It might have been located in Wareham, but on Thursday, August 17, when the moving Vietnam Memorial Wall was officially opened to the public, amongst the thousands in attendance were many from the Tri-Town area paying their respects to the fallen and remembering those they knew who lost their lives during the war.
Commissioned and dedicated in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington D.C. lists the names of 58,307 men and women killed in action during 1957-1975.
The Moving Wall, the one that turned the field outside the Wareham Middle School on August 17 into hallowed ground, is a half-scale replica of the original in Washington D.C., built in 1984. It was conceptualized by John Devitt, who attended the 1982 dedication of “The Wall” and wanted others to experience its power – people who could not travel to Washington to see it themselves.
It arrived to Wareham by travelling down Route 6 on Wednesday when it was met with an unofficial ceremonial guard of area first responders. The Rochester Fire Department erected a giant American flag by the Wareham border for the Moving Wall’s transport trailer to pass beneath.
Keynote speaker for the opening ceremony, former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army General George W. Casey, Jr. (2007-2011), recounted the first time he visited the wall in Washington. He remembers it as if it were yesterday. The emotions he felt when he caught his first glimpse of the staggering scale of the monument took his breath away.
“I felt like a hand grabbed me at the throat and I was overcome with emotion,” Casey said. “The experience is indelibly etched in my mind,” he said, overlapping with the wound of having lost his father, General George W. Casey, Sr., age 48, on July 7, 1970 when his helicopter crashed.
“It’s as vivid for me then as it is now,” he said.
It was a somber evening on that field in Wareham on Thursday night. Present were many veterans of the Vietnam War – the ‘all who gave some’ who turned out to view the names of the others – the ‘some who gave all.’
The wall of names reflects the image of the viewer, connecting them both as if providing closure of the circle starting the process of healing.
Although there are no names of people who resided in the Tri-Town at that time listed on the wall, it is impossible to find one town anywhere within driving distance to Wareham where there isn’t somebody who has been touched by the loss of someone they knew during the Vietnam War.
Always remembered, as Major Paul Barnett, Army National Guard reminded us. “And never forgotten.”
By Jean Perry
