On This Day In History The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Was Dedicated

As History.com notes, on this day in 1982 the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was deicated.

You can read about this story via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/vietnam-veterans-memorial-dedicated?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1113-11132016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=109065135&kx_EmailCampaignID=8005&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1113-11132016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

Defense Secretary Panetta Honors Veterans At Vietnam War 'Wall' Education Center

Terri Moon Cronk at the American Forces Press Service offers the below piece:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28, 2012 - The education center at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial "Wall" will be a place to join the past to the future, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said at the center's groundbreaking ceremony today.

By telling the stories of service members whose names are inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country will not be forgotten, he said.

Dr. Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, joined Panetta at the ceremony, held near the memorial on the National Mall here. The groundbreaking included a large delegation of congressional and military leaders and members of Gold Star Families -- an organization for families that have lost loved ones in military service.

"It will be a site for future generations of Americans to learn, think and reflect on our nation's wars and those who fought them," Panetta said of the education center. "This is a very poignant moment, for a very special place in my heart for [Vietnam veterans]."

The center, which will honor veterans from several U.S. wars, will bring to life the stories of the more than 58,000 U.S. service members who were lost during the Vietnam War. Stories and photos of the fallen from Iraq and Afghanistan also will be featured until those veterans have their own national place of honor, event officials said.

"As I travel across the country and the world, I am always inspired by the strength and the resilience of our military families," Biden, also a military mom, told the audience.

"But there are many Americans who don't know anyone in the military," she added. "As a life-long educator, that's why the education center is so important. It will help ensure our veterans will always be remembered -- not just in name, by but by their actions. Those actions will become part of the lessons that educate and inspire us for years to come."

This year begins the 50th anniversary commemoration of the United States' participation in the Vietnam War, Panetta told the audience.

"We remember their bravery and heroism and we will never forget their sacrifices during that conflict," he said of U.S. service members who fought in Vietnam.

Panetta spoke of his recent travels to Vietnam, noting that Defense Department officials were working diligently in Hanoi to find and identify remains of U.S. service members who are missing in action there and throughout the region.

"It is our sacred duty to leave no one behind," Panetta said. "We will not rest until every MIA is brought home. I assure you that your government is committed to the fullest possible accounting of our missing service members from the Vietnam War."

Panetta said Americans failed to acknowledge the sacrifices of the nation's service members when they returned home after the war.

"America's recognition came too late," he said. "The Vietnam generation is graying now. Preserving stories requires more than a place of remembrance. It needs a place of education. [These veterans] must never be forgotten."

The center will focus on a divisive time in the nation's history from which it learned meaningful lessons, the secretary said.

"That war is always a last resort, that we must have a clear mission [to fight], that people can oppose a war and still support the troops, and that we should always cherish the legacy of valor and self-sacrifice our veterans represent and make America strong," he said.

Panetta said the center will honor the nation's military heroes "by telling the stories of brave American warriors, past and present, we help ensure we'll never forget the sacrifices of those who paid the ultimate price for their country."

"The torch of freedom these heroes carried into battle must be passed from generation to generation, so we never stop fighting for a better future for our children," the secretary said.

Actor Tom Selleck And Defense Department Leaders Recall Vietnam Veteran's Valor, Sacrifice

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 28, 2012 - The Defense Department's most senior leaders today honored Vietnam War veterans, including their own friends and mentors, in a commemoration at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall here they said was long overdue.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and actor Tom Selleck all mentioned friends and mentors whose names are among the 58,282 etched into the black granite panels. They joined President Barack Obama in a ceremony marking the beginning of the 50th anniversary of the war.

The Vietnam War ended in April 1975 when North Vietnamese troops took the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. While the end date is a certainty, it is a mirror of the war and the divisions it caused that Americans still disagree on when U.S. involvement in the country began.

American advisors were dying with their South Vietnamese soldiers in the mid-1950s. But historians – and the Defense Department – are commemorating the 50th anniversary of U.S. involvement in Vietnam now.

"At this hour, and at this hallowed memorial, we mark the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War – a war that occupies a central place in the American story," Panetta said. "Millions of Americans were sent across the Pacific to a little known place to fight in the service of the country they loved."

Participating in the service was especially moving to Panetta, he said, because he went through ROTC and served in the Army with some of those killed in Vietnam. "No memorial better reflects the pain of the sacrifices that were made (than this one)," he said.

Millions of American served in Vietnam and, at one point, well over 500,000 U.S. service members were deployed there. They returned, Panetta said, to a country that "failed to fully acknowledge their service, their sacrifice and failed to give them the honor they so justly deserved."

The Vietnam generation "is graying now," Panetta said. But it is not too late for the commemoration of Vietnam to right the wrongs of the past, he said.

The secretary spoke of his recent participation in a ceremony presenting the Medal of Honor to the widow of Army Spec. 4 Les Sabo. Sabo, a member of the famed 101st Airborne Division, died saving his platoon in 1970. The award recommendation was lost for years before another Screaming Eagle found it and revived the process.

"The story of Les, in many ways, is the story of the Vietnam War: We forgot and now we finally remember," Panetta said.

Dempsey noted that some people called the war – and the wall – a scar. "But history's temperance allows us to see success where some only saw failure, to see hope where some only saw loss, and to see valor where some simply refused to look," he said.

The war's 50th anniversary gives Americans the opportunity to look, the chairman said.

Dempsey recalled being a 16-year-old in upstate New York and watching Army Capt. John Graham come back from the war, motivating him to want to be a soldier himself. "I remember the day in 1971 when Captain John Graham was buried at West Point," Dempsey said. "He died during his second tour advising the South Vietnamese Army. His son is now on West Point's faculty."

The chairman also spoke of Army Warrant Officer Roy Thomas, a gunship pilot with the 25th Infantry Division. "He died in battle when his son was four months old," the chairman said. "His son is an Air Force officer on my staff."

Those men are just two examples that echo thousands more who share a martial bond with their forbearers, Dempsey said.

"Whether they served in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan, whether they returned home or we still await their homecoming, there is no difference in their courage and sense of duty," he said. "There is no difference when it comes to fear and suffering, on the front line and on the home front. There is no difference in the love and longing of their families.

"And, there is no difference in the wounds that remain both seen and unseen."

Their example calls for Americans to resolve to "never again allow our veterans and their families to be left alone, left to feel outside, left to fend for themselves," Dempsey said. "And let us resolve today to not just say 'welcome home,' but to truly welcome our troops home with the respect and care that they and their families have earned."