The following opinion piece supporting the In Memory memorial plaque was printed in the Washington Post's 'Close to Home' section Sunday, April 2, 2000. It is the opinion of Robert W. Doubek, who, as project director, piloted the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to Federal approval.
Honoring Vietnam's
Postwar CasualtiesThe addition of a plaque to the site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has become an unnecessarily contentious issue. This plaque would honor Vietnam veterans who died after the war due to their service but who do not qualify to have their names inscribed on the Wall. The three-foot-square plaque would be placed at ground level within the bounds of the Memorial's 13-acre site, but not close to the Wall. It would bear no names, only an inscription to honor these hidden casualties of Vietnam.
At a March 16 hearing before the House subcommittee on national parks and public lands, Jan Scruggs, president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and John Parsons, chairman of the National Capital Memorial Commission, opposed the plaque on the grounds that it set a precedent for frivolous additions to the memorial.
I can relate to that concern. Two decades ago, as the memorial fund's project director, I steered the design of the wall through 16 hearings to federal approval and accepted the statue of the three soldiers only when politics dictated that the Memorial couldn't be built without it.
A few years thereafter, as a private citizen, I mobilized opposition to the proposal to add a statue of a woman next to the three soldiers.
But this plaque is different. When the design criteria for the Memorial were conceived, with a list of names ending at April 1975, the long term impact of the war on its veterans were not forseen.
Now we know that many veterans retain both physical and emotional scars, and some will die much earlier than had they not served.
Among the unseen names are the well known, like Elmo Zumwalt III and Lewis B. Puller, Jr. Zumwalt, a Navy veteran, died of non Hodgkins lymphoma linked to exposure to Agent Orange. Puller, a grievously wounded Marine veteran who wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning autobiography died of suicide attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Most, however, were not famous. John Keath Coder, who rescued downed fliers as an Air Force helicopter pilot in Vietnam, is remembered only by family and friends. He, like Zumwalt, died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma attributed to Agent Orange, at the age of 49.
His sister, Ruth Coder Fitzgerald, like many others, came to believe that a form of permanent recognition of his untimely death was not too much to ask. She mobilized friends and families and in 1996 established a non-profit corporation to realize her vision.
Last November, legislation (H.R. 3293) to authorize the plaque was introduced by Rep. Elton Gallegly and now has 234 bipartisan co-sponsors.
A companion bill in the Senate (S. 1921) has 26 co-sponsors. Both bills provide that the American Battle Monuments Commission be authorized to place the plaque, consulting on design, inscription and location with the architects of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.
Fitzgerald and her dedicated followers believed that it was only a matter of time before the plaque could be dedicated. Then Parsons and Scruggs argued against the plaque.
Unlike the many proposals for additions to the Memorial based upon service branch or other categories, which are divisive, the "In Memory" plaque would be unifying. Those it honors share just one thing: they gave their lives for their country. As such it sets no precedent, but rather closes the book and completes the Memorial.
Congress should now do its part and without delay pass H.R. 3293 and S. 1921.
Robert W. Doubek