Denise Short placed a red rose in front of the granite wall that contained her uncle’s name.
She was 9 years old when her uncle, Noel Bruce Witmer, 20, of McFarland, died in 1971 while serving in the Vietnam War. She said she has never been to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., and was happy to hear that a replica of the monument came to Bakersfield.
“We didn’t talk about it to my grandma,” Short said. “My father was too old to be in this war, thank God. I just had to come.”
Short was one of several hundred people who visited the Vietnam Wall Experience while it was exhibited at Hillcrest Memorial Park & Mortuary last week.
A special tent included frames containing pictures of the Kern County men who died in the war. Also in the frame was the report of each casualty and any medals they had received.
Tim Karwoski, a Vietnam veteran who served on a Navy ship during the war, was helping guests find names on the wall. He said he only knew one person on the wall, a high school classmate who was 18 years old and had only been in the service three months.
“I didn’t find out about his death until I came home,” said Karwoski.
Karwoski has never been to the memorial in Washington, D.C., and said seeing the memorial at Hillcrest each day brought back many memories.
“You can say a number like 58,000 but when you see the names it puts it in perspective,” he said.
The memorial was exhibited April 12 through 14. It was taken down Sunday and was escorted by the California Highway Patrol to the Arizona border. It was scheduled to be exhibited at another Hillcrest in Phoenix, Ariz.
The replica monument is made of polished black granite and is a copy of the original monument visited by thousands in Washington, D.C. It is, however, smaller in size.
The columns have etched in them the names of the 58, 219 men and women who died or are missing in action. Their names were read over the four day period in 15-minute intervals by volunteers.
The monument is owned by SCI, a Hillcrest cemetery corporation, said Vernon Valenzuela, assistant event coordinator and Vietnam veteran, and was escorted from Sacramento to Bakersfield by the California Highway Patrol.
“It’s an organization who takes the wall to cemeteries across the nation,” he said about SCI.
The monument has been to Bakersfield a total of three times. It was last viewed at Hillcrest Memorial Park in 1991.
The exhibit almost didn’t visit Bakersfield when the coordinators realized the land behind the Hill of Valor, a section at the memorial park specifically for veterans, was not level enough to hold the monument .
Coordinators scrambled for estimates of the construction and were elated when Bakersfield veterans donated all the work to be done, according to Valenzuela.
“Grimmway Farms came in here with bulldozers and leveled it off,” he said.
Valenzuela said he was proud of the record breaking time it took to set up the wall and said the wall would not have been a success without the outpouring of volunteers from Kern County.
Lisa Cahill, a volunteer for registration services, said she had 500 volunteers from all over Kern County.
“I have a gentleman who is driving from Paso Robles everyday to help,” she said. “This just couldn’t be possible without their support.”
Different ceremonies were held throughout the replica’s stay, including a sons and daughters ceremony dedicated to the 142 men from Kern County who lost their lives in Vietnam.