Leland should not proceed with Military Wall of Honor

At first blush, one can only hope that plans for a “Military Wall of Honor” in my old hometown of Leland is one of those ideas that evaporates in the presence of thought.

As outlined to me in an email from an old classmate at Leland High School, who is spearheading the undertaking, the plan is to erect a granite wall that would include the names of all from the community who have ever served in uniform.

That’s it. The only requirement is for completion of service. A dishonorable discharge exempts you from this wall. Otherwise all are in.

Did you join the National Guard in the 1960s as a way to escape the draft during the Vietnam War? No worries. You’re in.

The list of eligible honorees, I am told, quickly jumped to beyond 2,000 and is still growing. Surprised supporters now expect some 6,000 — more than the town’s population. Unless there’s a cap, a cutting off point, it’ll grow forever — or as long as there is a Leland and an American military. If we keep adding names it may one day rival the Great Wall of China.

That, of course, is a problem. It is far from the only one.

Leland was incorporated in 1886. How do we find that family of military men from 1923 that has moved, died or left Leland with no trace of remaining members? It’ll take more than word of mouth, which is how I was contacted. I have two brothers who served.

It’ll require a Herculean effort rivaling the building of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall — which despite its vast resources left hundreds of gaps.

And that brings us to the main and fatal flaw with this idea, however well meaning: Military names chiseled in granite mean something. That’s true in spades for Vietnam era veterans.

Vietnam veterans can’t trademark or copyright the wall and almost certainly would not want to if they could. There are, at present count, 57,939 names etched in granite on that wall — the number is so fluid those in charge of the wall prefer “around 58,000.”

Those names, whatever the exact number, mean something that simple military service alone doesn’t — and this in no way is meant to belittle military service.

The Vietnam wall emerged from and is a product of one of the more painful times in our nation’s military history. It is now the most-visited memorial in Washington.

But for many veterans of that war the wall in Constitution Gardens alongside the National Mall is almost sacred. Its dark granite holds much more than the names of our little brothers, our big brothers, our old comrades in arms.

It holds a hope, however vain in these troubled times, that honor and service will not only be respected and remembered but will never be cheapened and made to appear anything other than what it was: an ultimate sacrifice for a greater good.

Military veterans, of all citizens throughout our population, should respect its history and its future. It hardly seems out of place then to expect extreme caution be taken when borrowing the idea of a military wall of names.

That hardly seems the case for the all-encompassing project being considered in Leland. The backers of this wall of names can do better. Here’s hoping they will.

Tony A Tharp of Murphy, North Carolina, is originally from Leland.

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