The statue is of a soldier slogging through a Vietnam rice paddy, carrying his helmet, his rifle and another rifle slung over his back — the weapon of a deceased comrade.
"These weren't policymakers," said Vietnam veteran Lew Ross, who spearheaded the effort to reconstruct and rededicate the Vietnam War Memorial just west of the Utah Capitol. "They were 18-year-old, 19-year-old kids. We're very proud of what they did."
A group of about 200 people gathered Saturday — Veterans Day — to rededicate the monument. Built in 1989 at a cost of close to $500,000, the floor had crumbled from water damage and the lighting system was inadequate.
It now has a new granite floor and lighting system, paid for by $125,000 in state money appropriated by the Legislature specially for the purpose.
Speakers spoke, a bugler blew "Taps," bagpipers played "Amazing Grace" and four F-16 fighter jets from
Hill Air Force Base's 388th Fighter Wing flew over at precisely 11 a.m. — the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 11 years from the first dedication.
Eleven is an integer traditionally associated with war memorials, ever since World War I ended with a German surrender on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.
The memorial is reminiscent of its more famous counterpart in Washington, D.C., with a soldier statue and a black granite wall into which are etched the names of those who died in the jungles of Vietnam.
The black granite of the Utah memorial, containing the names of 419 Utahns, was quarried from the same location in southern India as the national memorial.
The wall lists the deaths by year, from 1959 to 1975. The only two names in that final year are Orin Poulton and June Poulton, husband and wife, who died when their C-5 cargo plane went down during "Operation Babylift," an effort to transport and place orphaned Vietnamese infants. They were both in their 50s.
Those behind the Utah memorial say it was well worth the money to keep the memory alive. Many Utah soldiers had it even harder than those from other parts of the country, they maintain, because they were coming off LDS missions, going from one extreme to the other.
"They went from a mind-set of saving souls to taking them," Ross said. "That was very traumatic."
The soldier statue has an interesting history: It was the first sculpture of Utah Vietnam veteran Clyde Ross Morgan, who at the time of its creation was undergoing treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. As is common in such cases, his doctors urged him to write poetry or learn music or do something else uplifting and beautiful that could occupy his time and take his mind off the war experience.
How about sculpture? he asked, having had a casual interest in it. The response was enthusiastic, and Morgan sat down another Utahn, Vietnam Marine O'Conner Dale, to be the model for the statue.
The memorial also contains etchings of medals, military service insignias and a map of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
An uncredited remark by Otto von Bismarck, etched below the representation of the Vietnam service medal, encapsulates the feelings of many regarding the Vietnam War:
"Woe to the statesman whose reasons for entering a war do not appear so plausible at its end as at its beginning."
E-mail: alan@desnews.com