Kids & Family
Four Wayne Men on Vietnam Wall
A project is underway to match a photo to every name on "The Wall" in D.C.
What if you could put a face to every name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial?
The VVMF hopes you can.
The National Call for Photos is a project organized by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to match a headshot or portrait photograph to every service member listed on The Wall.
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The pictures will be displayed in an exhibit at the future Education Center at The Wall, an underground visitors center to be built near the Vietnam Veterans and the Lincoln memorials. Every day, the center will celebrate the birthdays of service members who died during the Vietnam War by featuring their photos on a giant digital wall.
So far, 25,526 veterans have complete profiles with at least one photograph, according to George Pojani, a research associate at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. These profiles are currently featured on The Virtual Wall, an online database of the Memorial's veterans.
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Four of the fallen
Records show 233 people who enlisted in Delaware County died in the Vietnam War. They include William A. Blewitt Jr., Donald Deane Burris Jr., Calvin Kyrle Graeser Jr., and Lawrence James Merschel, all of Wayne.
Blewitt, a 18-year-old Marine private, died June 16, 1968, in south Vietnam, his profile shows. A picture of Blewitt is included, as are some messages of remembrance.
Burris, a 22-year-old Army chief warrant officer, died Dec. 22, 1969, in Laos, according to his profile. It includes several messages and a photograph of Burris. A classmate of his at Radnor High School wrote:
Don Burris was designated as the "most likely to succeed" in my senior class at Randnor Senior High School in 1965. Little did we know that Don's success would not be in academics, but in serving the citizens of his country in a most honorable way. He turned up missing on his second as a helicopter pilot in 'Nam. Thanks, Don, for your ultimate sacrifice in those tumultuous times.Graeser, a 23-year-old Army specialist fourth class, died March 11, 1967, in south Vietnam, according to his profile. A photo of Graeser is needed.
Merschel, a 20-year-old Army private, died May 1, 1968, in south Vietnam, according to his profile. He lived at 224 Pembroke Avenue and attended and , according to his obituary.
How to contribute
To locate photos for the project, contributors can visit www.vvmf.org/thewall and search for veterans who enlisted in their area. The VVMF recommends contacting family and friends of the veterans to find photographs or visit local libraries and search through yearbooks or newspaper obituaries.
To submit a photograph, contributors should obtain a high quality scan of the image and post a remembrance at http://www.vvmf.org/remembrances. The VVMF will send an email to contributors when their photograph is posted with a matching profile.
Relatives of service members with complete profiles are encouraged to submit photographs to the VVMF, even if there is already a photo available.
Pojani says that the contributors to the National Call for Photos will help improve the visitor's experience at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
"It's a place where people can go back and find stories about all the casualties on the Wall," Pojani said about the future Education Center. "It will be more personal than just names on the Wall."
