What if you could put a face to every name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial?
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund hopes you can.
The National Call for Photos is a project organized by the VVMF to match a headshot or portrait photograph to every service member listed on The Wall.
Find out what's happening in River Dellfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The pictures will be displayed in an exhibit at the future Education Center at The Wall, an underground visitors center to be built near the Vietnam Veterans and the Lincoln memorials. Everyday, the center will celebrate the birthdays of service members who died during the Vietnam War by featuring their photos on a giant digital wall.
So far, 25,526 veterans have complete profiles with at least one photograph, according to George Pojani, a research associate at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. These profiles are currently featured on The Virtual Wall, an online database of the Memorial's veterans.
Find out what's happening in River Dellfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
To locate photos for the project, contributors can visit www.vvmf.org/thewall and search for veterans who enlisted in their area. You can also see a list of all River Edge and Oradell veterans in the database below. The VVMF recommends contacting family and friends of the veterans to find photographs or visit local libraries and search through yearbooks or newspaper obituaries.
To submit a photograph, contributors should obtain a high quality scan of the image and post a remembrance at http://www.vvmf.org/remembrances. The VVMF will send an email to contributors when their photograph is posted with a matching profile.
Relatives of service members with complete profiles are encouraged to submit photographs to the VVMF, even if there is already a photo available.
Pojani says that the contributors to the National Call for Photos will help improve the visitor's experience at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
"It's a place where people can go back and find stories about all the casualties on the Wall," Pojani said about the future Education Center. "It will be more personal than just names on the Wall."
Here's the complete list of River Edge and Oradell veterans listed on The Wall:
Joseph Daniel Adrian 1LT Air Force River Edge NJ 8/2/1942 - 3/12/1967 Profile Anthony Brian Battel WO Army Oradell NJ 7/20/1947 - 1/28/1970 Profile Charles Paul Ellis PFC Marine Corps Oradell NJ 6/17/1946 - 9/13/1966 Profile Thomas Rankin Snaith LCPL Marine Corps Oradell NJ 10/23/1943 - 1/26/1967 ProfileGet more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
