NJ Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Foundation
2007 Scholarship Winner

Jessica Blank
Summit, NJ

Growing up the daughter of a Vietnam Veteran, I was always proud of my father's service to America.  As a four-year-old, I believed a soldier was always brave, heroic, and respectable.  Fourteen years later, my childish logic still held true.  I walked the hallways of my high school in my father's Vietnam army uniform on Veterans Day with pride.  To my fellow students, I may have looked slightly ridiculous wearing my father's oversized army shirt, but I didn't care what others thought.  I carried his shirt on my shoulders proudly in honor of my father's service and in memory of the veterans who were lost in the war.

I carried this sense of pride with me into the walls of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial.  As I stepped into the blazing sunshine, my eyes adjusted to the sight of hundreds of onyx panels bearing the names of countless Vietnam Veterans who selflessly sacrificed their lives for America.  Instead of adding sentimental value to the somber scene, the sun's rays felt oppressive as they illuminated my reflection in the proud, but delicate panels.  With no instinctive knowledge of which panel to approach first, I followed my father.  I gazed at the glossy names of the soldiers carved eternally within the stones.  Unconsciously, I searched for my clear reflection in the dark onyx.  However, my view was blurred by the veteran's names.  My head bore the name of a veteran unknown to me.  My heart proudly boasted the name of another.  Although I did not personally know these veterans, I realized that they defined who I am.  These veterans were imprinted in my reflection, my mind, my heart, and my life.

My wandering thoughts scattered like the reflected sunlight on the polished stone of the monument when my father broke the suffocating silence.  "I sat with Tommy on the steps of his house eating ice cream when we were ten," whispered my father.

And now he was on a wall, an elegant wall of solemn remembrance of soldiers who had died too young.  My father hesitantly reached out and widened the palm of his had to cover his childhood friend's name, Lance Corporal Thomas Busch III.  I placed my small hand on the wall next to his and felt the warmth of the stone.  It seemed as if the veterans' spirits were alive as the warmth of the onyx penetrated my skin.  I placed a long piece of paper over Lance Corporal Busch's name and held it steadily in place with one hand on each end.  My father stepped behind me, blocking the relentless sun from burning my skin.  Towering over me, my father sacrificed himself for me.  I was safe in the shade of his tall frame, but I could still feel the eternal warmth of the black onyx.  Then, he reached over me and began to gently scratch with a pencil on the paper.  One by one, the letters distinctly appeared on the pure white paper, slowly spelling out the name, birthday, and date of death of my father's best friend.  I held the paper steady in silence, barely breathing, reveling in the secure protection of my father's shadow.  Then, I realized that the three of us represented the three types of soldiers of the Vietnam War.  Lance Corporal Busch was the young soldier who never made it back home.  He sacrificed himself for the hope of America.  My father was the youthful soldier who surrendered his own innocence.  He was scarred by the death of his fellow comrades; by the death of his best friend.  I represented innocence.  I was a mere child who was protected by the bravery of the soldiers.  The piece of paper scratched with the imprints of Lance Corporal Busch's name represented the link between the generations.  I held the paper steadfast, in memory of a man who I had never met, but to whom I was forever indebted.

Lance Corporal Busch's name was accompanied by hundreds of others.  In a blinding moment of realization, the vastness of the debt of human life engulfed my mind.  How many best friends, wives, daughters, and sons stood where my father and I had stood to remember those who had died?  How many others had scratched their loved ones' names on sentimental pieces of paper?  I knew that I would never be able to answer these questions.  I could only hope that the numbers were infinite and that people from all over the country would continue to find their reflections in the glossy panels of solemn remembrance.  These American citizens, like the onyx panels, serve to honor Vietnam War Veterans forever.