The committee involved with completion of the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial in Veterans Memorial Park in Las Cruces is looking for help from the community through donations and also photographs to help complete the memorial.
Jim Harbison, a Vietnam veteran who served two tours in Vietnam during his Army Career spends most of his retired days at the memorial working on its completion.
He says that the marble panels of the monument tells the story of all branches of the U.S. Military that took part in Vietnam as told by veterans who were there.
Harbison says that some of the things included in the final phases of the memorial still to be completed include a Huey Helicopter and a panel that will be called “Faces of Vietnam.”
“So what we’ve done is we have asked all of the veterans who live in this area and who served in Vietnam to send us photograph and we’ll have it etched in the marble panel, and so it ties the community into the monument. It also recognizes some of these people who have kept their Vietnam service hidden for nearly 50 years, because of the way they were treated when they came back,” says Harbison.
Harbison says that the “Faces of Vietnam” panel will display the efforts by veterans and civilians who served in all of Southeast Asia.
“Our faces of Vietnam panel is not just those who were in Vietnam, but those who served in Southeast Asia, because you had Air Force people who flew out of Thailand, out of Guam, out of The Philippines. You had Navy people up and down the coast who never set foot on the soil of Vietnam, but their contributions were legendary for everything we had to do,” says Harbison.
Joe Martinez who is a local supporter of veteran's affairs started the push for this memorial. He says it was half-funded by the state and half-funded through fundraising by the committee.
“We’re selling t-shirts and we’re selling baseball caps and whatever we could dream up that would be a sellable thing to hold on to…it’s worked,” says Martinez.
Thomas Sotomayor, II designed the memorial. His father was a Vietnam Veteran and he says he hopes the memorial will help educate younger generations.
“Here soon most of the veterans that served in this war that really need to hear the thank you’s and the welcome home…they’re not going to be here to receive them anymore so the next generations have to be able to come in here and experience what it is that they sacrificed.”
Dolores Archuleta, a former Las Cruces City Councilor and Chairperson for the Veterans Wall in the park says that the addition of the Vietnam memorial has helped bring more attention to the sacrifices made by Veterans.
“So many people were so pleased with it, especially the people we were trying to reach-The Vietnam Veterans,” says Archuleta.
Hubert Gay helped on the committee as well. Gay is an Air Force veteran who served during at Travis Air Force Base in California during the Vietnam War where many of the wounded and fallen arrived from Vietnam.
“Some of them mainly there at Travis, were the medevacs coming back…all these guys. That’s the main point. They would come into Travis and then they would be split up and shipped to whatever part of the country they would come from there. There were all kinds of tore up guys. And then there were other flights that would come in that had the caskets on it.”
Gay says he hopes people can gain an appreciation of all that the Vietnam Veterans gave during the war.
“I hope they appreciate the sacrifice that these guys made. Especially the ones that didn’t return.”
Photographs for the “Faces of Vietnam” panel to the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial Committee can be emailed to jharbison@usa.net. The photos can also be mailed with a return self-stamped envelope to Vietnam Memorial Committee at P.O. Box 1332, Las Cruces NM 88004.
All photos must be received by July 31st.
For more information: https://newmexicovietnamveteranswarmemorialproject.org/category/news/