Bear Taylor 
Find a Memorial Day event near you
For this 2024 MEMORIAL DAY, I have a headline from many years… “The National League of POW/MIA Families was incorporated by a group of wives of American servicemen who were listed as prisoners of war or missing in action in the Vietnam War. The emblem of the organization, the POW/MIA flag, would continue to be flown at public locations nearly 50 years after the United States had withdrawn from the war…”(Wikipedia)… Today, that flag files more broadly and determinedly than ever and the number of warriors unaccounted for from the Vietnam War has been reduced to 1,587, thanks to the Defense POW/MIA accounting Agency…
REMEMBERING THOSE WHO PAID THE LAST FULL MEASURE…
MEMORIAL DAY… Is the day that’s set aside each year to remember with gratitude and pride all those who served and died for our country and our freedom. May your day be filled with memories and peace. On this solemn day in 2020 our nation and the world is hunkered down, “staying in place,” and assiduously striving to keep space, face masks and soap and water between our faces and the scourge of COV-19, or Wuhan Virus as it’s called in this humble abode. Arlington and our national cemeteries are out-of-bounds for all but the families of those resting in peace. Limits on gathering have been imposed to the extreme. How then are we to “keep faith” those this day is meant to remember and honor in a meaningful way?…
“…And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and the final sacrifice.”…President Ronald Reagan…
MAY I OFFER A COURSE OF ACTION for this unusual Memorial Day that will leave you feeling fulfilled as the sun sets on your day of remembering our nation’s fallen warriors? I guarantee it…
I. PREPARATION. Google “Memorial Day Images.” There are more than a hundred of them. Scan through them. Take note of those that express your feelings for those fallen family member (s), shipmates, squadron mates, and others who died while sering our country. Google “Memorial Day Quotations” and do the same. I suggest the forty quotes in the Country Living collection. This is your raw material. Throw all your raw material into a mental pot. Stir them around. Compose your own “quotable quote.” One you would feel proud to post on “The Wall” next to the name of your fallen hero. Compose a remembrance that speaks from your heart.
II. ACTION. Identify those fallen warriors you want to individually remember and honor on this 2020 Memorial Day. You will need a full name, rank and service. The date of final sacrifice is also useful in completing your “remembrance” where it will mean the most. I recommend you locate your Vietnam Air War hero in Chris Hobson’s VIETNAM AIR LOSSES, which is maintained on-line at Dave Lovelady’s great website…
https://www.vietnamairlosses.com
Spend a few minutes discovering the details of your hero’s final flight. Then Google “Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund— THE WALL OF FACES.” Type in the name, rank and service of the warrior you seek to honor with a personal remembrance. Follow instructions. Leave your remembrance–include your personal “quotable quote.” How’s that feel?
Military Times
Why the Vietnam War Memorial is Amazing
by Jan Scruggs
On May 28, 1969, while bleeding to death in Vietnam, I was preparing to die at age 19 after saying the Lord’s Prayer. Brave US troops, all draftees, found and dragged me to safety. I recovered and completed my tour.
May 28, 1979, I rented a room at the National Press Club and boldly told the media in attendance that there would be a national memorial in Washington engraved with the names of the fallen honoring all who served in the recently completed Vietnam War. I had national credibility from my research on combat trauma at American University. The memorial would give them recognition and, perhaps, some healing for the entire nation. The success of the plan was unlikely, led by a naive GS 7 federal employee named Scruggs. Yet, the memorial was funded and built in record time for the November 1982 dedication.
A dedicated team planned the project led by several grads of the West Point and the Harvard Business School. We held the largest design competition ever and endured a raging national controversy over the avant-garde design chosen, which has worked so masterfully since 1982, enjoyed by over 5,000,000 visitors annually. The designer was Maya Lin, then a 21-year-old student at Yale University.
What is often called “The Wall” also led to unanticipated outcomes, including the Korean War Memorial in 1993 and the World War II Memorial in 2004, on America’s Mall. If imitation is the most sincere from of flattery, The Wall deserves awards. There are several 1/2, 3/4 and full scale replicas traveling the country since 1984.
Pensacola, Florida, made a granite replica (The Wall South) a few years later near the naval base. Recently a full-scale granite replica was dedicated in Missouri by a Vietnam vet — desiring the healing that often emanates from the memorial — to be closer to the veterans in the western USA. The replica faces the sun at the same angle as in Washington. Other replicas come and go from veterans groups. One entrepreneur was selling 1/2 and 3/4 scale replicas in the neighborhood of $200 or more for interested people to have on their property.
The Wall is amazing. There is no anthropological or sociological precedent for a monument with such characteristics or replication. This would include the phenomena of probably a half-million items which have been left at the Wall, stored by the National Park Service. Some of these items have been displayed in the Smithsonian and the Imperial War Museum in London. And lets not forget Rolling Thunder, with its hundreds of thousands of motorcycle riders who ride to The Wall from was far away as Oregon. The Wall is like Mecca or the Western Wall in Jerusalem that compels the faithful to visit.
The talking point for the memorial was to “separate the war from the warrior” to honor the service of our citizens who gave their lives in the rice paddies of Vietnam. Victory was elusive, as is the case in Afghanistan.
It is fascinating to think that 75 years ago, on June 6, 1944, thousands of America paratroopers and infantry were on their way to the beaches and cliffs of Normandy, France, where many are now buried in cemeteries after laying down their lives. When I visited Normandy and places like Gettysburg I always remember the sobering, haunting words of World War I veteran, Archibald MacLeish, written during World War II.
The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak
“Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?
“They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.
“They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us.
“They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what you make them.
They say, Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say: it is you who must say this.”
Have a great day of remembering our nation’s greatest patriots, and especially those you carry in your heart and mind…
Lest we forget…. Bear
