I Came To See My Son's Name.

 I came to see my son's name. These or similar words are on the lips, minds, and hearts of people who journey to see their 'special name' on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Wall, in Washington, D.C.

 But this wasn't the real Wall, and this wasn't our nation's capital. This was The Moving Wall, the half-sized replica of the Wall that has been visiting the cities and hometowns of those named upon it since 1984. And it was in Batavia, New York for the week.

 As a volunteer at The Moving Wall, my duties were the same as those I had learned while volunteering with the National Park Service at the real Wall: simply to help people find their special name and make name rubbings. However, my Park Service volunteer mentor had taught me that we could also provide a much more valuable service to the visitors by giving them the opportunity to talk about the person behind the name.

 While searching the directory or leading a visitor to the name they sought, I would quietly ask, 'Was he friend or a relative?' Over my six days of volunteerism, I began conversations this way with several hundred people. Only a handful gave me a short answer. Almost everyone wanted to talk. Each had their own story to tell. For some, the words poured out as if the floodgates of a dam, closed for thirty years, had just burst open. For others, the words came out slowly and deliberately between long pauses. Sometimes, people choked on their words and cried. Tears came to my eyes as I listened, asked more questions, and silently prayed that my words would help heal, not hurt.

 We mourn and respect our dead soldiers, but in the shadow of that bitter war, their sacrificesand the grief of their familieswere granted no dignity. Many Americans had blamed the war on the soldiers who'd been called to fight in it, who'd died in it. Mothers and fathers came to see that their sons had not been forgotten, that their names were remembered on the Wall, that someone else cared.

 A frail, elderly mother came to The Moving Wall in a wheelchair. As we looked for her son's name, she described his interests during high school, and then the agonizing days when she was first told that her son was injured, then missing, then just 'lost at sea.' His remains never came back home.

 'Til death do us part' became an abrupt reality for thousands of marriages because of the war. I met two widows of men whose names are on the Wall. One showed me a picture of her husband and a separate picture of their daughtera daughter her husband had never met, a girl who grew up without a father. I was painfully aware that had some Viet Cong soldiers been slightly better marksmen, my wife and son might have been among these visitors at The Moving Wall, searching for my name.
 
 Sisters and brothers came to see a name. One said he was so close in age to his brother that 'people were always calling us by each other's name, and we both hated it.' A sister said, 'I was so much younger than my brother that I didn't realize why my mom was crying when we said goodbye to him at the airport.'

 A group of four people stood near one panel. I offered to make a rubbing of a name. One man pointed to the name Paul D. Urquhart.

 Is that Captain Paul Urquhart, the helicopter pilot?' I asked.

 The man nodded. 'He's my brother.'

 I explained that I had known Paul, that I'd flown with him on his first tour in Vietnam. I'd read later that he'd been shot down during his second tour. Paul's brother said that he and his family had come all the way from Pennsylvaniait was the anniversary date of the day Paul went MIA. I made a rubbing of Paul's name and added a rubbing of the Army aviator wings from my hat, a symbol Paul and I had worn so proudly so long ago.

 Aunts and uncles also came to see a special name on the Wall.

 'He stayed overnight at our house so much that one neighbor thought he was our son,' one aunt said.

 'I took him hunting,' an uncle confessed regretfully, shaking his head. 'I was the one who taught him to like guns.'

 Cousins came to the Wall. 'He was like a brother,' they said.

 Veterans came to see the names of their buddies. Most of them were eager to tell me about their friends, or about how they died. Though decades had passed, many could vividly recall the days their buddies were lost. They spoke of survivor's guilt. 'He went out on patrol in my place that day,' one said. 'If I hadn't been away on R&R, he wouldn't be dead,' echoed another.

 Others were bothered by the fact that they couldn't remember much about their friend because they had tried to 'block it out' for so many years.

 One man said: 'I lost a few good friends while I was there, but I don't want to find just their names, because I feel the same about all 58,000 of these names.'

 Many people came to the Wall in the privacy or serenity of darkness. Our security volunteers reported that there were only a few minutes each night that the Wall had no callers at all. One visitor spent several hours in the middle of the night standing in front of a certain panel. Whenever anyone came close, he would move away. When alone again, he would move back to that panel to continue his silent vigil. Still others came in the darkness before dawn to watch the break of a new day over the Wall.

 The visitors said:
 'I taught four of these boys.'
 'He was the little boy who lived across the street.'
 ' We were going steady in high school.'
 ' He delivered my newspapers.'
 'I was his Boy Scout leader.'
 'He went to our church.'
 'I worked with his mother at the time he was killed.'
 'My son played football with him.'
 'We were classmates for twelve years.'

 Two weeks after the visit of The Moving Wall to Batavia, a friend told my wife: 'I don't understand all the concern about The Moving Wall. Why don't people just forget about that dirty war?'

 For many, The Moving Wall does not need to be explained. Those who do not understand are, perhaps, more fortunate than those who do.

-The author is the founder of The Virtual Wall www.VirtualWall.org

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