Park Displays Replica of Vietnam Memorial

They had heard about William Johnston from the time they were in kindergarten. They had played on the baseball field named for the school’s first valedictorian, first student body president and first former student to die in the Vietnam War.

Now the fifth-grade students from Meadow Oaks Elementary School had a chance to see Johnston’s name again--listed along with more than 58,000 others on “The Wall That Heals,” a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Color guards from several local high schools, veterans associations and law enforcement struggled to keep their flags steady in the strong wind, during a nearly two-hour opening ceremony at Warner Park on Thursday.

Many of the keynote speakers were drowned out by shrieks from the public address system, but the highlight for most spectators was the wall itself.

“This finally brings people more and more aware of the human side of the people who went there, instead of the dishonor that had been put on them a long, long time,” said Granada Hills resident Joe Skarda, who paid his respects to 54 fallen men from his 116th Assault Helicopter Company.

The sorrow of death in battle was the overriding topic of discussion among the several hundred people in attendance. And at least one veteran, a Topanga resident, spoke of peace. “I grew up in a world of competition,” said Mark Scully, a member of Vietnam Veterans for Peace who had eagerly joined the war in 1968 after serving in ROTC in high school. “But I’m now trying to make it a world of cooperation.”

The traveling exhibit was brought to the Valley by BRAVO, the Calabasas-based Brotherhood Rally of All Veterans Organization, and was sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

The wall will be on display through Sunday at the park, 5800 Topanga Canyon Blvd.

The names of Californians listed on the wall will be read between noon and 6 p.m. that day, followed by a closing ceremony at 7:30 p.m.