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Vietnam Memorial Is Shrine For Mementoes, Messages

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By STEPHEN MANNING, The Associated Press

Published: November 11, 2007

WASHINGTON - They are lined up like footnotes to the names etched on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial's polished black granite, leaning against its base, some a collective tribute to the fallen, others bearing a message for just one of the dead.

An American Legion uniform cap from Kansas, a police patch from Cornella, Ga., a note to "GRAMDADAD" that appears to have been written by the unpracticed hand of a young child. A homemade plaque with plastic red poppies pasted to it, dedicated to a "Band of Brothers." Poems from middle school students.

Since the memorial was completed in 1982, it has become a de facto shrine with more than 100,000 offerings for the dead and messages from survivors left by the millions who visit it each year.

That number is likely to grow in the coming days. National Park Service officials say milestones like Veterans Day today and the memorial's 25th anniversary on Tuesday inevitably lead to floods of new items at the wall, as veterans gather at the site on the National Mall and the memories of the war that ended more than 30 years ago are renewed.

The nature of the mementos has changed. In the beginning, it was mostly veterans who dropped off unit patches, Purple Hearts, photos of lost soldiers or old pairs of Army boots. But with many veterans now in their 60s, members of a younger generation - including grandchildren of veterans and the fallen - are making contributions.

The practice wasn't foreseen by the memorial's planners, but the first offering came even before the monument was completed, a Purple Heart laid in the foundation by the brother of a dead soldier.

At the beginning, a memorial staffer collected the items on the belief that people would want them back. When they continued to pile up, with little sign of abating, the Park Service decided in 1986 to treat the items as museum pieces.

"It was unheard of for people to come to a site over a protracted period of time and leave objects," said Duery Felton, the collection curator and a Vietnam veteran. "These objects became a collection. Before that, they were just things left at the memorial."

Jan Scruggs, a veteran who came up with the idea for the memorial and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, said the wall changed the way people pay respects and grieve at memorials and at the sites of tragic events - such as the World Trade Center in New York and the bombed federal building in Oklahoma City.

"It is a beautiful thing," Scruggs said. "It shows that those who we know and who were a part of our lives and who aren't with us any more still have an impact on us."

Park Service workers collect the mementoes every few days and ship them to a temperature-controlled warehouse in an office park in suburban Landover, Md., about 20 miles away.

"They are speaking to the dead and place of the dead in culture," said Kristin Hass, a University of Michigan professor who wrote a 1998 book on the practice of leaving messages and mementos at the wall.

There are notes between buddies who served together, and messages of uncertain meaning like the unbroken, dry cigarette or the roll of toilet paper. Felton said both would be precious to a soldier spending days in the bush.

Others are stark testaments to the Vietnam experience. Felton pointed to one of the dozens of pairs of worn combat boots pairs left at the memorial.

"These boots have character, they tell a story," he said.

The collection includes items taken from the enemy - a dented canteen, an AK-47 ammunition belt. There is a letter from a U.S. soldier to the North Vietnamese soldier he killed saying: "Why you didn't take my life I will not know."

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