58,220 Memories

Edward is acting silly. He is on all fours, ducking behind counters and popping his head out. He is chasing his little nephew Jimmy around the kitchen. He is laughing.

It’s 1969.

This is the last image Maria Prescott has of her brother. She has this. She has a yearbook page from high school. She has a letter from his commanding officer in Vietnam, the one that describes where he died and how. Just east of Dow Tieng. Shot in the head. At 1800 hours on the 18th of March 1969.

She also has a name on a wall, surrounded by 58,219 others. It reads “Isaac E. Heath.”

“He was just a little boy,” she said--even at 28 years old. “I just couldn’t imagine him going out and fighting in some jungle.”

And when she thinks about it, it occurs to her that her brother, who would now be 59, was more child than middle-age man when he died. He still had much in common with the 10- and 12-year-olds tromping behind Prescott as she places a flag and copy of Edward’s yearbook picture at the base of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial replica.

These school groups who wander by the replica at the Civic Arts Plaza are too young to know much about the experience.

“I hope they don’t forget,” she said. Even now, more than 30 years later, the thoughts bring back tears.

Thursday morning, the first day of viewing the replica, individuals and school groups trickled by the wall--in remembrance of a war very faraway and long ago to many of them. Teachers and parents said this is the place for children to learn. It’s a more tangible tool than a textbook and a classroom, they said.

This wall, billed as “The Wall That Heals,” is a smaller, portable replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the simple set of black granite panels designed by Maya Lin when she was a Yale undergraduate. Dedicated on Veterans Day 1996, the 250-foot replica has visited nearly 100 cities.

The half-size replica will be on display around-the-clock, through 6 p.m. Sunday.

A group from Sunkist Elementary School in Oxnard chanced by the wall en route to a field trip. Some squealed, looking for their own first names. There’s Paul, they said. There’s Eddie. There’s Michael.

What is this for? they asked. Are all these people really dead? Yes, they learned. All these people really are dead. These people--some of whom shared your names--were killed in Vietnam.

“This is a reality. Don’t take it lightly,” said Rich Hanson of Camarillo, who chaperoned a class of fifth-graders from Grace Brethren School in Simi Valley. “When you hear that people die, it’s an abstract thing. Here, each name is a real person.”

He enlisted his 11-year-old daughter, Lindsay, in searching out the names of Hanson’s old school mates, those drafted in a war he was thankful to have missed.

“To me, when I look back on that era, there was a lot of freedom, a lot less restriction,” he said. “This brought us back to reality. There’s more to life than parties. There’s a world outside.”

A Vietnam veteran, a Camarillo resident who would only give his name as Magic, volunteered to unload trailers and help set up the exhibit’s information center after arriving at 7:30 a.m. Dressed in camouflage and with feathers tucked behind his ear, he vowed to return to this spot every day the wall is in Thousand Oaks.

These panels mean something to him. They remind him of horrible loss, which, he said, occurred for no real reason and to no real effect but destruction.

Look at the wall, he said. It begins in the middle with the first death, and then heads east. It begins again in the other side and then returns back to the middle. Like the war, he said.

“It ended right where it began,” he said.

The city has scheduled an opening ceremony for 6:30 tonight, to include an unveiling of a model of the Eric Huberth Memorial Sculpture--in remembrance of Thousand Oaks’ only missing-in-action soldier. In case of rain, the ceremony will be held in the Fred Kavli Theatre.

A candlelight closing ceremony is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday, and will feature a flyover by the 146th Airlift Wing of the Channel Islands Air National Guard.

These ceremonies and remembrances help. It’s important to talk about it, Prescott said. It’s important to remember: her brother, who loved to ride his motorbike, who was a patriot right up until the end.

It’s important to bring these personal mementos--a letter, a yearbook photo, a poem--so others at the wall can see that the name was a person with a family who grieved for him.

It eases the pain, she said, but it never goes away.

“This is the wall that heals,” Prescott said. “It’s really beautiful. But you never really heal.”