‘You Are Not Forgotten’
On Memorial Day, a Vietnam veteran honored his brother and a Navajo Code Talker at the Navajo Nation Veterans Cemetery
Special to the Times | Donovan Quintero
Vietnam veteran Bruce Zah replaces an American flag beside his brother’s grave at the Navajo Nation Veterans Cemetery in Fort Defiance on Memorial Day. Zah also honored a relative, Navajo Code Talker Kenneth Tsosie, during his visit to the cemetery.
FORT DEFIANCE
On Memorial Day, Vietnam veteran Bruce Zah walked the rows at the Navajo Nation Veterans Cemetery in a woodland-camouflage jacket and black wool beret, carrying a rake, a screwdriver and a folded American flag as he searched for the headstones of two men he came to honor.
His left sleeve carried a yellow-and-red Vietnam Service patch. Over his right breast, a “Vietnam Veteran” ribbon sat above an 82nd Airborne tab marking his 1968 deployment. A POW/MIA patch, showing the silhouette of a bowed prisoner and the words “You Are Not Forgotten,” was stitched over the left pocket of his jacket.
Special to the Times | Donovan Quintero
Vietnam veteran Bruce Zah carries a rake through the Navajo Nation Veterans Cemetery in Fort Defiance on Memorial Day after tending the graves of his brother and Navajo Code Talker Kenneth Tsosie. Rows of American flags stood beside veterans’ graves during the observance.
The first headstone belonged to his brother, Spc. 4 Walter Lee Zah, a fellow Vietnam veteran who died in June 1999 at the age of 53. The second belonged to a relative, Navajo Code Talker Cpl. Kenneth Tsosie, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War and died in January 1968 at the age of 44.
Zah, who served with the 82nd Airborne in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968, set up a small red stepladder at the flagpole beside his brother’s grave. With wire-frame glasses low on his nose, he worked the screwdriver into the bracket, eased the weathered flag down and threaded a fresh one through the hardware. The new flag began flapping in the cold spring wind.
“I bring the extra flag every year,” Zah said.
To read the full article, please see the May 28, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow