Next year will be the 25th Anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC; The Wall.

As they did at the 20th Anniversary in 2002, they will be asking for volunteers to help read aloud each name on The Wall during the Veterans Day ceremonies next November. Several of us helped out with that, four years ago. They read names around-the-clock for 4 or 5 days, and each volunteer stands at a microphone on a stage at the apex of The Wall and reads 40 to 60 names from a list on paper that they supply to you.

I think we should make an effort next year to arrange for 119th veterans to read every one of our own 119th friends' names, and I think we can arrange to be able to do that. The Memorial Fund people were very cooperative last time.

As far as I have been able to determine, we have 63 of our friends from the 119th on The Wall, and they are in about 25 closely-spaced (semi-contiguous) groups. This means we can have 25 separate people read, or some of us could do more than one group. They arrange it so that each person reads about 40 to 60 names in the order that they appear on The Wall. If we tell the Wall people where our guys appear, I am sure they can arrange the groups to include all of our names for us. I have that information.

This is just a heads-up to get everyone sort of thinking about it. I will get in touch with the Memorial Fund folks right after the first of the year, when they start working on it, and try to help them to understand what we would like to do. I expect that they will be as cooperative as they can be. I will post news as I have it.

Anyone interested in participating next Veterans Day at The Wall in Washington DC, check in when you get a chance. Nothing is in stone, it would just be good if we all get an idea of who might be thinking of doing this for our friends.

Thanks,
Bob Kilpatrick