Park Service: Please stop leaving your cremains at The Wall

The Washington Post reports that folks leaving the cremated remains of their loved ones at the Vietnam Memorial is happening more often and that it should really stop.

Leaving mementos at the Wall has been a tradition since the polished stone memorial bearing the names of the 58,000 Vietnam War dead was dedicated in 1982.

Hundreds of thousands of letters, photographs, jungle boots, stuffed animals, sculptures, dog tags, college rings, a motorcycle, cigars, a piece of a helicopter rotor blade and human remains have been left.

The artifacts are gathered and stored in the Park Service’s large Museum Resource Center in suburban Maryland. The human cremains are kept in a locked metal cabinet with the windows papered over.

About 70 cremains — some in containers, some scattered — have been left at the Wall over the years, said Folkerts, a curator at the resource center. The first were left in 1990, she said. The most recent appeared several weeks ago.

Almost half of the cremains left at the Wall since 1990 have appeared in the past five years.

Some come in elaborate containers, others in simple baggies or envelopes.

Thirty-one have been left in the past five years, including five in 2017.

Dick Lundskow’s family and friends left two small manila packets there this past Memorial Day. He wasn’t a veteran but was devoted to veterans’ causes, his daughter Angela Childers said, and would have wanted part of him left there.

Some cremains are in wooden, glass or metal urns. Some are in small pill-style boxes. Some are in plastic bags or Tupperware containers, according to a Park Service list.

A 155-mm artillery shell casing said to contain the cremains of a Daniel Dhee Hughes was left in 2006.

An elegant wooden box labeled “Master Gunnery Sergeant Ronald William Looney” was left after he died in 2008. It is adorned with the Marine Corps globe-and-anchor insignia and has an ornate metal clasp.

A silver container labeled “Martin Ranko,” still bears the logo of the Long Island Cremation Co. of West Babylon, N.Y. It was left Veterans Day weekend, 1990.

A small gold cylinder left in May 2011 has a taped-on label, reading:

SFC William R Shales
174th assault helicopter company
Retired 20 years of service
3 tours of Viet Nam
1937 – 2011 Rest in peace.

An envelope containing the cremains of Roger B. Probst Sr. was left June 21, 1991. Someone had written on the envelope: “You finally made it. Enjoy your reunion…”

Many of the containers are not marked with a name, said Laura Anderson, curator for the Mall and Memorial Parks.

“We don’t have a way of knowing if it’s even a Vietnam vet,” she said. “Some of them could be other family members. They could be veterans from other wars .?.?. We don’t know.”

Spokesman Mike Litterst said the remains can’t be added to the Park Service’s official collections.

“We’re not permitted,” he said. “And right now, we don’t have an answer for what to do with these remains. But we do know that they won’t become part of the collections.”

There are signs around the Memorial asking for folks to not leave the earthly remains on the National Mall, but folks ignore the pleas, apparently.

I think it’s odd that the design of the Wall caused a lot of ill-will among Vietnam veterans when the design was first approved, but I guess those feelings have passed over time and the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction recently, so that Vietnam veterans now want to lie in that place for eternity.

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.

Category: Veterans Issues