Years after their deaths, seven Vietnam veterans were honored Tuesday by having their names carved into the black granite wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
"It shows the continuing pain of the Vietnam War and the fact that years later there are continuing casualties as well," Jan Scruggs, president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, said Tuesday after the last name was inscribed.It was a bittersweet occasion for family members.
"It's too bad it took so long, but I am glad," said Linette Sparacino, sister of veteran Charles Wood, an Army pilot from Roseburg, Ore., who died 15 years ago.
"It's a nice memorial, better than a verbal kind of ceremony where the words float in the air and they are gone," added Sparacino, of Alexandria, Va., by telephone.
There were no relatives or friends watching as Jim Lee and Kirk Bochman inscribed the names, a procedure that involves plastering the stenciled names on the wall and then sandblasting them in place.
But family members will attend a ceremony on Memorial Day to honor the veterans: Pfc. Harrison Allen of Springfield, Ill.; Staff Sgt. Robert Shockey of Phoenix; Spc. Edward Tibbetts of West Southport, Maine; Spc. Kenneth Duggar of Chicago; Master Sgt. Herbert Murff of Caruthersville, Mo.; Chief Warrant Officer Wood; and Spc. William W. Di Niro of Seldon, N.Y.
The additions bring the total number of names on the memorial to 58,209.
Officials said it took so long to include the names partly because some family members did not inform the Pentagon of the deaths but mostly because determining what constitutes a death as a direct result of the Vietnam War is a time-consuming process.
"If a person . . . died of wounds he received (in Vietnam) or whether it was an accidental death his name would be on the memorial," said Scruggs. "The problem we're looking at here is people who did not die in Vietnam itself but died here stateside years later."
"It's been going on every year since we put the memorial up (in 1982), and we suspect it will continue for probably the next five, six or eight years," he added.
Meeting the strict criteria for inclusion on the wall can be a nerve-racking experience for families.
Sparacino said her brother was shot in the stomach, broke his neck, his back, one arm, both legs and six ribs and received 156 stitches after his plane was shot down June 13, 1970.
Wood survived the crash but was in and out of hospitals the rest of his life with complications. He died in 1982 after emergency gall bladder surgery.
Although Wood's surgeon verified on the death certificate that he died as a direct result of his wounds, the family was initially told that soldiers who were discharged from hospitals before their deaths could not have their names on the wall, Sparacino said.
After making a formal application to the Pentagon, Sparacino succeeded.