The Wall That Heals<\/a>, travels to communities across the United States. It gives people who cannot travel to Washington an opportunity to pay their respects and find the names of loved ones who died in the war.<\/p>\nThe visit can be especially emotional for Vietnam veterans and the families of those who died. Organizers said many veterans returned home to hostility and felt discouraged from openly acknowledging their service.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to understand these Vietnam Veterans came home to insults, jeers,\u201d said Sandy Nugent, site manager for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. \u201cThey were told to hide their uniforms, don’t put their service on their resume because they’d never get a job. So, will you imagine they’ve held that in for fifty years. So, this wall to come into town they finally get to feel again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nugent said visits to the wall can lead to conversations some families have waited decades to have.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe call it the wall magic and really amazing things happen at the wall,\u201d Nugent said. \u201cWe hear from so many family members; \u2018my dad or my grandad never spoke about the war and after visiting the wall we were up until 2, 3 am in the morning\u2019. That is powerful and it’s a part of that veteran’s healing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Local organizers said the Brooklyn community helped make the wall\u2019s visit meaningful, including by arranging special guests and commemorative events.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn’t like today when soldiers come back and you get the ‘thank you for your service,’\u201d said Tom May, co-chairman of Brooklyn Wall That Heals. \u201cIn fact back then there was even times when the airports had to route people out a different direction if they were in uniforms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organizers planned a ceremony for 6 p.m. Thursday at the BGM High School football field. Capt. William Albracht, whom May described as \u201cthe youngest Captain in Vietnam,\u201d was scheduled to deliver the keynote address.<\/p>\n
To learn more about visiting the wall in Brooklyn be sure to visit The Wall that Heals<\/a> website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BROOKLYN, IOWA \u2014 Nearly 60,000 names etched into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington honor Americans who died…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-310177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}