Personal items from WWII grace new site

WASHINGTON – Intimate remembrances are appearing amid the World War II memorial’s cool granite and bronze: An American flag that graced the coffin of a father gone to war. Black-and-white photos, in pewter frames, of young men in uniform. Silver dog tags, ribbons, even a Purple Heart or two.

“This is personal. These are people that were there,” said Frank LaMantia, 52, of Aurora, Colo., as he read notes with some of the pictures of young soldiers, sailors and fliers that visitors have left behind.

“It makes it more touching,” said his girlfriend, Janice Schaffer.

One letter next to a photo of a young soldier in the 82nd Airborne read simply, “Dear Dad, Oh, how I wished you had lived! . . . All my love, Jeanne.”

The memorial was dedicated last weekend at a ceremony with President Bush, former Sen. Bob Dole and tens of thousands of aging World War II veterans. Since then, people have been placing remembrances of loved ones at the site.

The National Park Service is discouraging visitors from leaving items because there’s no plan for what to do with all the photos, letters and other keepsakes.

“We would rather see these mementos stay locally, in the communities where the veterans came from, at a local museum, a local historical society,” said David Barna, chief of public affairs for the Park Service.

“We would never be in a place to display them all.”

The Park Service was faced with the same sort of dilemma at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial when people, in droves, began leaving Purple Hearts, Bronze and Silver Stars, and other items normally handed down to future generations of families.

“They were leaving their medals. They were leaving their photographs. They were leaving very personal items, and they were leaving them not only mother to a son, but comrade to comrade,” said Pam West, director of the Park Service’s Museum Resource Center.

Over the past 20 years, the Park Service has collected some 80,000 items from the Vietnam wall. They are being stored at a warehouse in suburban Maryland. Some have been on display at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.

Many flowers, photos and military caps left by loved ones at the World War II memorial were placed near the names of battles etched into the monument’s granite or near the “Freedom Wall” and its 4,000 sculpted gold stars, commemorating the more than 400,000 Americans killed in the war.

A photo of 1st Lt. Everett W. Kennedy of Quincy, Mass., was accompanied by a poem from his granddaughter, Kate, written on the 60th anniversary of his death.

The last few lines read: “In the eyes of a man, the smile of a woman, in the heart of my Gram, and now finally, in the memory of his country.”