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By JAN LAVALLEY
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
; Vietnam was a war many would rather forget. But the memory of those men and women who sacrificed their lives must not be forgotten, said Sam Thompson, charter president of the local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America.
Sam said they wanted to do something to remember friends who never came back. That something is a memorial — a Wall of their own for area veterans.
The sacrifice was not only theirs* but their families too. Chapter member Ellis “Bootie” Smith, who grew up in Rappahannock and had just finished Rappahannock High School when he went to Vietnam,
“There were four of us who went to Winchester together,” Bootie said. “I know Mike Welch and Ronald Dodson went into the Air Force. I went into the Marines.”
“Herman Judy got drafted into the Army, but he didn’t make it back,” he said. “His is one of the names who’ll be on the wall.”
They have started a fund drive to build the memorial honoring local Armed Forces members who served and died in Vietnam. So far, they have raised $2,000 of the $20,000 needed to build the memorial. Plans call for constructing the memorial in the courtyard of the Culpeper County Courthouse at West and Davis Streets.
They chose Culpeper originally because the National Cemetery is there but found they could not put it in the National Cemetery because there is a rule about having the same names on two different memorials in a national park. The names were of course already on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., or The Wall as it is better knpwn.
So, they went to the Culpeper County government bodies and asked for their permission to locate the memorial on the courthouse lawn. They chose Culpeper because it’s centrally located and because a larger number of those from the five county area who were lost in Vietnam were from Culpeper. It will list the names of serviceman killed in Southeast Asia who came from the five counties served by the Piedmont Area Chapter: Culpeper, Fauquier, Madison, Orange, and Rappahannock counties. As of the end of 1996, 17 names of area serviceman killed in Vietnam have been identified.
It will be a 12 foot long aboveground wall, much smaller in scale, but like the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial. . “Soon after word got out that we were forming a VVA Chapter here
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