Vietnam War Remembered as Moving Wall Returns to Ventura

VENTURA — Mothers who lost sons. Sisters who lost brothers. And children, some of whom never knew their fathers.

Clutching flowers, old pictures or just memories, they gathered Wednesday evening in front of the Moving Wall--a traveling memorial to those who fought and died in the Vietnam War.

As the setting sun cast long shadows across the freshly mown grass at Ivy Lawn Cemetery in Ventura, Charles Ray reached up with a torch and lit the eternal flame--to honor the more than 58,000 men and women who gave their lives for their country in Southeast Asia between 1957 and 1975.

Ray, whose son Jimmy did not return from Vietnam, lit the flame “in honor of all the people who did not return,” said Gordie Hemphill, president of Vietnam Veterans of Ventura County.

The Moving Wall is a smaller, portable replica of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. That wall, a simple set of black granite panels, was designed by Maya Ying Lin, then a Yale architecture student.

When veteran John Devitt of San Jose saw the monument in the nation’s capital, he was so moved that he decided to bring its message of remembrance and healing to Americans who could not travel to Washington.

Devitt and a friend started a project to build the Moving Wall with $2,800 of their own money, and collected an additional $18,000. Constructed in 1984, the Moving Wall was also designed by Maya Ying Lin.

The Moving Wall is 6 feet high at its vertex, 253 feet long, composed of 74 aluminum and black glass frames. As of January, there were all 58,202 names engraved on the wall--listed in chronological order by date of casualty. The exhibit was last displayed in Ventura in 1994.

Standing in front of the panel engraved with her dead husband’s name, Carol Ellinger of Oxnard held a small wallet-size photo of Staff Sgt. Franklin M. Ellinger, USMC, and rubbed her thumb back and forth across it over and over.

“He was 27,” said Ellinger, a tear rolling down from behind her sunglasses. “It was such a wasted war.”

She said she still feels animosity toward the United States government 30 years later, and ambivalence for a government now rushing to cash in on Vietnam’s economic redevelopment.

Mati Waiya, a Chumash ceremonial priest, blessed the wall with smoke and the wing of a hawk. Then he sang a Chumash song.

When he finished, Warren Mackey approached him.

“It’s taken me 30 years to return to the reality of this war,” Mackey said, then threw his arms around Mati Waiya.

Mackey said he was stationed in Vietnam four times with the Navy, mostly on ships--away from the killing. But he said everything changed when his ship fished the body of an unknown Air Force major out of the Gulf of Tonkin.

“I couldn’t get him out of my mind,” Mackey said, adding that he never found out the man’s name. “The wall’s been around for a long time and I stayed away. But this helps. It helps the healing.”

The war in Southeast Asia was the longest in U. S. history, lasting from July 1957 to May 1975. In addition to those who lost their lives, 300,000 were wounded, 75,000 were permanently disabled and 2,266 are listed as missing in action.

There are 105 names on the wall from Ventura County; 30 of those are interred at Ivy Lawn. The county is home to more than 20,000 Vietnam veterans, according to Veterans Administration records.

Many of the vets who showed up Wednesday spoke of the pain of losing friends halfway around the world, only to return home to a nation that despised them for their efforts.

“The treatment when you came back was the worst thing,” Hemphill said. “You were met with silence.”

Ruben Arzabol of Oxnard, who was a supply sergeant in Saigon, was one of those who helped set up the wall Wednesday.

He said the wall, which has the names of two friends on it, helps bring him peace and closure.

“It’s opening up the closet. Before it was hidden.”

The wall will be on display through Wednesday at Ivy Lawn Cemetery, 5400 Valentine Road. A public ceremony is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday, with presentations by local and state dignitaries.