HURRICANE, W.Va.— “You want to go see how many grown men you can see crying, that’s where you want to go,” said Vietnam veteran Steve Lewis of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Lewis was one of hundreds of bikers who arrived in Putnam County Wednesday night, making an emotional yet rewarding journey on the Run For the Wall.
“I just wouldn’t go because I didn’t think I could take it. I’ve lost a lot of friends,” said 70-year-old Lee Kenner of Seattle, a veteran of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which fought in Okinawa. “I don’t know if I want to see their names on the wall. But since I’m 70-years-old, my wife said if I don’t do it this time I probably won’t do it.”
Many Kanawha Valley residents came out to Hurricane’s Valley Park to welcome the riders, including Wade Taylor of Dunbar, who said he had served in the Middle East during the Persian Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm.
“This is a great function. It supports our military, and that’s what bikers do. We like to support charities; we like to support our military,” Taylor said. “That’s why we’re out here today, to show gratitude to the people who served our country.”
Serving in the South Pacific was never easy.
“We just didn’t know what we were getting into,” Kenner said. “We were trained for it, we knew what to do, but we just didn’t know what to expect.”
“Really hot in the summer. Maybe over 100 (degrees) a lot of times,” Lewis said describing Vietnam. “Summertime, it rained almost every day, in the wintertime it would rain a lot, and so everything was muddy. It was always muggy and dirty. They don’t ever start wars in a nice place.”
When he finally arrived at the wall in Washington, Kenner wasn’t sure how he would react.
“I really don’t know. It’s going to be a lot of mixed feelings,” he said. “I know I’m going to remember a lot of fun times, a lot of tears, a lot of good memories and of course the bad memories.”
Lewis had not only been to the wall, but also had seen many of the traveling replicas of it throughout the country. One of those was on display Wednesday night at Valley Park, with the names of the the Mountain State’s nearly 800 fatalities in Vietnam, more than any other state.
“It’s an awesome experience to go there and see that, and at the same time it’s hard on the heart,” Lewis said. “It’s pretty sad. It’s like a grieving thing. There’s (all those names) on there, and all those people are young.”
Lewis was carrying the picture of a high school friend from Seattle who he said was killed in Vietnam on Dec. 1, 1966.
“I’m bringing his picture, and actually four other people. I’m taking them to the wall and leaving them there as a memory of them.”
Over 58,000 American lives were lost in the Vietnam War, with many still ruled as Missing In Action.
The trip is a 10-day ride that begins in California to Washington, D.C.
On Thursday, the riders will come to Charleston for a ceremony for a brief ceremony at the state Veterans Memorial at the state Capitol. They’ll travel to Rainelle in Greenbrier County in the afternoon.