Wall powerful wherever it is
The mobile Vietnam memorial overshadows gaudy surroundings.
By BEN MONTGOMERY
Published October 20, 2006
BRANDON — The woman didn’t know it was here. She drove up from Apollo Beach, headed toward Hillsborough Community College, and saw it from the road.
She parked near Sears and walked up to the men under the white tent. She told them his name. A man punched it into a computer, then jotted some numbers on a scrap of paper.
Panel: 7
Line Number (from the top): 30
She walked along the wall, past Jerry R. Beebe and Benjamin Harris and Garney Burleson. Past Albert J. Peters and Thomas A. Ronald and Arthur P. Gray. Past wilting roses and folded love letters and a six-pack of beer.
She counted the lines from the top.
Thirty.
There he was. First name on the row.
She didn’t seem to notice the odd juxtaposition of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial replica next to the Westfield Brandon mall, the names of 58,000 dead soldiers situated between the Crosstown Expressway and a giant orange tent made to look like a Jack O’ Lantern.
Sacred Ground, read the sign. No cell phones, please.
“This is the first time like this,” said Wayne Jones, a Vietnam vet who drives the pieces of the wall from place to place. “We normally put it in cemeteries.”
“There were questions about doing it at the mall,” said Dave Braun, president of the Veterans Council of Hillsborough County. “At first I was unhappy about it, but with it here there’s no excuse for anybody not to come see it.”
If a line existed between sacred ground and shopping mall, it cut through the Sears parking lot. Once in a while, the line was crossed.
As the parking lot filled, a bagpiper warmed up near the Jiffy Lube. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, do you need an speedy oil change?
A couple who stopped to eat at the mall walked over.
“Very sobering,” said Matt Parker.
“Sadness,” said his wife, Lori. “Incredible sadness.”
Two East Bay High cheerleaders showed up with a disposable camera. Brittany Liles, 16, said her American history teacher offered extra credit if students visited the wall and returned with proof. So she posed, like Vanna White.
Her cell phone rang.
“Oh, you know, I’m at that wall by the mall,” she said.
The men who made it out of the smoke and ashes stood around one of the tents nearby talking about Johnny Cash and Old Milwaukee and how it’s tough for people who weren’t over there to understand the sacrifice of those who were.
“That’s what eats us,” said Jim LaGrande, with Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 787. He goes to schools to talk to kids about Vietnam.
He tells them about needing the beer and the pot to do his duty , about losing 23 jobs in two years after his return, about spending a good chunk of his life drying out and doing good in the names of those 58,000 men.
At Panel 7, Line 30, the woman from Apollo Beach made a rubbing.
Joseph L. Chambers.
She met him at Arkansas State in Jonesboro. They fell in love, got married.
Their son, Rodney, was 3 months old when Joseph’s chopper went down, Sept. 1, 1970. He was 23.
Rodney is a grown man now. A cop in Washington, D.C.
He was on patrol at Union Station a few years ago when a call came in about a man with a grenade.
Rodney stopped the man, who pulled the pin. He wrested the grenade from the man and held it for 20 minutes, until the bomb squad arrived.Karen Chambers is proud. His father would have been, too, she said.
She took her rubbing and walked toward the mall.
Photographer Melissa Lyttle contributed to this report. Ben Montgomery can be reached at bmontgomery@sptimes.com or (813) 610-2443.