Dear Editor:
This past Memorial Day we commemorated the memories and heroism of those veterans who made the supreme sacrifice for the freedoms and liberties we so cherish. This is all fitting and proper and is part of the fiber that makes us all Americans.
There is another thought, that there were veterans who came home after the war and died as results of complications which they developed during the war. They came home and died from alcoholism, Agent Orange exposure, drug abuse, suicide, car crashes and a host of other causes.
In reality they died because they had been to war in Vietnam. They died and we don’t remember or memorialize them. We don’t remember them because they died after they came home. But these men and women deserve our remembrance. They laid their lives on the line, like the other 59,000 whose names are on the wall in Washington, D.C., they deserve our recognition, our remembrance and our love.
There is a moment to pay tribute to those veterans who died after they came home from the Vietnam War. It is called the “Hidden Casualties Project”. This effort is being organized by David Cline, Chairman of the Jersey City Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee. The committee is looking for the names of veterans from Jersey City who died after they came home from Vietnam.
We know who they are, they are our sons, our brothers, our friends. They died from reasons other than that of combat. But they were no less Nobel, no less loved and no less worthy of our recognition, remembrance and love. If you know a Vietnam Veteran who died after he or she came home from the war please contact David Cline at the Jersey City Vietnam Veterans Memorial Committee, PO Box 7035, Jersey City, N.J. 07030 or the Jersey City Office of Veterans Affairs, 280 Grove Street, Jersey City, N.J. 07302 or call 201-547-4328. On Memorial Day of 2003 bricks engraved with the names of those who died after they came home will be laid at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Pershing Field. Please don’t forget theses loved and honored Americans.
Jaime Vazquez
Director
Jersey City Office of Veterans Affairs