Wall offers chance to honor the Cost of Freedom

May 28, 2007

You and I can attend any church we want. We can gather in public and discuss—or even criticize—our government and our leaders. We can buy guns to protect ourselves.

These are just a few of the many freedoms we enjoy in the wonderful country of ours, the United States of America. But the freedoms we often take for granted came with a price—many heartaches and tears as brave men and women fell in battle—and that’s the true Cost of Freedom.

On this Memorial Day, we should remember all those men and women who have paid the ultimate price for securing our freedoms. We can honor them again next month, when the American Veterans Traveling Tribute comes to the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis June 20 through 24, in conjunction with the museum’s Vietnam Veterans Remembrance Day June 23.

The tribute features:
A 370-foot-long, 80 percent replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in our nation’s capital, listing the names of 58,453 people who died or went missing in Vietnam.
Nine panels with dog tags mark the names of military men and women who died for our country since 1973—in Desert Storm, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Lebanon, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, and aboard the USS Cole.
Another panel listing the names of all 2,948 civilians killed during the terrorist attack on our nation Sept. 11, 2001.
Other memorials recognizing the thousands of military men and women who died during the Korean War, World War II and World War I, the Spanish-American War, the Civil War, the Mexican War, the War of 1812, and the Revolutionary War.

Three honored guests will speak:
Sergeant Major Norm Hayes served in both the Vietnam War and the War on Terrorism.
Col. Bob Howard is an Alabama native who served five tours in Vietnam with the Green Berets. He won the Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, and is one of America’s most decorated soldiers—and perhaps the single most decorated soldier from the Vietnam War.
And Pat Swanson, a local Army veteran, will speak during closing ceremonies.

Before visiting the wall, we can learn more about many of the Pacific Northwest veterans who served in Vietnam, thanks to a fabulous Internet Web site called Faces from the Wall, at http://www.facesfromthewall.com/ According to the site, put together by Darilee Bednar of Marysville, Wash., the effort started in 2002 to “place faces to the names of the 1,050 Washington State men whose names are on the Vietnam Memorial Wall.” The site, which includes some photos of the veterans, lists information about 23 men from Lewis County who died or went missing during the Vietnam War.

The site includes information on veterans from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. It also has grown to include Washington veterans who served in Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq as well as American civilians who died in Vietnam and Laos.

Nobody wants war. It’s never the first option—always the last resort—but sometimes we must fight to protect our freedom. We did not ask to be attacked on Sept. 11th, just as we never asked to be attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor.

History shows that many innocent Jewish men, women and children perished in concentration camps during those years when the United States hesitated to enter World War II. If we had refused to fight after the attack on Pearl Harbor, where would we be today? Would we be free to gather, worship, speak, and criticize?

Thank God we have brave men and women who are willing to fight for this nation. We must support those troops who face danger daily to protect freedom here and abroad.

Given the fact that millions of young Americans have served in our military throughout the centuries to protect our way of life, we should be able to take a few hours next month to let our servicemen and women know that they—and their sacrifices—will never be forgotten.

Visit the American Veterans Traveling Tribute at the museum June 20 through 24. Reassure the military men and women who returned home that we cherish the freedoms we enjoy—we recognize the price paid by those who didn’t survive—and we will always honor and appreciate the Cost of Freedom.

Julie McDonald Zander is a personal historian and former journalist who lives in Toledo. She owns Chapters of Life, a company dedicated to preserving the past, one family’s story at a time. Her Web site is www.chaptersoflife.com She can be reached at memorybooks@chaptersoflife.com