Eight Names on a Wall
Winthrop's Vietnam Veterans Memorial

       In early 1988 the Winthrop School Committee authorized the creation of a Vietnam Veterans Memorial dedicated to the memory of local residents who had died during the Vietnam War. This memorial was dedicated and installed in the lobby of Winthrop High School on Sunday, May 22, 1988. This study examines two groups of people connected to the Winthrop Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The first group consists of those people in the community who helped create the monument; the second group consists of members of the families whose sons' and brothers' names comprise the memorial itself.

        I conducted oral-history interviews with fourteen people; I spoke on the telephone with five others; and I had in-person conversations with two additional people. I wrote to and received information from four military archives bureaucracies, two state bureaus of vital statistics, two public high schools, one parochial elementary school and one university; I also received a letter from an uncle of one of the young men whose name is on the memorial.

        The "Background Interviews" focus on the issue of creating a Winthrop Vietnam Veterans Memorial and placing it in the high school as well as on how it will be used by the community. The "Names on the Wall" section reveals an untold story of the Vietnam War - that of the families of the deceased. These stories include descriptions of family life, how these young men grew and developed, and how these families have coped with the ultimate tragedy that Herodotus wrote about in the 5th Century B.C.E.: "In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children."