Long-Delayed State Memorial to Viet Veterans on Track

The belated California Vietnam Veterans Memorial, five years in the making, two years behind schedule and still scrambling for donations, is finally due for a ground-breaking in serene Capitol Park on Thursday.

No one had a clue when Gov. George Deukmejian signed legislation in 1983 authorizing the memorial and allocating space for it in the park that the project would take this long. The volunteer seven-member state commission set up by the Legislature to oversee the memorial’s construction has had its hands full simply trying to stay solvent. About three years ago, it was virtually broke.

With the exception of a small start-up loan, the state largely has left the commission alone, giving it the responsibility of privately raising the $2 million necessary for the memorial.

The donations, 80% of them small $10 to $20 contributions, have trickled in, leaving the commission still about $340,000 short of its goal. But with contributions now amounting to $65,000 a month, backers of the memorial feel confident enough to start construction. Dedication of the completed memorial is scheduled for October.

“I thought people would jump on it,” lamented commissioner B.T. Collins, a former Green Beret officer who lost an arm and a leg to a grenade in Vietnam and later served as head of the California Conservation Corps and chief of staff to Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

While raising money still is a difficult task, supporters are encouraged that the bulk of donations have been received in the last two years, as the commission’s efforts have become more organized.

Not to be minimized, Collins and others say, is the movie industry’s focus on Vietnam in the last couple of years. Both the war and the warrior have been kept alive in the public’s mind by films such as “Platoon,” “Full Metal Jacket” and “Good Morning, Vietnam,” and new television shows that include “Tour of Duty” and “China Beach.”

The look of the memorial itself will be far different than its abstract counterpart in Washington, a low-lying linear structure that has been dubbed “The Wall.”

The California memorial will occupy about 3,750 square feet and is designed as a plaza in the shape of broken concentric circles. At the center will be a 26-foot flagpole and a life-size bronze soldier sitting on his helmet reading a letter from home, his M-16 rifle cradled between his legs and resting on his shoulder.

Names of Casualties

Surrounding the statue will be four curving walls, each made of 2-foot-thick precast concrete, standing several feet high. On the interior of the walls will hang a series of battle scenes in bas-relief bronze, each taken from a war photograph and depicting not only soldiers but the few women, such as nurses, who also had a part in the war.

The names of California’s war dead and those missing in action are to be chiseled into black granite on the outside surface of the walls.

Of the 58,132 that the Pentagon has listed as killed or missing in action in Vietnam, 5,822 were from California, which suffered more casualties than any other state.

White roses in planter boxes and cherry trees will ring the entire structure.

In keeping with the Legislature’s intent, the memorial is “as politically neutral as possible,” meaning there is no sign of the social upheaval and anti-war sentiment that rocked the country and California in the 1960s and 70s.

Aside from the approximately $1.7 million raised, the commission has received an additional $400,000 in donated services, principally from Sacramento-area contractors who will provide such things as concrete, landscaping, excavation, electrical and plumbing work, and security surveillance cameras.

And that, indirectly, brings up a sore point with the memorial’s backers: About 75% of the money raised thus far is from Northern California.

Jerri Ewen, the commission’s executive director and the memorial’s only paid employee, said at one point that she compared donations between Sacramento, where media attention has been relatively heavy, and San Diego, where, by comparison, word of the memorial has been scant. What she found was that nearly 4,000 contributions came from Sacramento, while 361 were from San Diego.

“There is general apathy in Southern California,” Ewen said. “There doesn’t seem to be the awareness about it. The memorial is not going to be in L.A., where people can pass it on the way to Santa Monica.”

She notes that more than half of the dead and missing were from Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties, with 1,772 from Los Angeles County alone.

Difficult Beginning

Despite all the fanfare that surrounded the creation of the memorial commission, the group got off to a rocky start. It took a year to select the design. The seven members, all Vietnam veterans, were self-admitted fund-raising amateurs. Compounding the problem was the lack of any staff to carry out day-to-day operations, plus not having any ongoing state aid.

Though some corporations and veterans’ groups made initial donations in the early days, the momentum soon stopped. By late 1985, the commission was down to about $25,000 in its bank account. In desperation, a professional fund-raiser was hired. But that turned sour when the commission discovered it was paying out in fees and commissions nearly what it was taking in by way of contributions.

The turning point came when the commission hired Ewen, its first and only full-time employee. The significance of the decision was that for the first time there was someone in charge of coordinating the day-to-day efforts of volunteer fund-raisers, from San Francisco Bay Area mothers whose sons died in the war, a Sacramento television station sponsoring a telethon and a bake sale conducted by a bunch of sixth-graders.

Slowly, the money started rolling in. First it averaged about $13,000 a month. Then it grew to $35,000 a month. For the last six months, donations have averaged $65,000 a month, according to Ewen. “We’ve had a progression of steady income,” she said, expressing confidence that the commission will reach its $2-million goal.

The commission has also relied on gimmicks. Last September, Deukmejian and entertainer Bob Hope presided over a so-called “ground-breaking” in Capitol Park. But soon after a tractor had dug a ceremonial hole and the assembled dignitaries and media had departed, the hole was filled in.

Neither the state office of buildings and grounds nor the office of the state architect had yet approved the construction plans or been assured that once the project was started it would be completed expeditiously.

Fund-Raising Event

Ewen said the event was held both because it was one of the few times that the governor and Hope could get together and because it offered another money-raising opportunity.

The state architect now has approved construction plans. And the office of buildings and grounds, which oversees construction in the park, has been assured that there is enough money to finish the memorial in a timely fashion.

“We told them we wouldn’t get started until we were convinced we could get from Point A to Point B,” Ewen said. “We couldn’t have guaranteed that six months ago.”

Deukmejian, in his weekly radio address Saturday, appealed for public support of the memorial and announced that a disabled veteran would begin a 400-mile journey in a wheelchair from Sacramento to Los Angeles to publicize the project.

A gubernatorial spokesman said that David Spencer, 39, a member of the 101st Airborne Division who was wounded in Cu Chi, Vietnam, in 1968, will leave the Capitol on Thursday and is scheduled to arrive at Los Angeles City Hall on June 10. Spencer is a student at Cal State Chico.

For B.T. Collins, Thursday’s event will be an important milestone in what has turned into a five-year obsession. The normally irreverent and sometimes caustic Collins has cajoled, bartered, pleaded and arm-twisted individuals and audiences throughout California for donations. Everywhere he goes he drops off donation envelopes.

He makes 25 speeches a month, most of which have nothing to do with the Vietnam memorial. But as the “price of admission,” he always asks for contributions to the memorial fund. Collins says all honorariums he receives for his speeches are turned over to the memorial.

Neglected Names

Accustomed to the frustrations that have surrounded the project, his latest worry is that the memorial will inadvertently leave off the names of dead soldiers who were born and raised in California but who, because of unusual circumstances, joined the armed services in another state. Already, the commission has found eight such cases.

While the memorial honors the Californians who fought and died in Vietnam, Collins sees it actually as a tribute for someone else. He is convinced that one effect of the anti-war protests and social turmoil of the time was “that it sent a terrible message to the mothers and fathers whose sons died over there” that their sons’ deaths had little meaning.

“This memorial is not for Vietnam veterans,” he said, “but for the mothers and fathers.”