A moving experience
Navajo Times | Donovan Quintero A man is reflected in The Moving Wall, a half-size replica of the Vietnam Memorial that visited Chinle last weekend.
Chinle welcomes replica Vietnam Memorial
CHINLE
Navajo Times | Donovan Quintero
A man is reflected in The Moving Wall, a half-size replica of the Vietnam Memorial that visited Chinle last weekend.
Precious Wesley was born a generation after the end of the Vietnam War, but there she was with about 300 other Navajos last Friday on the edge of Chinle High School’s baseball field, squinting at the names etched on the Moving Wall, a half-size replica of the Vietnam Memorial.
Turns out Wesley and most of the other teens at the wall that day were doing an assignment for their Navajo Language class at Chinle High School, trying to find Navajo names among the fallen.
“I think I found some!” said Wesley. “‘Nelson.’”
Um … not quite.
As she continued to search for Yazzies and Begays among the tens of thousands of names on the black metal semicircle, the reality of it hit her.
“I don’t know much about the Vietnam War,” she admitted, “but this is a lot of names. It’s kind of overwhelming.”
Fifty-eight thousand, two hundred and fifty-three names to be exact. Fifty-one of them are Navajo. No Navajo Nelsons.
To Aaron Yazzie, master of ceremonies for the program at the wall that day, each name represents an unfulfilled young life.
“Most of these guys never got to have a wife, to have children,” he reflected.
To Col. Joey Strickland, who traveled from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to give the keynote, it’s personal. One of those names on the wall could have been his.
Strickland, former director of Veterans affairs for Arizona who now holds that post in his home state, recalled a fateful day back in the late 60s when his unit was defending a two-acre landing zone when they were hit by a barrage of rockets and mortar fire.
“There were almost 90 casualties,” he recalled. “There were bodies strewn all over the ground.”
Observing his best friend had taken a hit, Strickland ran to find a medic.
Nearing the aid station, he encountered the unit’s physician, Dr. Little.
“He was naked from the waist up, gauze wrapped around his waist,” Strickland recounted. “He had a sucking chest wound, but he saved the lives of 20 soldiers who would have been on that wall.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow