58,256 Names Pierce Silence at the Wall

By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2007

He was given his father's name at birth. Harry Griffith Cramer III, his birth certificate reads, the son of Harry Griffith Cramer Jr.

The name has stayed with him in a way his father couldn't. It has shaped and molded his life, guiding him through difficult times and giving him strength in moments of weakness. It is one of the few things he has left of his father, so he cherishes every letter of it.

Yesterday, he shared that name with hundreds of people gathered on the Mall, reading it aloud, deliberately and poignantly. And his was just the beginning.

Like a dam unleashed, the names poured forth yesterday at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial -- names of all the deceased and missing service members, set in the black granite panels -- one after another.

Family members and volunteers began reading the 58,256 names yesterday afternoon and were to continue until midnight in observance of the 25th anniversary of the Wall. The reading was to resume at 5 this morning and continue until late Saturday evening, with almost 2,000 volunteers taking turns.

As the son of the first Army soldier killed in Vietnam, Hank Cramer was chosen to be yesterday's first reader. He came an hour early to compose his thoughts beneath his father's name at Panel 1, Line 78.

"Harry G. Cramer Jr."

He was 4 when his father died and has only a few memories of him -- 30-second clips that have circled in his mind for much of his life: His father singing a cowboy song. Going for rides on his father's back. Tussling with him on the floor.

And then this scene: his mother explaining why an army chaplain had knocked on their door.

Throughout his childhood, his mother, a schoolteacher, tried to teach him what his father's death meant. She saved the uniforms and medals and the letters her husband wrote from Korea and Vietnam. On Memorial Day and Veterans Day, she took her son to his father's grave at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and to give him context, they visited the graves of the academy's most famous graduates. This was who your father was -- a soldier's soldier, she told him.

So Hank Cramer set out to be the same. In college, he, too, signed up with the Army and eventually joined the same Green Beret unit in which his father had served, 1st Special Forces Group in Washington state.

In 1982, when he heard that a memorial had been built to honor the sacrifices of U.S. troops in Vietnam, he flew in to pay his respects, only to find his father's name missing. For political reasons, he discovered, the military had decided that war deaths of service members had not officially begun in Vietnam until 1959. His father had died Oct. 21, 1957.

He waged a campaign to have those few extra letters chiseled on the Wall, and succeeded a year later. The name was everything he had left, he said. He visits the memorial at least every other year.

"It's a powerful feeling to look at your reflection in the Wall and touch that name," said Cramer, 54. "It's good for my soul to touch that name and tell him I'm trying to live up to it."

He did so again yesterday shortly before the ceremony began, preparing himself to honor his father's name once more. Then he read it. And the list went on.

"Joel D. Coleman"

Kelly Coleman-Rihn was 7 months old when her father was killed, a 21-year-old member of the 1st Cavalry Division 2/7th (Airmobile).

Her mother remarried and changed her last name. Vietnam was rarely mentioned.

When she was 21, Coleman-Rihn began digging into her father's history.

"For the longest time, I hadn't been able to talk about it," she said. "People asked me, 'How can you miss someone you never had?' But that's exactly it. I never had him; that's what I missed the most."

She found a group, Sons and Daughters in Touch, for children of those killed or missing in Vietnam. On Father's Day in 1993, she drove from her home in the Pittsburgh area to meet with group members in Washington, hoping to talk with others about her father.

"But I couldn't even say my dad's name without crying hysterically," said Rihn, 42.

With each new piece of information she has found about him, the importance and meaning of his name has grown. A few months ago, she met a man who told her how her father died, in a surprise attack by a North Vietnamese platoon.

"Me saying his name, it's a way to keep his memory alive," she said. "There's always going to be that hole in your heart, but learning and passing on that knowledge, it helps."

"Donald V. McGregor"

Terry McGregor would rather not have to read the name at all.

"It's a difficult thing and an unfortunate situation," said McGregor, 50. "I'd rather have my dad be here, but since he's not, this is something we do for him."

A few years ago, he participated in one of the three other times the names on the Wall have been read in their entirety.

"It's a powerful thing to read your father's name, with all that it means to you," he said, "and then to hear all the names that follow and realize that each one represents something similar to someone else."

He brought his son to yesterday's reading, both arriving on a red-eye flight from California. Each of them read a full page, about 30 names in all, pausing slightly after each. Then, they stepped aside and let the next person take over, calling out name after name until long after the sky grew dark.