Vets Get Chance to Say Goodby as Moving Wall Heads to Orange

Bob Kakuk, one of 80,000 Vietnam War-era veterans living in Orange County, had felt “incomplete” for 20 years.

“It was as if I came home from the war without finishing the job I went to do,” said Kakuk, who heads Vietnam Veterans Reunited, a support group in Huntington Beach. “I thought that seeing the wall would close the book on Vietnam--or, at least, a chapter of the book.”

But Kakuk could not afford a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. So he waited for it to come to him. Last year, the massive list of the 58,156 Americans who never returned from Vietnam made its way to nearby Riverside--in the form of a scaled-down replica. “Looking at it hit me just as hard as when I saw the real thing in Washington a few months later,” he recalled.

Kakuk soon will get another chance to see the portable model of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The Moving Wall will appear for the first time in Orange County at Chapman College beginning Sunday at 4 and continuing through noon Oct. 27.

From there, the Moving Wall will be on display at Camp Pendleton from Nov. 3-9.

Standing at half the size of its inspiration, the aluminum replica is 6 feet high and 253 feet long--requiring the Orange college’s athletic field for display.

The Moving Wall was conceived by John Devitt, a Vietnam veteran who lives in San Jose. “I had the opportunity to attend the dedication of the memorial in Washington in 1982,” he said. “I kept hearing the word ‘finally’ at the dedication: ‘Finally, the vets can put the war to rest.’ And I thought, ‘But not all of the vets will be able to come here.’ ”

Devitt contacted Jan Scruggs, who had led the campaign to erect a national monument to Vietnam War veterans.

“His idea for a portable wall sounded like it was worth a shot,” Scruggs said in a telephone interview from his home in Columbia, Md. “A lot of folks don’t have the mobility or finances to make a trip to Washington.”

Scruggs, himself a Vietnam veteran, has found that the Moving Wall stirs the same emotional response elicited by its immovable counterpart. “The magic of the portable wall is that it is only going to be in that one town for a few days,” he said. “So anybody who has any connection to the Vietnam War--whether they lost a buddy or a relative or a neighbor--is drawn to the wall, because they have to see that person’s name.

“In many cases, the experience is even more intense than that of seeing the wall in Washington. These people have made a special effort to visit the (portable) wall. They’re not just tourists happening by the Vietnam War Memorial on their way to the Lincoln Memorial.”

Within a month of the original memorial’s ground breaking, Devitt went to work creating an offshoot. He rounded up the help of fellow Vietnam veterans Norris Shears and Gerry Haver. Aided by a $16,000 donation from the city of San Jose, the three raised $28,000 for materials.

Initially, an abundance of enthusiasm motivated them to approach their project with some naivete.

“We figured we’d put this thing together in two weekends,” Devitt said, laughing. “But it ended up taking us two years.” Their most time-consuming task was the meticulous reproduction of the memorial’s 58,156 names--a list that includes about 1,300 Americans missing in action.

Devitt took the wall on the road in 1984, and it’s been on a roll ever since. By the end of next year, it will have made an appearance in every state. A minimum of 17,000 people have seen it at each stop; more than 250,000 viewed it in Chicago. “We get requests from military bases, colleges, high schools and civic groups,” Devitt said. To cover transportation costs, he charges $2,500 per week for use of the wall.

So in demand is the Moving Wall that Devitt put a second replica in motion last year. Yet even with two walls roaming the United States, the attraction is booked solid through 1990.

The Moving Wall comprises 74 sections, with each frame containing two silk-screened panels of names. Like the original, made of polished black granite, the aluminum duplicate has a dark reflective surface. The wall is actually two walls, whose sloped wings meet at their vertex to form a “V.”

The Moving Wall weighs 2 1/2 tons and is moved on a flatbed trailer driven by volunteers. Local Vietnam War veterans will assemble the memorial when it arrives this weekend.

Veterans and student volunteers will keep watch over it and aid visitors in finding specific names. “The names are listed by the date of death rather than alphabetically, so we will have cross-reference books available to help the public,” explained Jay Moseley, director of the honors program for Chapman College. “We look forward to the opportunity for interaction between students and veterans.”

Today’s college students were only toddlers during the Vietnam War years. “Everything I know about the war I learned in a history book,” said Nancy Reisinger, 20, a senior at Chapman.

Reisinger volunteered to lend a hand at the Moving Wall, in part because she recently visited the Vietnam War Memorial. “It was just amazing to see all those names and realize how many people died,” she said. “It’s really sad. I think that talking with veterans next week will make the war real for me.”

One of the veterans who plans to visit the Moving Wall at Chapman is therapist Kenneth Flint, team leader of the Veteran’s Center in Anaheim. “A lot of families in Orange County were touched by the Vietnam War,” he said. “Seeing the names of loved ones on the wall is part of the healing process; it allows people to say goodby.”

The Moving Wall exhibit is sponsored by Chapman’s Freshman Seminar Program and Cultural Arts Committee. Chapman College is at 333 N. Glassell St. in Orange. Visitor parking lots will be available for guests.

A special ceremony will begin at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. Admission to the wall is free. For more information, call the Freshman Seminar office at (714) 532-6013.