It was Veterans day 1989..a group of about thirty veterans...family and friends treked to the Memorial Wall in D.C.to symbolically "bring home" eight slain sons of Phoenixville,Pa...with tears in their eyes and a loss in their hearts....they traced the names of these fallen..life long friends and...along with a red carnation and American flag...placed the etching in tiny home made caskets....and returned them from whence they came....

After what seemed a lifetime of playing together...laughing
and competeing...graduation finally arrived and we went our seperate ways...some to colleage...others to the workforce...but the majority to the service...contact was lost with many and I still don't know where some guys are.......
It wasn't till many years later that I did find out the stories of so many of my childhood friends and school buddies...it really is a small world.....there were eight in the same area of Nam as me...three in the 1st cav...one was a pilot supporting my unit around the old French fort...three more were Marines at DongHa...one was my oldest brother....a River Rat down south.........

 A Memorial was built to honor and pay tribute to these lost sons and all the sons of Phoenixville...who answered the call,as did their fathers years ago..A dedication was held by Rolling Thunder of Pa..VietNam veterans of America..the Memorial committee and the VFW...and the tiny caskets were placed in the monument...forever sealed in the park where most had spent their youth...little league baseball...arts and crafts ..checkers..chess..vollyball...quaits and horseshoes...learned how to swim and got Red Cross certified in life-saving...

This park was more then just their youth...it would turn out to be the final stop on a short lived life...in the park,once filled with the laughter and wild screams...the smell of grilled foods...the sounds of a baseball hitting a bat...here they are forever entombed...their voices...you know the ones...their hopes and dreams...their images..stand as guardians and reminders of a time lost so long ago...lost youth and darkened futures...

When all of this began I thought that I would find the answers to long sought questions....I did...along with a ton of new questions
and as we all know...ours is not to question....All of us mourn and grieve...pay respect and honor to our fallen in so many different ways.....things left at the Wall are a testament to that....my eyes
swell each visit I make and I find that now....in my"older years"
so to speak...they tend to swell quite often.....And that's alright...
for as long as tears flow... their being remembered...They Live...