Names On a Wall

The following is a reprint of part of the year-end family xmas letter in 2009 about a family trip:

Washington D.C. is a place that you need to spend plenty of time.  First on the agenda was the National Mall and the White House.  The prez owes me a favor and I went to collect, but he wasn’t home at the time.  He may have heard that I was in town and slipped out the back way.  Can’t compete with helicopters and the Secret Service, so we headed to the Mall.  There were 3 must seers and that was the Smithsonian Institute, Arlington National Cemetery and The Wall.  I was prepared for them, or so I thought.  We got a kick out of the Smithsonian since we had seen the movie, “Night At The Museum” and Trish and I were entranced at Arlington.  We toured the Lee Mansion, but the main objective was the JFK gravesite with the eternal flame.  Had we been there the day after, we would not have gotten near the place as the Kennedy family was there for Teddy’s burial.  He is buried off to the left of the eternal flame near his brother Robert.  According to the tour guide, the 9/11 plane that crashed into the Pentagon was so low that it touched treetops up on the high ground.  If you’re heading to Arlington, I recommend the tour.


The other must seer was “The Wall.”  I had opportunities to see a traveling wall, but I didn’t.  It had to be the real thing, along with the surreal.  I parked myself on a bench just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial.  There was a World War ll veteran being interviewed on the bench next to me and across from us was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Garden Statue.  Gazing over to my left, about 25 yards from where I was seated listening to this veteran’s D-Day experiences was the western end of “The Wall” less than a foot high, stretching east as far as the eye can see.  I got up and strolled in that direction with what I must admit, a little hesitancy.  I reached the western tip and proceeded to the apex in the middle.  My apprehension worsened as the wall kept getting higher and higher while touching this stone structure with my left hand, feeling the etched names tingling across my fingertips, awakening all my senses to where I was in that moment of time.  When I reached the central focal point, I looked up and the wall, at that point, must have been 10 feet high.  Looking to the left from whence I came, then up towards the sky, well over my head, then to the right of which to travel, it dawned on me that every square inch of this garden of stone has a name etched on it.  No pun intended, but I was in way over my head.  It was more than “awe”, it was a level I had never been on before.  Over 50,000 souls, some that I knew whose names are somewhere on that wall, swept away well before their prime.  It was then that I lost it.  My salvation was that part of my family was with me.  How could I have expected to gaze upon this and not change.  Who could be that stoical.  I left Vietnam in November, 1969.  I was 23 years old. It has been 40 years.  I found no honor in war, only names on a wall.  


We had seen some more sites that evening such as the Jefferson Memorial and the inspirational Iwo Jima Memorial.  I believe that they are best seen at night with all the lights.  There is no lack of spine shivers in that neck of the woods and no way could we see everything.  It was time to exit the Nation’s Capital and rack up more frequent flyer miles and head back home

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