'The wall is closure': Vietnam veterans from Inland Northwest reflect, heal in Honor Flight trip to D.C.

WASHINGTON - On the National Mall, where monuments to America's past rise high above the reflecting pool, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial stands in dramatic contrast, a black granite wall cut into the earth that bears the names of more than 58,000 Americans who lost their lives in Vietnam between 1959 and 1975.

On Wednesday, Inland Northwest Honor Flight brought 90 veterans to the site to reflect on their own military service and honor the friends and comrades they lost. Dave Baird, a Navy veteran and counselor who helps organize the semiannual trip from Spokane, said the monument also provides an opportunity to heal trauma that veterans have carried for more than half a century since the last Marines left the U.S. embassy in Saigon on April 30, 1975.

"It's almost a vortex you're going down into," Baird said. "It's a place of healing. You know, closure is a big piece of psychology. The wall is closure."

Walking down into that vortex, Baird helped several veterans find the names of men and women they knew who died in Vietnam. He encouraged them to touch the letters etched into the polished granite that reflected their faces among the thousands of names.

At the wall, 80-year-old Jim Thueringer didn't know where to find the name of David, a wiry kid from Alabama who always picked him to be the door gunner on their helicopter, because he couldn't remember his friend's last name. Thueringer said he was fine. Then, as he recalled how David died, his eyes filled with tears.

Thueringer would have been on David's chopper that day, he said, but he was an Army mechanic with just five days left before the end of his tour, so he was asked to stay back and work on another helicopter. Looking at the long black wall of the memorial, he remembered boarding a plane to leave Vietnam after two years in the country and seeing a row of black body bags on the tarmac, a reminder of just how many young Americans like him wouldn't make it home.

"A waste of people," Thueringer said. "What did we accomplish? We didn't accomplish nothing. For what?"

He is the oldest of five Thueringer brothers who grew up in North Dakota, joined the Army, served in Vietnam and made the trip to the nation's capital on Tuesday and Wednesday. All five brothers now have land in Eastern Washington, including Tom, 79, who goes by Bones; Steve, 78, who goes by Turbo; Terry, 76, who goes by Lou; and Allen, 74, who just goes by Al.

"It's amazing we all came back," Jim Thueringer said. "We never talked about us going to war. I just volunteered, and then I found out that's what they all did, too."

Of the 90 veterans who made the trip to Washington, D.C., one served in the Korean War and the rest in Vietnam, said Tony Lamanna, a Spokane Police Department detective who founded Inland Northwest Honor Flight in 2009. The group is part of a nationwide Honor Flight network and brings veterans to the capital free of cost, while the volunteer "guardians" who accompany them pay their own way.

A year earlier, the Inland Northwest Honor Flight group included two World War II veterans and seven who served in the Korean War. Lamanna said his organization gives priority to veterans in the order of the conflicts in which they served, while veterans with terminal illnesses are given top priority regardless of when they served.

Lamanna estimated that enough Vietnam veterans are on his group's waiting list that they will represent the majority of the next two years of Honor Flight trips, with veterans who served in the 1983 invasion of Grenada and the 1989 invasion of Panama to follow. But he said veterans of any age are encouraged to sign up for future trips.

Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.

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