Memorial Coming To Chewelah

Scores of volunteers are preparing for thousands of people to visit a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial next week.

Sponsors say the traveling replica, sometimes called the “Moving Wall,” has attracted 15,000 to 30,000 visitors in like-sized communities since it was created in 1983. That’s six to 12 times Chewelah’s population.

The portable memorial was created by San Jose, Calif., resident John Devitt, a helicopter door gunner in the Vietnam War. Devitt reasoned that many people couldn’t afford to visit the original memorial in Washington, D.C., especially considering that the Vietnam War was fought largely by men who were too poor to go to college and avoid the draft.

Chewelah’s version of the angular wall - made of aluminum panels - will be set up Saturday morning and remain on 24-hour display until the following Saturday evening. It will be the focus of daily events designed to honor Vietnam veterans.

Computers and printed catalogs will be available to locate individuals among the 58,209 names etched on the wall. The computers will generate individualized printouts with information about the fallen soldiers, a picture of the wall and a space for visitors to make a crayon “rubbing” of the name.

Veterans Administration counselors will be on hand for anyone who needs help with unresolved emotions.

Each night, high school students, Boy Scouts and members of Chewelah’s two veterans organizations will light the wall with bag-covered “luminary” candles, give a 21-gun salute and play taps.

An opening ceremony Sunday at 2 p.m. will feature a Huey helicopter as well as dignitaries. Northeastern Washington veterans-turned-teachers will be honored Monday at 7:15 p.m., while Native American drummers and dancers will pay tribute to their veterans Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Busloads of school children will visit the memorial all day Wednesday, and the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association will conduct a ceremony the following Saturday, May 16, at 3:30 p.m., just before the closing program.

A local production of a Broadway play about Vietnam veterans, “Speed of Darkness,” opens today at 8 p.m. at the Chewelah Civic Center. For more information, call (509) 935-6968.

Even at half the size of the polished black granite wall in the national capital, the 252.8-foot-long replica will take up much of Janke Park. Community leaders hope the setting, along the banks of Chewelah Creek, will recreate the serenity of the nation’s most-visited memorial. To promote that atmosphere, vendors will be banned.

“We believe we have just a great setting for it,” said project leader Doug Asbjornsen. “Our park is a real centerpiece of our community.”

Asbjornsen started work on the project two years ago when someone told him about the replica after one of the elaborate Veteran’s Day programs he has organized as principal of Jenkins Middle School. The school has created a memorial mural, and has heard from an Auschwitz death-camp survivor as well as numerous veterans.

“I want this stuff to come alive,” said Asbjornsen, a Naval Reserve lieutenant commander who regularly patrols for Russian submarines with an air squadron based at Whidbey Island. “Vietnam is ancient history for our kids in the same way World War II was for me when I was a kid growing up.”

A 1974 high school graduate, he was too young to serve in Vietnam but old enough to remember the unpopular war and the lack of recognition for those who fought it.

Jenkins Middle School is sponsoring the “Moving Wall” exhibit and working it into lessons wherever possible, “but we also wanted it to be a gift to the people of northeast Washington,” Asbjornsen said.

Ten other civic leaders are helping Asbjornsen direct an estimated 200 volunteers.

Thanks to City Councilman Gene DuCharme, an auto shop owner who took charge of fund-raising, “money is the least of our worries,” Asbjornsen said. He said cash donations came to about $6,500, and guessed that in-kind donations may bring the total to $10,000.

Any leftover money will be used for similar events in the future or, possibly, to construct a permanent Vietnam memorial in Chewelah.