05/02/08 — EDINBORO — More than 40 years have passed, but Deborah Nichols Stranahan said she still has dreams that the high school sweetheart she married at a little church in Spartansburg is on his way home.

A U.S. Army helicopter pilot, Colin K. Nichols was killed when his helicopter was shot down by ground fire in Vietnam on July 20, 1966, leaving behind his new wife and a daughter he’d never meet. His body was returned Aug. 2 that year — his wife’s birthday — and laid to rest in Rose Hill Cemetery in their hometown. The inscription on his tombstone reads “May We Remember.”

Those words are meant “more as an admonition than a sentiment,” Stranahan told the crowd gathered Thursday near Mallory Lake at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania for the opening of a five-day exhibit of The Moving Wall, a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Nichols’ is one of 58,217 names of Vietnam War dead listed on the wall. “There are 58,217 stories associated with each of those names,” Stranahan said. “My story is but one.”

Among the names listed on the 253-foot replica are more than 100 from northwestern Pennsylvania who lost their lives while serving in Vietnam, including 30 Crawford County residents.

“Every day, I am painfully aware that but for the grace of God and some lousy North Vietnamese shooters, my wife and son may have been coming here today to see my name on that wall,” said Erie County Judge Michael Dunlavey, a retired U.S. Army Reserve two-star general. “It took a long time for me the visit the (original) wall in D.C. ... I don’t know if it was the pain or the guilt of surviving when so many others did not.”

But visiting the wall, Dunlavey and others said, allows for remembrance of those killed in Vietnam and offers veterans, their families and the public at large a sense of some closure to what was the longest and arguably most controversial war in U.S. history to date.

The names and the cut-short lives they represent may also be read as a cautionary tale, according to Dunlavey. “Before we send our citizens (to war), volunteer or not, it must be for a defined purpose,” he said. “Sometimes our leadership forgets about that.”

But sociopolitical commentary is “not what we’re here for today,” Dunlavey added. “Today we’re here for remembrance.”

A stated goal of those who created the monument in Washington has been to avoid commentary on the war itself and instead allow it to be a simple memorial, uninfluenced by “pro” or “anti” ideologies, to those who served and died.

“It is with that stated intent that Ediboro University is proud to host The Moving Wall,” university President Jeremy D. Brown said.

The wall was brought to the campus through a collaboration with the Erie County Office of Veterans’ Affairs and Vietnam Combat Veterans Ltd. During the event’s initial announcement last year, Erie County Veterans’ Affairs Director John Williams said the exhibit last visited Erie County in 1995.

“I can’t tell you what this means to me — there are no words,” Williams said Thursday. “We don’t forget. ... And as we remember their sacrifices, we also mourn for what might have been. Please remember them for who they were — and who they might have become.”



You can go

The Moving Wall, a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is being exhibited at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania through Monday. Situated in a tree-lined grassy area along Mallory Lake near the center of campus, the exhibit is free and open to the public 24 hours a day. Upwards of 20,000 visitors are expected, and at least 1,600 students from 14 area schools have already registered for tours, according to university officials.



Roll call

Thirty Crawford County residents killed in the line of duty during the Vietnam War are among the 58,217 names listed on The Moving Wall currently on exhibit at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania:

–– Terry L. Beck — Panel 17W, Line 24

–– Joseph R. Bennett — Panel 51E, Line 44

–– Donald L. Bowers — Panel 8E, Line 51

–– William R. Breeden — Panel 46E, Line 5

–– Edward J. Broms — Panel 50W, Line 41

–– Robert L. Brown — Panel 8W, Line 123

–– Roy O. Buchanan — Panel 20W, Line 111

–– Dan R. Byham — Panel 32W, Line 58

–– Patrick C. Cartney — Panel 36E, Line 1

–– Raymond H. Chase Jr. — Panel 29 E, Line 65

–– Edward C. DeBow — Panel 29W, Line 67

–– Jack E. Deeter — Panel 16W, Line 120

–– David G. Dragosavac — Panel 12W, Line 66

–– Gary A. Harned — Panel 12W, Line 39

–– James H. Jarzenski — Panel 3E, Line 18

–– David L. Joliet — Panel 17W, Line 83

–– Charles E. Kahler — Panel 29E, Line 4

–– Rodger D. McElhaney — Panel 20W, Line 7

–– Colin K. Nichols — Panel 9E, Line 49

–– David L. Niemann — Panel 20E, Line 122

–– Donald R. Phillis Jr. — Panel 52W, Line 30

–– John L. Reagle — Panel 33W, Line 9

–– Charles L. Reefer — Panel 20W, Line 109

–– John E. Reynolds — Panel 49W, Line 25

–– James E. Rudd — Panel 49W, Line 20

–– Frank D. Trypus — Panel 3E, Line 102

–– Merlin H. Vroman — Panel 23E, Line 105

–– David A. Washburn — Panel 61W, Line 18

–– Robert L. Westfall — Panel 1E, Line 7

–– Alfred L. Wyant — Panel 49W, Line 2