WASHINGTON, D.C. – Due to the military parade happening in Washington, D.C. this weekend celebrating the Army’s 250th birthday, a ceremony to honor Vietnam veterans had to be relocated. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund said it will be the first time in 30 years since holding this event that it will not take place at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C., but they’re still committed make sure the ceremony continues despite the location change.
Each Father’s Day weekend the VVMF holds their ‘In Memory’ ceremony. It honors Vietnam veterans who were able to return home from war but later suffered from agent orange exposure, PTSD and other illnesses as a result of their service.
“For In Memory this year, we are honoring 774 Vietnam veterans and we have about two-thousand family members expected to attend on Saturday for the ceremony,” said Heidi Zimmerman, VVMF Vice President of Programs and Communications.
But after President Donald Trump’s announced there will be a military parade that same weekend of the event, the VVMF had to reconfigure how to hold the event.
“So we needed to have the accessibility for our attendees we needed to have a solemn place to have the ceremony and that wasn’t going to be able to happen in Washington, D.C. this weekend,” said Zimmerman. “And so we started looking somewhere else to hold it.”
Instead of just canceling the event altogether they wanted to make sure they could move it to a different location to give veterans and their families a chance to see the wall. The VVMF decided to relocate the event a few miles away to the George Washington Masonic Temple in Alexandria, Virginia. Volunteers quickly built the VVMF’s ‘Wall that Heals’ It’s a three-quarter scale mobile replica of the memorial in D.C.
“Bringing in the wall that heals is the next best thing to being on the east knoll of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,” said Zimmerman.
The VVMF said although the location has changed, their commitment to conducting these ceremonies remains steadfast.
“Besides the replica wall, we also have a replica In Memory plaque here with us and we think our families will be really pleased with what they see,” said Zimmerman.
