Wall stands as solemn reminder of lives lost
Ceremony at Cantine Field marks arrival of traveling Vietnam memorial
SAUGERTIES, N.Y. » With a small piece of paper and charcoal stick, Alexander Gouza carefully rubbed an etching over one of the more than 58,000 names on the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall, capturing a reminder of someone he’d never known but felt the need to honor.
“I want to remember some of the soldiers who died for our country,” 12-year-old Alexander said.
He and his sister, Madeline, 7, traveled from the Greene County town of Cairo on Thursday with their mother, Shelly, for the ceremony that formally welcomed the traveling wall to Cantine Field in Saugerties.
“I just think that learning about our country’s history is important,” said Gouza, a history teacher in the CairoDurham Central School District. “It’s important for them to see real-life veterans.”
The three were among more than 500 people — including veterans, elected officials and others — who took time out of their day to pay tribute to the Americans who died during the 20-year conflict.
The Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall, a 300-foot wall that is three-fifths the size of the permanent memorial in Washington, D.C., arrived in Saugerties on Wednesday. It will remain at Cantine Field through this Sunday, July 22.
Among the more than 58,000 names etched into
the black granite are those of 42 men from Ulster County who were killed in action.
Five decades later, the pain of the war remained visible and evident on Thursday — visible on the faces of the Gold Star families who still feel the loss of their loved ones; and evident in the words of Vietnam veteran Tom Andreassen, who lamented “the misconception of men and women who fought in that war .... ”
“The time to heel the wounds of war are long over,” Andreassen said. “We pray for our brothers and sisters on this wall, as well as their families. And let us not forget the living veteran, the Vietnam veteran, that left a part of their soul in the swamps and jungles of Vietnam. Many of them still live every day with the horrors of the service many years ago.”
Ulster County Executive Michael Hein said that while the county owes a debt it can never repay to those who died, he hoped the presence of the wall, referred to as The Wall That Heals, will help to ease that pain.
Retired U.S. Army Col. Roger Donlon, a Saugerties native who was the first person to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for service in the Vietnam War, spoke at Thursday’s ceremony, recalling his own welcome home from the war, before the antiwar sentiment had taken hold of the nation.
“Dec. 28, 1964, I came home a cold winter ...day, but the town of Saugerties was bubbling with warmth with 35,000 people on the streets, welcoming Roger home,” he said. “The welcome I received was the medicine I needed.”
Donlon urged those attending the ceremony to remember those who didn’t return home, and to remember the words his wife had inscribed on his wedding band some 58 years ago: “What we are is God’s gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.”