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Loved ones share stories at The Wall That Heals

Veterans, friends and family recall fallen Vietnam War soldiers

Tribune Chronicle / R. Michael Semple Marine Corps veteran Bob Plant of Warren, left, helps U.S. Army veteran Ken Horm of Bristol look for names on The Wall That Heals of fellow veterans who were killed in the Vietnam War. The wall is a three-quarter replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and will be on the south lawn of Packard Music Hall until this afternoon. It arrived on Tuesday.

WARREN — Joe Bernstein of Mineral Ridge dropped to his knees Friday in front of Panel 30E of The Wall That Heals. His fingertips grazed a name engraved in white on Line 87 of the synthetic black granite.

His body trembled. When Bernstein stood, tears rimmed his eyes.

“I have 20 friends (on the wall), two really close,” the Vietnam veteran said. He looked back at the section of wall he just left. “That was Thomas Mays.”

Mays, an army sergeant from Hamtramck, Mich., was killed in action Nov. 25, 1967, in Kontum, Vietnam.

“I met him coming down on the train. He was coming in from Detroit; I was coming from Cleveland. We were together for three years, until Fort Bragg. He was shipped out with the 173rd Airborne, I went to the 101st. I got shot in September 1967, and he was KIA on Thanksgiving,” Bernstein said.

Bernstein got to come home. Mays is one of the 58,318 names etched into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., a tribute to the service men and women who lost their lives in the Vietnam War.

The Wall That Heals is a 375-foot-long, three-quarter-size traveling replica of the Vietnam Wall in Washington. Volunteers assembled the 146 sections Wednesday on the south lawn of Packard Music Hall, and the replica wall will remain in place until after a closing ceremony at noon today.

Bernstein said it is good to have such a monument in town, where people can pay respects.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re all dead almost,” he said of his fellow Vietnam veterans, now in their 70s or older. “If it has any meaning for the next generation, I don’t know. Now if I can quit crying, I’m going to go home and get my granddaughter and bring her here.”

Richard Sprague, a history teacher at Niles McKinley High School, and his three daughters, twins McKenna and Keeley, 7, and big sister Adalyn, 8 1/2, crowded around Panel 9W.

“We’re looking for the people who were from Niles,” McKenna said.

Etched on Panel 9W are the names of two Niles residents: Army Sgt. Thomas D. Catlin, killed June 24, 1970, and Army Pfc. Gary L. Fleck, killed two days later on June 26, 1970.

In all, there are five names from Niles on the wall. Sprague, himself too young to remember the war, had his daughters on a quest to find them all as they explored the length of the wall and the exhibits and memorabilia set up around the Packard Music Hall lawn.

“I’m a history teacher,” he said. “Now I’m teaching some history to them this summer.”

John McCombs of Lordstown said, “I’ve never seen the wall before. It’s a nice thing.”

He reached up to brush his fingers across the names engraved on Panel 28W. He stopped on Line 88.

“It’s a school friend I graduated with, Elmer E. Barr,” McCombs said. Barr, an Army specialist from Clymer, Pa., was killed March 30, 1969, in Dinh Tuong.

McCombs served from 1967 to ’69, but not in Vietnam. “I lucked out. I was in Germany.”

His wife, Toni McCombs, held a slip of paper listing the location of Army Sgt. Cecil W. Kittle Jr. of Huttonsville, W.Va., killed Nov. 17, 1965, whose name is engraved on Panel 3E.

“He was my brother’s best friend,” Toni McCombs said. “He was one of the first killed.”

Her brother came home from Vietnam. Her father, a Green Beret, came home. Other friends and family came home. Kittle did not.

“The thing I hate the most in all of this is when they came home, they weren’t welcomed. My brother was spit on,” Toni McCombs said. “He did two tours and made it back home, thank God.

“These men never got the recognition they deserve. It was a political war, everyone knows that. But they…” She gestured toward the wall. “… paid the price.”

Kenna Davis of Girard leaned to focus her cellphone camera on an etched name. “I was just walking through and I found my grandfather’s brother, Jeffrey A. Turner. There he is.”

Davis moved from Florida two years ago to be with her sweetheart, Jack Parry of Girard, who also was looking for familiar names on the wall.

“My one buddy, him and I were in the Marines together. His brother is here,” Parry said.

Parry said he was discharged from the Marines just before the Vietnam War started. His feelings are mixed on whether he’s relieved that he missed it or bothered that he wasn’t fighting alongside his Marine brothers. “I don’t know,” he said.

Over the past four days, family and friends placed tributes along the length of the wall.

A blue, three-ring binder with documents in plastic, 8-by-10 sleeves leaned against Panel W7. On the front was a photo of Army Staff Sgt. Andrew J. Fritsch III of Rochester, Pa., killed Aug. 10, 1970, in Tay Ninh.

Among the documents inside the binder was a photocopy of a Western Union telegram to Mr. and Mrs. Andrew J. Fritsch Jr., dated 8:45 a.m. Aug. 13, 1970. It reads in part:

“The Secretary of the Army has asked me to express his deep regret that your son, Sergeant Andrew J. Fritsch, was killed in action in Vietnam on 10 August 1970. He was on a combat operation when a hostile force was encountered…”

The telegram was signed Kenneth G. Wickaham, major general, Department of the Army, Washington, D.C.

A laminated prayer card with the photo of Marine Pfc. Patrick P. Manning of Kansas City, who was killed in a July 30, 1965, helicopter crash in Quang Nam, was tucked into the bottom aluminum frame of Panel E2.

Propped at Panel W23 is a framed, 8-by-10 photo enclosed in plastic of 13 sweat-soaked Marines posing at Fire Base Vandegrift in Vietnam. A label on the upper right hand corner of the photo identifies the group as Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, and states that the picture was placed at the wall by Sgt. James Rapone of Champion in memory of Lt. Ronald McLean, killed in action June 8, 1969, in Quang Tri.

Maria Schaaf of Uniontown affixed a gold Christmas wrapping bow onto Panel W41.

“It’s my brother, Joseph Ellis Guenther,” she said. “He’s our gold star.”

Minutes later, at the request of The Wall That Heals staff, she moved the adhesive bow off the section and placed it among the other mementoes at the base of the wall so as not to damage the finish on the panel.

Guenther, an Army private from Akron, was killed Oct. 7, 1968, in Binh Duong.

“He was only there for 30 days,” Schaaf’s sister, Mary Scheatzel of Tallmadge said. “He was a medic. They say my brother didn’t even have a gun because he said he couldn’t kill anyone.”

A Google search recently led Schaaf to Richard VanNest of Grand Rapids, Mich., who was with her brother when he died.

“There were four of them. They sat down to rest. When they got up, a booby trap went off,” she said. “Just to know the last face Joe saw and the last voice he probably heard, that was good.”

Schaaf said it was VanNest who told her that the wall would be in Warren.

“I wanted to see it,” she said. “It doesn’t bring him back.”

“It will be 50 years this year. We still miss him,” Scheatzel said.

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