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The Wall is coming here in June
The Moving Wall, the traveling half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, D.C., will appear in Mountain Home June 15-22.
The Chamber of Commerce is sponsoring the exhibit, which is being paid for by the Air Force Appreciation Day Committee.
The Chamber is in the process of developing a series of events to take place each day that the exhibit of the names of those who died in Vietnam is displayed. Details will be released over the next several months. Coleen Swenson, publisher of the Mountain Home News, who made the initial efforts to obtain the wall, will head the committee planning the events.
The wall will be set up in Carl Miller Park on June 14, Flag Day, with opening ceremonies set for June 15. The memorial is dedicated to the 2.7 million men and women who served in the U.S. military in Vietnam.
The Moving Wall was paid for, like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, from contributions made by the public. It's appearances are coordinated by Vietnam Combat Veterans, Ltd. It is not a display owned or operated by the federal government.
As names have been added to the wall in Washington, D.C., over the years, Vietnam Combat Veterans have updated the moving wall to exactly match the names on the national memorial.
The Moving Wall is made of aluminum panels, having a surface painted with a two-part polyurethane gloss black which gives a mirror-like finish.
Overall length of the Moving Wall is 252.83 feet, which is slightly longer than half the length of the Memorial in Washington, whose length is 493.5 feet Composed of 74 separate frames, each frame contains two silk-screened panels. Each of the two walls that make up the entire wall is 126.5 feet in length. The tallest panels have 137 lines of names, while the shortest panels at each end of the Wall have only one line. Originally there were five names on each line, but with the addition of names, some lines now have six names. At the vertex of The Moving Wall, where the two walls join at a 125-degree angle, the panels are just over six feet in height. In Washington, those same panels are 10.2 feet in height.
Numbers at the bottom of each panel are used in locating names. Volunteers will help individuals at the display find the names of people they are looking for.
As of Jan.1, 2003, there are 58,228 names listed on the Memorial. Approximately 1,300 of those are still unaccounted for prisoners of war (POWs) and missing in action (MIAs). The names are arranged on the Wall in chronological order, according to the date of casualty, or the date they were reported captured or missing.
Historicaly, many people make rubbings of the names, and the Chamber will have special forms available for that purpose. Like the national memorial in Washington, D.C., many people leave items at the Moving Wall, ranging from flowers to letters, even medals.
The idea of a national Vietnam Veterans Memorial began when Dr. Victor Westphall of Angel Fire, N.M. began constructing a memorial in Angel Fire in memory of his son and those who died with him. The idea of a Vietnam veterans memorial located in the nation's capital was that of Jan Scruggs. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc. was incorporated on April 27, 1979 in Washington, D.C., by a group of Vietnam veterans: Jan Scruggs, President of VVMF; Robert Doubek, Project Director and later as Executive Director; John Wheeler, Chairman of the Board. They lobbied Congress for a two-acre plot of land in Constitution Gardens.
On July 1, 1980 President Jimmy Carter signed the legislation to provide a site in Constitutional Gardens near the Lincoln Memorial. It was a three and a half year task to build the Memorial to salute those who served in Vietnam. The Memorial wall was designed by Maya Ying Lin and was dedicated on November 13, 1982. The sculpture created by Frederick Hart called the "Three Servicemen" was unveiled on November 8, 1984, at which time control of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was turned over to the National Park Service.
The concept and actual building of the Moving Wall grew out of the hard work and efforts by John Devitt, Gerry Haver and Norris Shears, Vietnam veterans from California, concerned with what they might possibly do to somehow "keep alive" and share the power and good that Devitt had experienced while attending the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
At first, it was decided to build a replica and display it on the West Coast so that people who lived so far from the Capital might have a chance to experience the wall.
While in Washington, D.C., in February 1983, John Devitt was explaining his project to several other veterans he had just met. One exclaimed, "What a great idea! Is this going to be portable?"
Trying to avoid any "negatives" around his project, John simply nodded and replied, "Yeah, it's going to be portable."
Originally, John Devitt simply called it the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Mobile), drawing on his own background as a helicopter crew chief in the First Cavalry Division (Airmobile). In February 1985, while the Memorial was on display at the State of California Veterans Home in Yountville, California, Micki Voisard of St. Helena, Calif., dubbed the name "The Moving Wall." She is a member of Vietnam Combat Veterans, Ltd. and a former flight attendant with Flying Tigers Airline. It has also been referred to as "The Traveling Wall" and the "Half-Scale Replica Wall" and the "Healing Wall".
Construction began in February 1983 after experimenting with various methods of replicating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. Out of several methods tried, Devitt decided silk-screening was the best way to replicate the names, making each name as legible as it is on the Memorial in Washington. John Devitt, Gerry Haver and Norris Shears did the actual construction and silk-screening of names. When they began, John was confident they could complete the project within two weeks.
The Moving Wall was completed in October 1984, having taken nearly two years rather than the two weeks John had hoped for. On October 11th, the last panel was silk-screened, mounted on its frame while the ink was still wet, and loaded into its crate. On Oct. 15, The Moving Wall was erected for the first time in Tyler, Texas.
Carl McClung, a Vietnam veteran in Tyler, had heard about The Moving Wall seven months before and had contacted Devitt to see about scheduling a date. The display in Tyler, Texas, coincided with the East Texas Rose Festival.
All items except the flowers are boxed up and sent to storage, in the Memorial Fund's warehouse/office complex. When the Moving Wall has fulfilled the needs for which it was created, a permanent site will be developed and landscaped. A museum will be built at the site, and all the artifacts that have been left at the Moving Wall will be displayed in glass cases below each state flag of states The Moving Wall visited.
The Moving Wall has visited over 900 communities since its inception.