The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund issued a call for photos of the Vietnam veterans whose names are on the Memorial Wall on Thursday at the Newseum, in an effort to create a display at the future education center.
The Memorial Fund is partnering with FedEx Office, which is offering scanning services at more than 1,600 FedEx printing centers across the nation to anyone who wants to provide a photograph for the project.
Jan Scruggs, founder and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, said the photos will be shown once a year on the soldiers’ birthdays at The Education Center at The Wall, which is to be an underground facility at the National Mall near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
“Integral to the entire project is the Wall of Faces as you walk in,” Scruggs said. “We want to get all of them.”
The Memorial Fund and the National Parks Service are working together to build the Education Center, which was approved by Congress in 2003.
Peter Holt, chairman of the campaign to build the Education Center, kicked off the campaign on Wednesday in New York. He said $25 million has already been raised toward the hoped-for $85 to $100 million.
Besides the Wall of Faces, the Education Center will include a Collections Wall, with more than 100,000 items that have been left at the Wall since 1982; a Legacy of Service, which will display pictures of those who have served in America’s wars; and a timeline of the Vietnam War and the Memorial Wall.
Former Nebraska Sen. Charles Hagel, who served in Vietnam alongside his brother, said at the Newseum that the photo project will serve as a reminder for the American people.
“A nation’s policies must always be worthy of the sacrifices of the men and women and their families who serve this country,” he said.
Colleen Shine, a member of Sons and Daughters in Touch, an organization that offers support to those who lost family members in the Vietnam War, shared memories of her father, who went missing in action in 1972. She and her family did not know where his remains were for 24 years.
“I hope that today’s launch will inspire us to seek out and bring to light the faces and stories of all the names on the wall,” Shine said.
FedEx President and CEO Brian Philips said more than 5,000 FedEx employees are Vietnam veterans, making the photo project very personal to them. The idea for FedEx, he said, came from observations Chairman Fred Smith made about military logistics while he served in Vietnam with the United States Marine Corps.
Philips said anyone who has a photographic record of any of the names on the wall can go to a FedEx to have the photo scanned.
“We want all 58,261 people to be represented with a photograph,” he said.
