Pennsylvania XII

I returned to Philadelphia, recently, after reading about the repeated vandalism at the Vietnam Memorial there. I will not go into a long rant about the kind of people who would desecrate a beloved memorial, but I wanted to see what was up.

View from behind where the former wall of scenes was located

The earlier version of this remarkable site is featured elsewhere on this site. You can see it here;

http://michaelfwalsh.blogspot.com/2009/12/pennsylvania.html

The wall of scenes that faced the wall of name s is now completely gone. The only good thing I can see about that is that I was able to get a nice shot of the whole wall of names, this time. this was not possible before due to the confined space.

View from in front of the wall of names towards the former wall of scenes.

Reading the website of the memorial makes it clear that the intention is to rebuild it better than ever. What is does not do is make it very clear exactly what the new memorial is going to look like. I will return when the work is complete and report back later. It is hoped that the repairs will be complete by Memorial Day 2014.

In addition to being able to photograph the wall of names I also discovered a time capsule buried on the site, I had completely missed that the last time I was there. It is located around behind the wall of names.

Also, the last time I visited there were a large number of Shamrock stickers placed next to very Irish sounding names, this time, I saw that these had all been removed but someone had placed a number of 1st Air Cav. stickers next to certain names.

I feel like this is people being respectful and honoring those they loved and lost. There were, also, a couple of small "Irish" flags stuck in to the panels.

I do not object to these either, I kind of like them, but the vandalism is just meaningless, disrespectful and unacceptable. Nearby, is a beautiful memorial to the Irish immigrants who left Ireland during the potato famine and came here in hopes of survival and a better life. As I stood looking at it I was somewhat stunned by people not only allowing, but encouraging their kids to climb all over it and the teenagers placing themselves among the life sized statues of the refugees and taking pictures. Maybe it is not such a big deal, but I just feel that it is representative of the lack of respect, at worst, or the obliviousness, at best, of far too many.

Next time, I will get back on my standard alphabetical schedule and revisit Connecticut. As always, join me on the 19th at 9:00am.

To see other memorials from Pennsylvania, or any other state, click on the state name on the left side of this page.