Vietnam veterans remembered at Pasco memorial

Tom Vandenberg visited more than 58,000 friends Thursday at Pasco’s City View Cemetery.

“These are all my friends, and these are all my brothers. Some of them I’ve met, and most I didn’t,” the Touchet resident said about the American Veterans Traveling Tribute. “I just needed to come here.”

Vandenberg rode with the hundreds of motorcyclists escorting the Vietnam War Veterans Memorial replica to the cemetery on Wednesday. The traveling tribute will be available in the cemetery through the holiday weekend.

During the war, Vandenberg was part of one of the Navy’s Construction Battalions, known as the “SeaBees.” They built camps, roads, bridges and other infrastructure in the country.

“We built schools for them. We built hospitals for them, community centers,” he said. “In fact, the very first Navy Medal of Honor and the only SeaBee is on that wall, and he came from Port Townsend, Washington.”

The SeaBee, Marvin G. Shields, died in the battle of Dong Xoai.

After leaving the Navy toward the end of the war, Vandenberg joined the Army Reserves and became a drill sergeant. In total, he served 10 years.

Thursday was the first time he was able to visit the memorial.

“It’s extremely emotional,” he said. “We were kind of rejected when we came back. ... When you come to the wall, you find that you started at the lower part of one panel and you count over four panels ... and that was the time that you served.”

Doug Arbogast was one of the volunteers who helped unload the 12 pieces of the replica out of a trailer. A group of veterans and others assisted Pasco city employees in putting the display together.

The pieces of the 360-foot-long replica sit on tracks. It stands 8 feet tall. The traveling wall began visiting cities and towns across the country in 1998.

“We were out here early this morning to help put it together,” Arbogast said. “(The city of Pasco) has done an outstanding job putting this together for everybody.”

Arbogast, a Pasco High School graduate, enlisted in the Navy in 1966 and served four years.

Not only does the replica pay tribute to those who died, it also helps the public understand what Vietnam was about, he said.

While the replica lacks some of the size and shape of the original in Washington, D.C., it’s still impressive, Arbogast said. Many of Thursday’s visitors knew someone who didn’t return from the war.

For Arbogast, it was David Bruce, a high school classmate.

“We used to scuba dive together,” he said, finding Bruce’s name on the wall. “There’s a lot of remembrance (vets) get from finding people they were in the service with who didn’t make it it back.”

Visitors can view the memorial until 3 p.m. Tuesday at the cemetery, located at 1300 N. Oregon Ave.

This story was originally published May 25, 2017 at 5:35 PM with the headline "Vietnam veterans remembered at Pasco memorial."