Time to Remember : High School Memorial Would Honor Vietnam’s Dead

Like thousands of other high schools in the nation, the picturesque campus of Huntington Beach High has its cheery icons of student life.

There are bold wall paintings of oil derricks, reminding everyone that this is the home of the fighting Oilers. There is a large mural depicting smiling students of all races and ethnic groups. And there are decorations of black and orange--the school colors--setting off its graceful, European-style buildings.

And soon, if a student-led drive to raise $2,500 is successful, there will be a new mural and accompanying memorial at Huntington Beach High, but one with a darker, more serious message.

On a wall of the campus’s landmark tower-auditorium building, bronze plaques engraved with the names of the 330 Orange County soldiers, sailors and airmen killed in the Vietnam War would be affixed. Above the plaques would be a student painting of the Unknown Soldier, a tribute to those killed in the war who may have been officially overlooked.

A memorial to the dead of America’s most controversial modern war is unusual on a high school campus. While no records are kept of such things, officials at the state Department of Education in Sacramento said the project would be a first in California.

“There’s no other high school in the state that has such a memorial, and I know because I keep track of these things,” said B.T. Collins, a much-decorated Vietnam veteran who is now chief deputy state treasurer in Sacramento. “This is wonderful that those kids are doing something like this.” Collins was the chief fund-raiser for the California Vietnam War Memorial, which was dedicated at the state Capitol in December, 1988.

“This is not a political statement,” said Walt Ruskin, 18, a Huntington Beach High senior leading the effort to build the memorial. “This is basically an honor (to the deceased). People will be able to see the names of those who died.”

Ruskin was inspired to lead the memorial drive after taking a U.S. government class taught by longtime teacher Len Ewers. The instructor devotes about two weeks of the semester course to the Vietnam War, including the war’s continuing effects on American life.

“It’s a war that won’t go away,” Ewers said. “Look at how often it comes up in everyday life. You don’t hear that much talk of the Korean War and World War II. But the Vietnam War is like a ghost that keeps coming back.”

Ewers said that among the list of Orange County deceased is a Huntington Beach High student whom he once taught.

“It was back in 1965, and the student’s name was Terry Quinn,” Ewers said. “He dropped out of school and joined the Marine Corps. He was killed shortly after he got to Vietnam. I think he was only 18 at the time.”

Because so many victims were so young, Vietnam is relevant to all teen-agers, Ewers said.

“The average age of a person killed in that war was only 19,” he said. “When we study the war, many of my students are shocked. They didn’t know that the casualties were so young.

“What we try to do is to look at war, and how we need to seek other solutions. Because I think that is one of the legacies of the Vietnam War: We’ve got to get on with our lives and find other solutions to our problems besides war.”

About three years ago, Ewers saw a printed list of the Orange County dead in the Vietnam War. He thought those names should be memorialized at the high school, and he subsequently raised that idea in his classes.

Ruskin, who is student commissioner of athletics at the high school and was a tackle on the Oilers’ football team, took Ewers’ course this semester.

“I thought the memorial was a good idea, and I decided to work for it,” Ruskin said.

He gained permission of the high school’s Student Council to build the memorial and he joined with a student committee to finance it by selling raffle tickets to other students.

“We’ve raised about $500 so far, but we need help from people off campus and we’re hoping we’ll be getting some donations,” Ruskin said. The $2,500 needed for the project is expected to pay for all the plaques, as well as paint for the mural.

The mural is to be painted by senior Kayo Nakamura.

The plaques and Unknown Soldier mural will be on the wall that faces a grassy outdoor amphitheater--a popular gathering spot.

On a recent lunch break, scores of students sat near that amphitheater, including sophomore Niki Bouffard, 16, who said she thought the memorial is a wonderful idea.

“The veterans of that war weren’t treated very well,” she said. “This memorial is a way of honoring these people the way they should have been honored back then.”