How would you feel if your son, brother, father or husband had been deployed to the Vietnam War and then tragically died, but his name is not honored on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall) in Washington, D.C.?

The Pentagon says your loved one’s name is left off of The Wall because he died outside of an arbitrarily designated “combat zone.”

And how would you feel learning there are many men who also had died outside of this combat zone, but their names are honored on The Wall?

There is a growing movement of veterans who lost a military brother and families who lost a relative from two different disasters during the Vietnam War demanding action. Action to get a total of 167 sailors’ and soldiers’ names who died in these disasters onto The Wall.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is currently the only U.S. senator co-sponsoring two Senate bills: S.849, “The USS Frank E. Evans Act,” and S.1891, “Flying Tigers Flight 739 Act,” that would approve their names to be on The Wall. Sen. Maggie Hassan is a co-sponsor of S.849.

And this is likely the tip of an iceberg. Tim Tetz, a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF), the nonprofit group that built The Wall, said : “The last DOD estimate I heard of mentioned approximately 500 individuals were in somewhat similar circumstances.”

On June 3, 1969, the USS Frank E. Evans was participating in a 40-ship armada “show of force” war exercise meant to intimidate the North Vietnamese. The Evans was struck broadside by an Australian aircraft carrier ripping the destroyer in half and drowning 74 sailors.

The destroyer had served in several naval bombardment missions to support ground troops in Vietnam. The “Lost 74” names are not on the Wall because the tragedy happened about 100 miles outside of the combat zone. Gary Vigue and Ronald Thibodeau are Granite Staters who died in this tragedy.

On March 15, 1962 there were 93 hand-picked Army soldiers deployed on a classified mission to the Vietnam War. En route to Saigon, their plane, Flying Tigers Flight 739, disappeared between Guam and the Philippines. The official cause of the disaster is “unknown” and the Pentagon sealed the records. However, Donald Sargent of Ossipee was listed as being on board the flight.

The VVMF built The Wall by raising $8 million in private donations.

Robert Doubek, a Vietnam veteran and a founder of the VVMF, “was tasked with identifying all of the names to be included on the Wall.”

There is no official listing of casualties from the Vietnam War, but Doubek “tried to make the best call he could when adding names to the list.” Doubek determined a multitude of deserving men had died outside the combat zone and added their names to The Wall.

This included: deaths from an Air Force bomber from Guam exploding over the Pacific; deaths from the SS Mayaguez incident in Cambodia; and deaths that occurred in Thailand and Laos.

The DOD was later given the authority to determine any new names to be added to The Wall.

The names of 375 have been added to The Wall since it was dedicated in 1982.

The National Park Service, which maintains The Wall, claims there is now not enough room for a large group of names to be added. A representative for the NPS testified to Congress saying a “wholesale replacement” of The Wall would be needed.

Maya Lin, the designer of The Wall, said: “The names are the memorial. No edifice or structure can bring people to mind as powerfully as their names.”

Lin wanted the structure of The Wall to look like a “cut in the earth” that would eventually “heal.”

This Memorial Day I was wondering what could be done, and I found an aerial view of The Wall. I almost instantly visualized a new wall.

A new wall could be placed in front and parallel to the existing wall – like a mirror image. It would be smaller version of the existing wall. An aerial view would look like two stripes that would be symbolic of the stripes worn by the enlisted ranks of the armed services. The enlisted ranks were the vast majority of those killed in the war. This design would still be a cut in the earth, just more pronounced. This additional wall would also allow space for more names to be added in perpetuity.

According to a 2017 financial statement, the VVMF that would fund a new wall had more than $40 million in total assets. Will the VVMFs’ board of directors be willing to approve and fund a new wall at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that will help heal many open wounds of veterans and family members? The names are the Memorial.

(John Meinhold is an Air Force veteran and the son of a decorated World War II air combat veteran who was listed as MIA during March 1945.)

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