South Carolina IX

I've not spent too much time in South Carolina but some of the memorials there are quite beautiful. the one in Columbia, the state memorial, is pretty amazing and you can see my original posts of it here.

Today, I have tried to pull some of the faces depicted upon the memorial. These, like so many, were taken before the idea to create the Faces of Remembrance series ever occurred to me, so there are not all I hoped they might be, but, I still want to honor them.

Difficult to see but a pilot in flight headgear.

Members of several branches are featured and you can tell that some have worn over the years. I wonder if there is a program to help restore them. I have seen this at other sites and if you click on Kansas, to the left, you can find a post about a restoration project I just happened upon at the University.

These faces represent and honor the 980 South Carolinians who were lost in 'Nam. The memorial is located in Memorial Park in Columbia.

Next time, on the 21st we will return to South Dakota, so join me there at 9:00am.

To see additional memorials from South Carolina, or any other state, please click on the state  name on the left side of this page.

South Carolina

We drove on to Columbia, South Carolina next. We decided to try out my new GPS and it worked like a charm, took us right to the memorial park.

This particular memorial, at one time, was said to be the largest aside from D.C. It is really beautiful and has some unique components, like Shakespeare's Band of Brother's quote engraved upon the surrounding edge.

A feature not seen before is that after each of the 980 names engraved on the wall is the exact date of the loss or the day they became MIA. MIA's are denoted by a star next to their names. In addition, the names are grouped by county of residence.

There are several etchings on the central pylon depicting scenes from from the war and on the Plaza in front is a slightly raised and labeled map of Southeast Asia. Steve and I were able to point to the places we were and were surprised that he never got as far south as Saigon and I never got as far north as the Capital.

We did not have much time so this is the only site we got to in South Carolina. South Carolinians are very proud of their sons and daughters who served and the state has built numerous monuments and memorials to them. I hope to be able to return to honor more of these fallen heroes.

The memorial is located in Columbia City Memorial Park, on Gadsden between Hampton and Washington Streets.