On This Day spotlights a historic New York Times front-page article. For teaching ideas, visit this resource.
1982
TRIBUTE TO VIETNAM DEAD: WORDS, A WALL
By Francis X. Clines
Washington, Nov. 10 — President Reagan stopped by the National Cathedral to listen for a while to the reading of the names of the Vietnam war dead this evening.
His motorcade sounded fast and far-off heading northwest to the cathedral in the dusk as Tom Toohey, unheeding in another part of town, stepped up to the glossy dark wall of the war’s freshly completed memorial with its long listing of its dead, touching it for the name, he emphasized, of “one good lieutenant.”
“There,” said Mr. Toohey, his fingers brushing the name of Richard H. Housh. “A real good lieutenant. I saw him jump up with his pump shotgun one time and blow away four guys coming at us. He was somebody else, one good lieutenant.”
Ceremony by Candlelight
While the President journeyed to one part of the capital’s weeklong commemoration of the Vietnam dead, the continuous reading of their names in a candlelighted chapel at National Cathedral, Mr. Toohey and hundreds of other Americans continued to arrive at the wall even after darkness fell tonight, the eve of Veterans Day. They bore the slow grief of the Vietnam time and indulged the simplest sort of human memorial, the act of touching stone, feeling the cold, stony texture of the engraved names of the dead that showed up by flashlight and in the wavering glow of matches struck in the dark.
This event occurred on Nov. 10, but appeared in the Nov. 11 issue of The New York Times. Read the entire article or explore this issue in full in TimesMachine.
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