Posted on 04/13/2009 11:10:39 AM PDT by Racehorse
WASHINGTON (AFRNS) -- One-hundred twenty-three American heroes from the Vietnam War era will be honored posthumously this month during the annual In Memory Day ceremony, according to Jan C. Scruggs, founder and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.
In Memory Day was created to pay tribute to those who died prematurely from noncombat injuries and emotional suffering caused directly by the Vietnam War, but who are not eligible to have their names inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
A list of the honorees and their hometowns is available at www.vvmf.org/index.cfm?SectionID=774.
The 11th annual In Memory Day ceremony begins at 10 a.m. April 20 at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial here. Nearly 1,000 family members, friends and fellow veterans are expected to visit the nation's capital to participate in this year's event.
"In Memory Day allows The Wall to do what it does best: provide a healing environment for family members and friends," Mr. Scruggs said. "It also allows all of us to pay tribute to these brave Americans who served and sacrificed for their country."
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial bears the names of 58,260 men and women who died while serving in the U.S. armed forces in the Vietnam War.
"The Department of Defense developed specific parameters that allow only the names of servicemembers who died of wounds suffered in combat zones to be added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial," Mr. Scruggs said. "The In Memory program recognizes those men and women who have died prematurely as a result of the Vietnam War, but who do not meet the criteria. Many of their deaths are a result of Agent Orange exposure and emotional wounds that never healed."
During the ceremony, family members will read aloud their loved ones' names in chronological order by date of death. Following the ceremony, participants will lay tributes at the base of The Wall corresponding to the honorees' dates of service in Vietnam. With the addition of this year's honorees, more than 1,800 people have been honored in the In Memory Honor Roll.
Established in 1979, the nonprofit Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was authorized by Congress to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Since then, the memorial fund has evolved into an international nongovernmental organization dedicated to preserving the legacy of The Wall, promoting healing and educating about the impact of the Vietnam War.
Its initiatives include educational programs, a traveling Wall replica that honors veterans and a humanitarian and land mine-removal program in Vietnam. The fund also is building The Education Center at The Wall, an underground educational facility near the memorial. (Courtesy of American Forces Press Service)
I propose that we establish a separate memorial in which the names would be inscribed of all those who died (of natural causes, traffic accidents, etc.) between receiving their draft notifications in the mail and their actually reporting for induction.
Regards,
Sadly, PTSD treatment is still lagging behind amputation and other types of wound injury.
"I am under a lot of pressure to not diagnose PTSD" [Army medical treatment thread]
All this sounds like politics to me and his labeling them heroes makes me want to ask him to define hero.
What's next?
Honoring those who fled to Canada and died of drug overdoses?
Give me a break.
There's a reason why it's called the VIETNAM VETS MEMORIAL!
I think you got a screw loose buddy!
So . . . ask.
Or, you can stand fast and be silly like several posters to this thread. Guess lurkers ultimately decide which posters are the silly ones.
R.
Muawiyah,
The way you wrote your reply, right or wrong in the way I read it, you opened the door. That guy just accepted your invitation to step over the threshold.
Best,
R.
I didn’t get what you were trying to say will you try it again.
How about my brother?
Shot nine times, three in the face, three in the left arm, three in the left lung while carrying a fallen marine back to the helicopter when he was 18. Got a silver star and a purple heart but died when he was 34 from soft sarcoma cancer (before agent orange was officially recognized as a cause).
I think he should be on the wall, but until now I never knew that there was anything at all that could be done.
I don’t know, your brother isn’t even on this list and he was a decorated hero but this famous liberal activist is. She inspired the TV show China Beach.
(Washington, D.C) - Lynda Van Devanter, one of the nation’s foremost women’s veterans advocates, died November 15, at her home in Herndon, Virginia, after a long illness. “This is an extremely sad occasion,” said Thomas H. Corey, national president of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA). “Lynda was a giant in the field of veterans affairs. She was a forceful and effective advocate for all veterans. She was a valued friend, a devoted colleague, an accomplished nurse, and a loving mother and wife. She will be missed terribly.”
“Lynda Van Devanter, who was born in 1947, served as a U.S. Army nurse at the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku from 1969-70. In 1979, a year after the founding of Vietnam Veterans of America, she helped launch and became the head of VVA’s Women’s Project. She also began counseling other Vietnam veterans and conducting seminars around the country.
In 1983, she wrote a highly acclaimed memoir, Home Before Morning, which was reissued in 2002. “
From one of her articles:
“When will we learn the lessons of past wars? When will we stop taking the seed of our lives, our children, and sending them to destruction? When will we realize that war does nothing but perpetuate war - that violence begets only violence? I ask our President and the leaders of the world community, can we not find some way of living together in peace and harmony? Can we not stop what seems to be carrying us inexorably toward another war - and possible nuclear destruction?”
If I don't die of old age first, I may die eventually from friendly fire.
The deep freezers at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland AFB in San Antonio vouch-safe a ten year supply of my stem cells against the day my cancer might return.
This particular cancer and the dates I served in-country automatically, simply upon my application and without much question, qualify me for the Agent Orange compensation for which I never made a claim and will not likely ever make a claim. (Partly because I am fearful any such claim will be subtracted from my military retirement.)
Not everyone who served during the Vietnam era served in Vietnam nor were "DIRECTLY" wounded in any way by "DIRECT" connection with in-country service.
At the end of my first active duty tour at a de-activated station in Houston, I was the only person to be given orders for Vietnam. My closest friend was dispatched to Florida, then to Taiwan, then afterwards sent home to Oklahoma City for honorable discharge.
Considering the times, that close friend was most certainly a hero.
Best, R.
I don't understand, What did your friend do that was heroic?
I think maybe you are right. You don't understand. You've at least twice tried to trivialize posts by playing or not playing . . . dumb.
What we might need here is a common frame of reference which you need to provide for me, if you might be pleased to do so.
How do you define "hero" and something "heroic"?
Thanks and best with a wink, R.
No, I don’t understand your posts.
Was your friend a hero because he served or did he serve in Vietnam or was it because he did something in Taiwan?
Just flesh it out a little more so that I can get some idea of what you meant.
LOL!
Answer my appeal for creating a common frame of reference, then we’ll have something to talk about.
Wink,
R.
You described your friend as a hero I didn’t, that means you need to define it.
Just give me a clue, when you described him were you saying that he served in the army and never went to Vietnam but because he served during the war he was a hero?
Why are you hesitant and so timid to answer two simple questions which might establish the common frame of reference I want?
How do you define, “hero?”
What do you define as ‘heroic?”
Answer the questions to my easily satisfied satisfaction and I will most certainly answer, maybe not to your satisfaction, why my friend who never served any closer than Taiwan was and remains a hero, IMHO.
Wink,
R.
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