PELL CITY — The girl scanned the dark granite wall, looking for the name of her pawpaw.“It’s my grandfather,” Samantha Elders, 17, of Pell City said after finding the name Donald L. Crane etched into the Alabama Vietnam Moving Memorial Wall. “We never got to meet him.”
She said her mother was 3-months-old when her grandfather died in Vietnam from a gunshot wound. He never saw his daughter, Samantha’s mother.
Samantha said she went to the Bankhead Crossing shopping center after her grandmother told her about “The Wall” and that her grandfather was listed on the memorial.
Another young boy approached and asked one of the veterans, “Do you have any McBrides?”
Vietnam veteran Ronnie Edwards of Moody looked through an alphabetical listing of the names of the fallen solders etched into the granite wall, which is transported throughout the state for people to see, touch and remember.
“There’s two,” Edwards said to the youngster. “There’s one from Jacksonville and one from east Gadsden.”
Edwards said many times Vietnam veterans aren’t listed on the Alabama memorial, even though they were born and raised in the Cotton State.
That’s because they enlisted in another state, including Mississippi or Georgia, Edwards said.
He said solders who lost their lives in Vietnam but are not found on the Alabama Vietnam Moving Memorial Wall are normally found on the national list.
The memorial weighs 5,880 pounds and carries the names of 1,209 fallen heroes.
Charlie Brasher of Odenville, chairman of the Memorial Wall, said the veterans displayed the memorial wall at the Bankhead Crossing commercial development in Pell City Friday and Saturday for the public to see.
“It’s been well received,” Brasher said.
He said “The Wall” attracts many onlookers.
“Younger people are coming up asking questions,” Brasher said. “But then there are a lot of vets coming up, and then there are the relatives. A lot of veterans get really emotional.”
But Brasher said it’s an emotional experience for many who come and look at the names of those who gave their lives serving their country during the Vietnam War.
“It’s both men and women,” Brasher said. “It’s patriotic people, and it touches them to see it (The Wall).”
Brasher said soldiers listed on the wall are grouped together by the year they died in Vietnam. The memorial lists solders who died in Vietnam from 1963 through 1975, when the United States pulled out of Vietnam.
He said the monument was built in 1992 by the Vietnam Veterans of America, Alabama Chapter 416.
“We had a lot of spaghetti dinners to raise enough money to build this,” Brasher said.
He said the memorial’s next stop is Gardendale, but it’s possible “The Wall” could be back in Pell City soon.
“I hope to be back here in the later part of November,” said Brasher, who has traveled with the memorial for the past four and a half years.
“It’s my pride and joy,” Brasher said, adding that the fallen heroes of the Vietnam War should never be forgotten. “We want to keep their memory alive.”
