Vietnam Vets at ‘The Wall’ Weigh Clinton

Vietnam veterans like to say they are “visiting” names on the stark granite wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Former Marine John Krankus, a 47-year-old accountant from Yonkers, N.Y., visits a handful whenever he comes to Washington.

On this particular afternoon--a day before the 10th anniversary of the dedication of “The Wall” and a week after the election of a new President with a controversial Vietnam War-era draft record--he has reason to be even more contemplative than usual.

He has heard talk this Veterans Day week that the election of Gov. Bill Clinton may prove that America has put the divisive Vietnam War behind it. But he is not so certain.

After communing with the names of his fallen comrades, Krankus steps away. “I have a hard time reconciling coming down to honor this memorial and living with a President who avoided the draft,” he said.

Then, somewhat hopefully, somewhat skeptically, he added: “Maybe he’ll do something for Vietnam veterans and then we can say it’s behind us.”

Along with Krankus, thousands of Vietnam veterans have crowded into the capital this week to mark the anniversary of the memorial--perhaps the most moving monument of all in a city replete with marble enormities honoring scores of heroes and leaders. Even at less celebrated times, veterans, relatives and tourists come by the hundreds and thousands to touch the engraved names with their fingertips, to fashion mementos by rubbing charcoal against a slip of paper over a name, to pose by the wall for a photo.

When they could not go to the nation’s capital, many friends and family members instead saw “The Moving Wall,” a traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which is in Orange County this week.

In Buena Park, the wall attracted hundreds of people to Independence Hall, across the street from Knott’s Berry Farm, where it is on display. A closing ceremony will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday.

Knott’s employees who served in the war were responsible for bringing the touring memorial to the theme park to commemorate Veterans Day.

“My goal was to bring it back to Orange County. There are a lot of vets who can’t go to The Wall” in Washington, said Larry (Bear) Hughes, 44, founder of Brothers of Vietnam, who works in Knott’s entertainment department. “Vietnam is history, and people should know that. It was part of our life, and there should be no shame in it.”

Vietnam veteran Richard Podsiadlo came to see his friends who died in the war. He cried when he recognized eight names on the wall.

“When I saw those names, I was seeing flashbacks, guys smiling, cracking jokes and, during the rough times, helping each other out,” said Podsiadlo, 48, of Huntington Beach. “I didn’t ever want to forget them.”

The election of Bill Clinton demonstrates that the draft issue, raised again and again by President Bush and other Republicans, was too anemic to avert the Democrat’s victory. The electorate was clearly willing to accept a President who had opposed and avoided one of the most painful wars in American history.

Citing his center’s polls throughout the campaign, Donald S. Kellermann, director of the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press, said: “While most Americans followed the debate over Clinton’s Vietnam draft status closely, they did not think the issue mattered enough to influence their vote.”

For the Vietnam veterans, however, the problem is more complex. Many have long felt apart from the rest of the nation. They are the only veterans of an American war who came home without ticker-tape parades and glory. They even dress differently from other veterans, eschewing American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars uniforms for old combat jackets bearing slogans across the back and colorful baseball caps identifying Vietnam veterans organizations.

Some veterans, far from fretting over the Clinton draft issue, gather hope from the election. Jan Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran who came up with the idea of the memorial, has long talked of the wall as a means of dissolving the bitterness and anger left by the war within American society. He now describes Clinton’s election as an opportunity to realize that goal. In his view, Clinton’s personal struggle over the war may be more important than his having avoided it.

“The Vietnam generation has assumed the mantle of leadership,” Scruggs told a news conference a few days ago. “The election campaign has given us an opportunity to help the healing.”

The point was echoed by Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski (D-Pa.) as he spoke Tuesday to a conference of Vietnam veterans across the Potomac River in northern Virginia.

“With President Clinton, I think you are going to have an ear that can listen to your proposals. I think he will be very sensitive to that,” said Kanjorski, who served in the Army between the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Later, he elaborated on the theme in an interview. “The most important event in Clinton’s adult life was this war,” he said. “You would have thought that the first new-generation President would have come out of the Vietnam War. But that did not happen, because it is a war that we have not yet resolved in our psyche.

“The Vietnam veterans don’t hold a lot against the guys who didn’t serve,” he said. “They wonder themselves what purpose they served by fighting.”

But a less conciliatory note was sounded at the conference by Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.). In a letter read to the Vietnam veterans by one of his aides, Dole pointedly congratulated them for their service. “The Vietnam veterans did not dodge and did not fail,” the Dole letter said.

Yet, it was Kanjorski’s optimistic and non-combative tone that was echoed by many veterans at the wall--albeit with some wariness. Dale Kusmiez, a machinist in South Bend, Ind., is 46, Clinton’s age. The back of his jacket bears the slogan “Together Then, Together Again” and notes that he served in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969.

“I quit high school in 1966, two months before graduation, and joined the Army,” he said quietly. “A lot of kids went to Canada in those days. Dan Quayle was really in the same boat as Clinton.

“When I first heard about Clinton’s avoidance of the draft, I thought about it a lot. Then I decided he has to live with it just the way I have to live with what I did. I voted for the man. We have to go on with the future.”

Paul Ryan, a 43-year-old electrician in Buchanan, N.Y., said he voted for Clinton for one main reason: “I don’t think President Bush did anything for veterans.”

By and large, the Vietnam veterans who have come to Washington this week, some in wheelchairs, some on crutches, appear less concerned with the President-elect and politics than with the poignancy of their experience and the wall.

From Sunday onward, long lines of volunteers--some relatives, some buddies, some officers, some outsiders--have stepped to a pair of microphones to read aloud the 58,132 names inscribed on the 247 feet of granite that stretches along a knoll near the Lincoln Memorial. The reading will end today.

The names of all the war dead are arranged on the wall in chronological order of death.

Times correspondent Debra Cano contributed to this story.