58,000

I ran my fingers across the letters of two names on the black granite wall. PVT Loren Pampel, USMC, is on Panel 37E, line 66. PFC Alfred Urdiales, US Army, is on Panel 38E, line 17.

I closed my eyes and two faces appeared. Both were frozen in time. We were kids again. Loren and I attended Edward Coles School for a short time. The last time I saw him would have been in 1961 or perhaps 1962. I remember Alfred from Bowen High School. We sat in the same classroom or study hall a few times in 1964-1966.

Loren and Alfred were 18 years old when they died 8,700 miles from home during The Tet Offensive in February 1968. I can't say that I was a close friend of either Loren or Alfred. However, they were people that I saw and spoke to almost every day during parts of my life. Reading their obituaries in The Daily Calumet indelibly burned their faces and my memories of them into my mind and my heart.

In 2018, a manufacturer of athletic shoes and clothing used the words “sacrificing everything” as part of an advertising campaign that featured a mediocre quarterback. That company’s board members and executives should have visited The Vietnam Veterans Memorial before making their asinine decision to use the words “sacrificing everything” as a crass marketing ploy. If they visited The Wall, they would have seen people who were touching a name, who had tears in their eyes, and who were lost in personal thoughts about Loren, or Alfred, or one of the 58,000 men and women whose names are engraved on that black granite wall because they truly sacrificed everything.