The Vietnam Veterans’ War Memorial resides in Washington, D.C.  I haven’t seen the actual memorial, but know that standing in front of it,– it touches you,– and you feel compelled to touch it.*

A few years ago, a traveling memorial came through town and my husband, myself and my three young sons went to see it.  One of the features of this traveling memorial is that you can locate the name of someone you know and see it carved there in the black marble.

I had attended high school and gone through church youth group with a young man who was killed in Vietnam.

I choked up and could not speak…

I thought I would look for his name.  The names are arranged chronologically by date of death.  It is overwhelming to search for a name, so one must ask a docent for help.  I approached the table and was totally unprepared for my response.

I was asked how to spell the last name, and without warning, I choked up and could not speak.  I looked at my husband, who feeling helpless, finally handed me a slip of paper on which to write.  I was then told where to look.

I found the name of my childhood friend and I made a “rubbing” of his name — taking a blank sheet of paper (provided) and rubbing a soft lead pencil across it so that the relief of the marble wall makes a negative of the name you see.  I can never think of that time, or my friend, without becoming somewhat subdued.

Recently some of the other people from my high school were talking about this young man — who will be forever young — and so I did some research on the names on the wall.

I used a virtual wall website  and was able to see more information about the time of death and even to read an incident report.  All sobering stuff, — especially since I have a son in the military now.

All the names on my friend’s section of the wall, span a little over a month of casualties of war. There is another website where you can read the wall virtually as if you were standing before it yourself.

In tracing all these websites, I just ran across another site where memorials were published by other corpsmen — some who were present at the time of death.

On Memorial Day, I feel it fitting to take a moment to think of the sacrifices that others have made in my behalf, — and to vow to never forget.

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* It was designed by Maya Ying Lin (from Ohio), who was a 21-year-old Yale University architecture student at the time of design. Yes, she won a contest of designs submitted.