19 photos of Nevada’s fallen sought for Vietnam War project

Janna Hoehn is close to notching another state to her photo collage list for the “Faces Never Forgotten” project.

She needs some help, however, to find the last 19 photographs of Nevada’s fallen military personnel from the Vietnam War.

“It’s my goal in life. I will work on this every day until the last picture comes in,” she said Friday in a telephone interview from Kihei, Hawaii, on the island of Maui. That’s where she is compiling photos as a volunteer for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

The nonprofit organization that built the Wall in Washington, D.C., is now building an education center next to it with a goal to display photos of all 58,300 of the nation’s Vietnam War dead whose names are etched in the black-granite Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

So far the project has obtained 41,000 with hopes of completing the task this year, the 40th anniversary year of the war’s end, April 30, 1975.

She only needs the remaining 19 photos of Nevada’s 149 fallen service members to make Nevada the fifth state completed, joining Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and New Mexico.

“If any readers know anything about these young men — I’m looking for photos, families, classmates — even if they don’t have a photo but can point me in the right direction that will help,” she said.

She also said she needs volunteers who can serve as “boots on the ground” in Nevada and the Las Vegas Valley and go to libraries to track down photos that might be in high school yearbooks and other publications.

Anyone who wants to participate can contact her by email: neverforgotten2014@gmail.com.

Hoehn said her motivation for the project stems from a visit she made to the Wall on the National Mall.

“I didn’t know anybody personally who was killed in Vietnam, but that wall affected me,” she said. “Vietnam changed America.”

While in high school during the Vietnam era, she was upset by how returning veterans were shunned.

“I’m trying to correct a wrong,” she said. “It breaks my heart to think of America turning its back on Vietnam vets and how that affected them. It’s still so painful for them.”

Because of a typographical error in government records, Nevada’s Vietnam War Memorial Wall that was unveiled in 2013 at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley lists Army Maj. Dale R. Buis, of “Pender,” among Nevada’s fallen from the Vietnam War. Buis, who was killed July 8, 1959, at Bien Hoa, South Vietnam, was from Pender, Neb., however. A “Pender, Nev.” doesn’t exist.

After the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened in 1982 by the National Park Service in Washington, D.C., Buis’ name was the first to appear on the Wall, which lists names in chronological order by date of death. Buis and Army Master Sgt. Chester M. Ovnand were members of the Military Assistance Advisory Group that had been sent in 1955 to train South Vietnamese soldiers. They were killed by a Vietcong grenade that had been thrown in a mess tent while they watched a movie.

In 1999, the Park Service put Air Force Tech. Sgt. Richard B. Fitzgibbon Jr.’s name ahead of Buis on the Wall. Fitzgibbon had been shot and killed by another airman. He died June 8, 1956, in Vietnam.

Two Marines — Cpl. Charles McMahon, of Woburn, Mass., and Lance Cpl. Darwin L. Judge, of Marshalltown, Iowa — were the last U.S. ground troops killed in the Vietnam War. They died during a rocket attack at Tan Son Nhut Airport on April 29, 1975, the day before Saigon fell.

The last names on the Wall’s timeline, however, are those of 14 Marines, two Navy corpsmen and two Air Force crew members who were killed May 15, 1975, by Cambodian Khmer Rouge forces during the American SS Mayaguez container ship rescue operation at the island of Koh Tang.

Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2.