Thousands pay tribute at ‘the Wall’

For Tony Cordero, lost luggage and thousands of miles were small obstacles to come see a man he hardly knew. Over the last 25 years, the Los Angeles resident has made the trip more than 50 times to pay his respects to his father, Air Force Maj. William Cordero, whose plane was shot down in the mountains of Laos 42 years ago.

Cordero, 4 when his father died, was here this weekend for the rededication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the most frequently visited monument in a city filled with them.

He came partly to read his father’s name aloud, one of 2,000 readers in a four-day ceremony to recognize each of the more than 58,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines commemorated on the black granite chevron known as the Wall.

“It reinforces to me, whenever I see his name there, that he is special and unique to me and my family,” Cordero said. “But it also reminds me every time I visit that he is one of many.”

On Sunday, people in leather jackets bearing remembrance patches and flags weaved among others in faded fatigues as about 10,000 veterans, family members and friends came to honor those who died and those still missing. This year’s Veterans Day ceremony -- the culmination of events that began Wednesday -- celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Wall’s dedication.

After all that time, Jan Scruggs, the man behind the Wall, is still awed by its effect: “It’s just amazing that all of these people are coming these massive distances, after all these years, to read these names.”

Scruggs, who was wounded in Vietnam, came up with the idea for a monument as he studied the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and the guilt complexes surrounding survivors of traumatic events. He believed that the nation had been scarred emotionally and politically and that it needed healing.

He and others founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in 1979, four years after the war ended. Its aim was to create an area of contemplation, where individual sacrifice -- not political division -- would be the focus.

“Veterans weren’t shown the gratitude they deserved when they stepped off the plane to come home,” Scruggs said. “The veterans needed a cathartic experience. But the nation needed a cathartic experience as well.”

With more than 4 million visitors each year, he said, the Wall has offered just that.

“This began a larger process of public mourning,” Scruggs said, noting that many visitors leave remembrances -- letters, photo albums, shoes from a daughter’s senior prom, even a motorcycle -- at the base of the polished slabs. The items are collected daily by National Park Service rangers, cataloged and stored. “It’s changed, in a societal sense, the way that people mourn as we search for a sense of community, a sense of shared values.”

For the last few years, at least five times a year, special-education teacher Donna Prince has come from her home in Reseda to volunteer at the Wall. In junior high school, she wore a prisoner-of-war bracelet bearing the name of Donald Cook, a Marine officer who never returned home. Thirty years later, she traveled to the Wall to find his name.

She was so taken with the power of the monument that she needed to become a part of it, she said. “It’s in my nature to give a little more. I don’t have a lot of money, so I give what I can: my time.”

Now she is a part of the “yellow-jacket crew” -- the helpers who ever so gently approach visitors, offering to do a rubbing of a loved one’s name or take a photo of them next to the Wall.

Scruggs said his next step would be to finish raising as much as $100 million for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Center, an underground educational facility scheduled to break ground in 2010. As for Cordero, he said he was working to raise $58,256 -- one dollar for every name on the Wall -- for the center.

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jordy.yager@latimes.com