfare Board’s Jewish Chaplains Council on a campaign to raise private funds to build the new memorial. In the months before the dedication, the memorial plaque had a tour of Jewish community centers and synagogues in ten states.

The fourteen chaplains honored on the memorial include four who died in Vietnam: Army Lt. Col. Rabbi Meir Engle, the first Jewish chaplain in Vietnam who died of a heart attack in 1964; Air Force Capt. Rabbi Joseph I. Hoenig, who was killed in a transport plane crash in Vietnam also in 1964; Army Capt. Rabbi Morton Harold Singer, who died in a plane crash in 1968; and Air Force Capt. Rabbi David Sobel, who was killed in an automobile accident in Thailand in 1974.

Those who participated in the ceremonies included Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), who chairs the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee; Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla., below); and the West Point Jewish Choir. Also on hand: a contingent from Vietnam Veterans of America, including National President John Rowan.

 
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, the organization that supports the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. (The Wall), is working on a project to gather photographs of all of the 58,272 men and women whose names are inscribed on the Memorial. So far, VVMF has collected about 23,000 photos.  They will be displayed in the Education Center at The Wall, which is under construction, and also will appear on line on VVMF’s Virtual Memorial Wall page.

VVMF, in conjunction with The History Channel, will host what they are calling ”Call for Photos” events in New York City, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Chicago this month and in November to try to add to the collection. If you have a photo of someone who perished in Vietnam, you are invited to bring it to the venues to scan. You may also submit the photo online. For info on the latter, go to www.vvmf.org/pafwan

Here are the details on the events:

New York City, Tuesday, October 11, from noon to 6:30 p.m. at the  Times Square Military Island on  Broadway between 43rd and 44th Streets 

Philadelphia, Thursday, October 13, 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. at  Independence National Historical Park adjacent to the Visitor Center on N. 6th Street and Market St. 

Atlanta, Tuesday, October 25, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m at  Centennial Olympic Park,  265 Park Ave. West  

Chicago,  Thursday, November 3, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on  The Riverwalk between W. Wacker Drive & N. State Street

John P. “Jack” Wheeler III, a Vietnam veteran who was one of the three founders of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, was found dead on New Year’s Eve in Wilmington, Delaware. According to the Wilmington News-Journal, Wheeler’s death at age 66 is being considered a homicide.

Wheeler, a 1966 West Point graduate who also had an MBA from Harvard and a juris doctorate from Yale University Law School, was the first chairman of  the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund’s board of directors. He and co-VVFM founders Jan Scruggs and Bob Doubek, were responsible for the Fund’s successful multi-million dollar campaign that resulted in the construction of The Wall.

Jack Wheeler served as a staff officer in Vietnam, and later held positions with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff. After he left the Army in 1971, Wheeler founded the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program during the Reagan Administration.

The Virtual Wall ® is an on-line web site that contains memorial pages honoring the 58,261 women and men whose names are inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The Virtual Wall, which is not affiliated with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund or the National Park Service, went live on line on March 23, 1997. It was started by Vietnam veteran Jim Schueckler, who today works with a team of other volunteers on the web site. The group includes Vietnam veteran Kenneth Davis and former Marine Channing Prothro, who also works with The Moving Wall.

Since 2000, The Virtual Wall has collected photographs of all those listed on The Wall in Washington. Early in 2002 The Virtual Wall began working with the Veterans History Project of the Library of Congress. Since then, The Virtual Wall regularly sends  a CD-ROM snapshot of the entire website to the Project. In that way all of the photographs, poems, letters, citations, and indexes from The Virtual Wall are archived permanently at the LOC.

The site includes indexes, which allow a visitor to search for a name by name or by city and state.  Among other things, that makes it simple to find out the names of those who died in Vietnam from any city or town in the country.

Vietnam Veterans of America has maintained a clearinghouse of information about state and local Vietnam veterans memorials since the mid-1990′s. We have information about scores of memorials in every state at the national office in Silver Spring, Maryland, including memorials that many of our chapters were instrumental in building.

The information is open to VVA chapters and to the public for research purposes. To make an appointment, call 301-585-4000 ext. 160 or email mleepson@vva.org

We also have been running a feature in The VVA Veteran in recent months by Vietnam veteran Al Nahas, who has documented some 85 memorials around the country for his book Warriors Remembered. Watch for his tribute to the Ponca City, Oklahoma, POW/MIA Memorial in the upcoming July/August issue.

Another Vietnam veteran, Michael Walsh, who lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., has been doing yeoman work documenting state and local Vietnam veterans memorials around the country. An excellent recent article in The Washington Post chronicled Walsh’s quest to visit and photograph memorials in all fifty state. So far, Walsh has been to 27 states and his photos and info on about a hundred memorials are on his blog, which he calls “A Means to Heal.”