I was lucky to be visiting my hometown of Elmore, Ohio when "The Moving Wall" was showcased in the downtown park area. For those of you who don't know, this half size replica is one of two that has been touring the country for over 20 years. This is a wall built by Vietnam Veterans who wanted to give others who could not travel to Washington D.C. the opportunity to pay their respects.
A couple things got me doing some more research when I arrived back home. I had overheard a veteran telling someone that he had brought a bottle of beer to place next to his buddy's name, saying "It was the drink we never got to have together."
The wall had small tokens, photographs, letters, etc. laying along the bottom, this immediately got me thinking, where do these items go? Answer: Items are gathered each day, they are then taken to an archive collection for identification, tagging and storage. The archive collection is not open to the public.
Another question while looking through the endless 58,261 names is what each symbol means after every name. Answer: The diamond denotes that the persons death was confirmed, the cross denotes that the person was missing at the end of the war and has yet to be accounted for.
Other interesting facts:
*The names are arranged in chronological order, according to the date of casualty. The designer did this so that the sequence allows for members who have died together to forever be linked.
*There are 8 women's names listed on the wall. All nurses, 7 from the Army and 1 from the Air Force.
*There are at least 38 names on the wall of individuals who are still alive today. These names are the result of clerical errors listing them under fatalities by the Department of Defense. These names cannot be removed from the wall.
I attended this wall with my Aunt Nan, my cousin Kelly and her 15 year old daughter Sylvia. We were all truly moved by the experience.
I would highly recommend seeing this to anyone in the touring area. For the current tour schedule Click here