Conley Publishing - Special Sections
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The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It has 58,307 names of United States soldiers who died in the Vietnam War. There are at least 1,162 of the names from Wiscon- sin. WAUKESHA FREEMAN • DAILY NEWS • NEWS GRAPHIC • OCONOMOWOC ENTERPRISE V I E T N A M V E T E R A N S M E M O R I A L Finding The Photos By Andrew Johnson, Gold Star father It was January 2014 when I read about Wisconsin Public Radio and Television's effort to join the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) effort to find the photo of every Wisconsin service member who was killed and listed on the WALL in Washington D.C. The effort is known as the Faces Project. The photos are displayed by the birth date of the service member on the VVMF website: vvmf.org. The photos will also be projected at a new Education Center that will be built by the WALL in Washington D.C. All permits have been secured for the new Center and construction is anticipated to start in 2019. Fundraising efforts are still underway. I also learned that Congress does not authorize a war memorial on the Mall in D.C. until 10 years after a war has been completed. It means that there will be no national memorial for the current service members who have been killed in the current war on terrorism that began on September 2001. Approximately 8,000 U.S. service members, including my own son, 1LT David Johnson, have given their lives in this war. The folks at the VVMF have offered to have a temporary national memorial for the current service members in the new Education Center. There will be a place where the photos / faces of these brave man and woman will be displayed. It did not take me long to realize that the community newspapers in Wisconsin as well as all over the country could significantly contribute to the effort to find the missing photos of killed Vietnam Veterans. The first question that comes to mind is: why are the photos missing? Doesn't the military have them? The answer is that there was a huge fire at a government storage facility in 1973 where over six million military records were destroyed including many of the personnel records from Vietnam. It was an era when there were paper records but no digital back-ups. In May 2013, approxi- matley 450 photos were missing from Wisconsin and 24,000 in the U.S. It is important to recognize that more than half the photos from Wisconsin had been found by this time. Many people deserve recognition for finding those photos, especially former school teacher Bryce Kelly of Medford who is credited with finding over 500 photos in the initial effort. In my mind, Bryce is a real hero for his dedication and persistence as a caring citizen. Also, many family members of soldiers up-loaded photos directly to the VVMF website. I have had the good fortune to have been the president of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association (WNA) in 2010 and still remain on the board of directors to this day. The use of local newspapers for such an effort made a lot of sense. Who knows their local communities better than local newspapers? I made a presenta- tion to the board in February 2013 and asked for the support of the WNA and its members to provide assistance to the effort and they gave their full support immedi- ately. I contacted Jeffrey Potter, Marketing Director of Wisconsin Public Radio, and offered the help of the Wisconsin newspapers in finding the photos. We worked with Jeff throughout the project. continued on page 2 Created by the Dodge County Pionier and released for exclusive use for Wisconsin Newspaper Association member newspapers. Proud to Honor America's Veterans 250100002 www.thesilverlining.com