Wall That Heals Departs after Four-Day Stay at Freedom Hall

BY CLAIRE GALOFARO
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. – A leather case lies open in the grass with a Bronze Star on one side and a Purple Heart on the other, both awarded posthumously on Jan. 29, 1969. The honors are a gift to a long-dead soldier, laid at the foot of the traveling Vietnam memorial in Johnson City.

The Wall That Heals ended its four-day stay at Freedom Hall’s Liberty Bell Track on Sunday and sponsors estimate that 15,000 people came to pay their respects, many leaving behind memories of the fallen.

“This is about closure,” said Randy D. Lingerfelt, a benefit representative with the Tennessee Department of Veterans Affairs. “When you’ve got somebody who lost their life to war, it’s a pain you can’t really describe. You can leave that here.”

More than 200 mementos were left beside the memorial over those four days, and Lingerfelt said they will be collected for display at the VA Medical Center in Mountain Home, Tenn.

The traveling monument, a half-scale replica of the original Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., was open and staffed with dozens of volunteers 24 hours a day.

Family, friends, comrades and strangers left handwritten letters meant for no living person to understand. There were boots and uniforms, dog tags – and a lone ace of spades. And more than any other gift: photos of handsome young men who never got a shot at growing up.

“These are kids’ names on this wall, 18, 19, 20 years old,” said Skip Church of Church Brothers in Johnson City, who spearheaded the event. “And within a matter of weeks they had to grow up to be a man. If they grew up at all.”

Of the 58,261 names listed, at least 156 had roots in the Tri-Cities area.

Many of the volunteers said young people are especially interested in learning about the war.

A blond-haired, freckled 14-year-old named Johnny Dison, showed up to volunteer every single day, sometimes for the overnight shift.

“Can I help you find a name?” Johnny asked each person who came through, helping old people with walkers and canes place flowers at the monument.

“Honestly, I don’t have a real reason for coming,” Johnny said. “I just enjoy helping people, I like having it here. There are a lot of elderly people who can’t make it to D.C.”

Johnny is a shrugging, blue-eyed kid amid hundreds of carnations and miniature flags lining the makeshift monuments. There’s a baseball diamond at his back and a water
tower off in the distance, painting a scene that is hauntingly Americana.

The wall is ushered to middle schools and football fields across the country by Richard “Gunny” Lyons and his wife, Debbie Frederick, two former truckers who gave away everything they owned and downsized to a trailer-sized life.

“I live with the wall. This is my home. Where we go, this whole nation, is my home,” said Lyons, who lost half a foot, half a shoulder and 29 friends in Vietnam.

Since 1996, the traveling wall has visited more than 300 locations. This was its first stop in the Tri-Cities, and Lyons said it was met with the greatest reception he has seen. The local chapter of Rolling Thunder, a group of motorcycling veterans, played a large part in organizing and staffing its stay.

“I left Vietnam 38 years ago yesterday and I more or less tried to erase it from my memory,” said Rolling Thunder’s local founder, Bill Hampton, a retired Tennessee State Trooper. “We came home to a divided nation, unappreciated, looked down on. It was not a popular thing to be a Vietnam vet. So we kept our mouths shut and tried to carry on with our lives. This is the homecoming we never got.”

cgalofaro@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2531