After 40 years, Long Islanders still find solace at Vietnam wall

Bob Inslee was 9 years old and watching Saturday morning cartoons in his pajamas on March 29, 1970, when two men in military uniforms knocked on his family's front door in Levittown.

Inslee's older brother and personal hero, Raymond, an Army sergeant, had been killed in combat in Vietnam, the men told his mother, More than 50 years later, Inslee, now of Massapequa Park, still bears the emotional scars from the moment his family's lives changed forever.

But like many in Gold Star families, Inslee, 60, has found comfort visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and searching for his big brother's name etched in black granite.

The iconic wall, the most-visited memorial on the National Mall, attracting more than 5 million visitors annually, opened 40 years ago Sunday — paying tribute to the 57,939 Americans who died in the war.  Since its dedication, the number of names on the memorial has risen to well over 58,000.

Inslee, who has visited the memorial three times, said the wall gives him a sense of shared solidarity with others who've experienced similar grief.

"You think you're the only one, but then you look at all these names of families and loved ones that are gone. Fathers and brothers and sons. They're gone, and their families are going through the same thing as you," said Inslee, a volunteer at the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage. "They didn't have a chance to get married or celebrate birthdays. They missed so much."

A place for 'closure'

The internationally recognizable V-shaped memorial was proposed by Yale University undergraduate student Maya Lin, a 21-year-old Chinese American who beat out more than 1,400 others in a competition to design it.

The wall sits between the Lincoln and Washington memorials and features names inscribed in order of death, rather than rank, as is common with other memorials. When it opened in November 1982, the memorial's unconventional design and resulting ambiguity was highly controversial. Critics called the concept "bleak" and said it failed to match the grandeur and imposing stature of the Lincoln or Jefferson memorials.

As a compromise, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which was in charge of the final design, added the bronze "Three Soldiers Statue” to the memorial in 1984. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial, which commemorates the 265,000 females who served in the war, opened at the site in 1993.

But it's the wall, which spans almost 500 feet in total, that elicits the most emotion.

Michael Sofarelli Jr., 48, of Northport, first visited the wall as a child with his father, who lost his lower right leg and vision in one eye in Vietnam when a grenade exploded next to him. 

At the time, Michael Sofarelli Sr. didn't talk about his experience in combat, so his son had little understanding why grown men, standing at the wall, adjacent to the serene Constitution Gardens, were so overcome with emotion.

Sofarelli returned to the memorial as an adult and noticed a young boy had left a note, written in red crayon, that read "Happy Birthday Grandpa."

Curious, Sofarelli began to inquire about the simple gesture and discovered that the National Park Service, which maintains the memorial, had collected more than 90,000 items left at the foot of the memorial — letters, dog tags, even a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

He would spend the next four years digging through more than 15,000 items, eventually focusing on about 200 notes that became the source for his 2006 book "Letters on the Wall: Offerings and Remembrances from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial."

"It's a place where people go to either have closure or mourn," Sofarelli said. "It's been described as a living, breathing memorial, even though it's a memorial to those that passed on … A lot of families whose relatives are still [missing in action] never had an actual body come back and never had a true burial for them. This is their cemetery. This is where they go to grieve. This is where they go to mourn."

Delayed recognition

About 560 Long Islanders were killed in action in Vietnam, according to local records and historians. Hundreds more from the region later died from injuries sustained in combat, from Agent Orange, or from suicide connected to their service, said experts, who estimate that 75,000 Vietnam-era veterans currently live on Long Island.

For years, the Honor Flight Long Island, a volunteer-run veterans’ organization, flew local World War II and Korean War vets for free to the nation's capital to visit military memorials and meet with service branch representatives.

In recent years, the nonprofit group, which is part of a national network, expanded its mission to include Vietnam veterans, said Bill Jones of Southampton, president of the group and a U.S. Army veteran. Honor Flight Long Island now has 200 applications from Vietnam veterans for flights to visit the memorial, Jones said.

The reception Vietnam veterans receive in the airport and at the monument is a far cry from the protests and scorn they felt upon returning from the war, he said.

"They never received a welcome home when they returned from Vietnam or throughout the entire '60s, '70s and '80s," Jones said. "And now for the first time they're really getting some thanks and recognition by the American public. It really makes up for a lot of how many were treated back then."

For those who cannot make it to Washington, a ¾-size replica, known as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Moving Wall, regularly travels the country, including visits to Long Island. And both Nassau and Suffolk have their own respective memorials or monuments honoring local Vietnam War veterans.

Rich Kitson, of Blue Point, president of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 11 in Suffolk, served in Vietnam in 1967.

After returning home, Kitson's younger brother, John, enlisted in the Marines and was killed in battle in 1969. John Francis Kitson was just 19.

"My way of thinking is, if you pay respect and think about them, it keeps their memory alive," said Kitson, who has visited the D.C. memorial a half-dozen times. "And they didn't die in vain because we still live in the greatest, most free country in the world."

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.