Effort underway to put faces, stories to those named on Vietnam Memorial Wall

WASHINGTON — There are 58,000 names of fallen Vietnam veterans listed on the memorial wall in Washington, D.C.

Someday, visitors will be able to put faces to all of those names, but the plan could take millions of dollars and help from veterans' family members.

Memories of Vietnam are always with veteran Joseph Walter Marquez. He was a paratrooper who returned home, but so many others didn't.

“There's a lot of cost to being an American and being free,” Marquez said.

He lost his brother Julian in Vietnam.

“The last picture I have of him is in front of a motel there in Fayetteville, so I posted that,” Marquez said.

He posted his brother's pictures on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund virtual wall of faces.

The virtual wall features 55,000 fallen or missing veterans. Each has a war story of their own.

Volunteers are searching for 3,000 more. Right now, the gallery is only online.

The hope is that one day visitors will be able to see the wall in a new education center.

“We will have a wall of faces there that is 50 feet wide and two stories tall,” said Jim Knotts, president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

Knotts said they still need to raise $88 million for the project.

“As amazing as the wall is, sometimes it’s hard for people to get scope,” Knotts said.

Like Julian Marquez, his big brother hopes a wall of faces at the Vietnam Memorial Education Center will remind us all of the cost of freedom.

“Have a sense of the sacrifice paid,” Marquez said.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund said it has photos for nearly 1,300 service members from Georgia whose names are on the wall, but it is still missing pictures of 293 service members from our state.

Cox Media Group