VVMF

For Immediate Release
May 17, 2004

Contact: Judy Keyserling
202-393-0090

THOUSANDS OF VETERANS & FAMILIES TO COMMEMORATE
MEMORIAL DAY AT THE WALL

Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge to Speak
Ten Names To Be “Officially” Added to The Wall
Monday, May 31 at 1 PM / Live: www.USVets.tv

Washington, D.C. – Nearly 10,000 veterans and their families are expected to participate in the Annual Memorial Day Observance at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Monday, May 31 at 1 PM, sponsored by the Vietnam Memorial Fund and the National Park Service, announced Jan. C. Scruggs, founder and president of the Memorial Fund.

Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, the first Office of Homeland Security Advisor in the history of the U.S., will deliver the keynote speech at the ceremony. Twice elected governor of Pennsylvania, serving from 1995 to 2001, Secretary Ridge was drafted into the U.S. Army while in law school and served as an infantry staff sergeant in Vietnam, earning a Bronze Star for Valor. He was elected to Congress in 1982, the first enlisted Vietnam combat veteran to serve in the U.S. House, and was overwhelmingly re-elected six times. (Read Keynote Address)

Other speakers at the event will include Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington; James V. Kimsey, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Board Member and Founding CEO and Chairman Emeritus of America Online; Command Sergeant Major Cheryl M. Mathis; Gentry Davis, Deputy Regional Director of the National Park Services’ National Capital Region; Diane Carlson Evans, Founder and President of the Vietnam Women's Memorial Foundation; and Jan Scruggs, Founder and President of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, will serve as Master of Ceremonies. The Memorial Day Observance will be broadcast via satellite and webcast live and archived on www.usvets.tv and the Memorial Fund’s website at www.vvmf.org.

New Names Added to The Wall
The names of ten servicemen, recently inscribed on The Wall, will become “official” at the Memorial Day Observance when they are read aloud. Family members representing each of the new additions will be present. With the new inscriptions below, the total number of names on The Wall totals 58,245.

	Marine Corps Corporal William Floyd Bronson, Jr. (Gardner, Massachusetts) March 17, 1949 - April 13, 1976 // Incident Date: March 9, 1968 Wall Location: 52 East, Line 46
	Air Force Captain Edward Alan Brudno (Quincy, Massachusetts) June 4, 1940 - June 3, 1973 // Incident Date: October 18, 1965 Wall Location: 5 East, Line 2
	Army Sergeant Larry Dennis Callaghan (Quincy, Massachusetts) October 8, 1946 - October 24, 2001 // Incident Date: July 21, 1968 Wall Location: 46 West, Line 32
	Army Sergeant William Edward Humphrey (Bethel, Tennessee) November 3, 1941 - February 6, 1980 // Incident Date: May 28, 1966 Wall Location: 17 East, Line 29
	Army SP4 Robert Bruce Hunter (Belmont, New York) August 15, 1946 - November 17, 2002 // Incident Date: February 23, 1969 Wall Location: 31 West, Line 11
	Army PFC David Michael Johnson (Denver, Colorado) January 5, 1947 - February 2, 2001 // Incident Date: June 8, 1966 Wall Location: 13 East, Line 29
	Navy PO2 Patrick Augustine McKenna (Fairfax, Virginia) February 8, 1944 - February 3, 1969 // Incident Date: July 15, 1968 Wall Location: 51 West, Line 22
	Army PFC James Rae Sabourin (Detroit, Michigan) March 28, 1947 - January 19, 1969 // Incident Date: November 3, 1967 Wall Location: 29 East, Line 34
	Army SP4 Carl Dennis Wadleigh (North Bergen, New Jersey) December 20, 1946 - May 31, 1968 // Incident Date: May 31, 1968 Wall Location: 61 West, Line 15
	Navy AO1 Joe Lee Williams (Homer, Louisiana) November 15, 1936 - August 5, 1964 // Incident Date: August 5, 1964 Wall Location: 5 East, Line 29

The Department of Defense makes all decisions about persons whose names are eligible for inscription on The Wall, based on established criteria. Each year, the Memorial Fund hires stone experts from Colorado-based Great Panes Glassworks, Inc. to add names to the black granite panels and to change the status designations of existing names from missing-in-action to killed-in-action. This year, the status symbols of 17 servicemen were changed. The diamond symbol denotes confirmation of death; the cross symbol represents missing in action; and when a service member’s remains are returned or accounted for, the diamond symbol is superimposed over the cross.

Memorial Day Observance To Be Webcast Live on the Internet
The Memorial Fund has teamed up with TVWorldwide.com to broadcast the ceremony live via its USVets.tv Internet TV Channel. Base Technologies is sponsoring the broadcast, to date. This is the third year TVWorldwide.com has partnered with the Memorial Fund to make its ceremonies available to veterans and the general public nationwide. Satellite coordinates for the broadcast will be announced in a future media advisory.

Established in 1979, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund is the non-profit organization authorized by Congress to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Today, through a series of outreach programs, the organization works to preserve the legacy of The Wall, to promote healing and to educate about the impact of the Vietnam War.

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