Waiting for the wall

Area Vietnam veterans reflect on the coming of a war memorial to Thebes, Ill., later this month.

By Sam Blackwell ~ Southeast Missourian

THEBES, Ill. -- In 1965, the news that her brother, Gary, had been killed in the Vietnam War shattered 13-year-old Joyce Schemel and the rest of her family at home in Cape Girardeau. Gary was the oldest boy, a top athlete at Central High School, the other children's role model ever since their father's death seven years earlier.

"Everyone looked up to Gary. He was the one you asked questions if Mom wasn't around and wondered, 'What are we supposed to do?'" she says.

"It was devastating."

Ada Osorio listened when her grandmother talked about Gary, and she saw his picture on her grandmother's living room wall. Thanks to Ada and a group called the Thebes Junior Volunteers, another wall -- the traveling half-scale replica of the Vietnam Memorial -- could soon have a place in many more lives.

Last August, then-16-year-old Ada wrote to the organization that sponsors The Wall That Heals. She asked them to bring the wall to Thebes because she knew her grandmother never would be able to travel to Washington, D.C., to see her brother's name on the actual memorial.

Ada wrote on behalf of the Thebes Junior Volunteers, a new organization started to do good works in the community and to provide children with excursions. She wanted the elders of her village to be able to see the wall and for younger people like herself to learn more about what the war meant.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund responded affirmatively a month later, saying no one so young had ever made such a request. The Wall That Heals Will be erected on the ballfield near the Mississippi River in Thebes from Aug. 29 to Sept. 1. After the opening ceremonies at 10 a.m. Aug. 29, it will remain open 24 hours a day. The National Guard will provide security, and counselors will be available.

Thebes veterans

No one from this tiny village of 478 died in the Vietnam War, but a number of veterans from the war live here. Jerry Bridges was an Army infantryman for two years. He landed in Vietnam in the middle of the Tet offensive, when 70,000 North Vietnamese troops stormed provincial capitals and began turning the stalemated war in the Communists' favor.

Bridges was wounded a number of times. "They patched me up and sent me back," he said. "The last time, they took a kidney so I didn't have to go back no more."

Still he volunteered for another tour, serving in the Signal Corps.

He has never been to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington. "I'll see this one," he affirmed.

Bridges, now 60, has some people he wants to look up. "There are four or five I know of," he says.

His four children, ages 14 to 22, never asked him much about war. "There's some stuff that went on there I wouldn't want to tell them," he said.

He plans to round them all up to see the wall with him.

Whether the wall will have more meaning to people because of Sept. 11, he doesn't know. "For some it may. The wall probably will have a lot of meaning in itself," he said.

Jim Hale, Joyce's brother-in-law, was a career military man who was in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970 as a member of an artillery unit on a fire base. Family members say he doesn't like talking about the Vietnam War. "I don't have nothing to talk about," he said.

He did say a lot of his friends were killed there.

He hasn't decided whether he will go to the wall when it comes. He saw a replica wall in Kansas a few years ago. "It didn't have much effect on me at all," he said.

Ford Bevins is a 56-year-old welder who served in the Signal Corps in Vietnam. He knew people who were killed the war but can't remember their names. He will be at the wall.

"I think it's a great thing," he says. "People ought to look at it and see some of the people who served their country, gave their lives."

'Made me proud'

In a few months, Joyce Schemel, whose married name is Joyce Hale, will become a grandmother for the 18th time. When another replica wall came to Cape Girardeau a few years ago, she was sick and could not go. She is disabled and has been in a wheelchair ever since a fall in January that broke two bones and shattered her foot.

Raising five children by herself, she says, she never had extra money for trips. Seeing her brother's name on the Vietnam Memorial is something she never thought she'd get to do.

She cried when she found out Ada wrote the letter. "It made me proud," she said.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182