Ceremony honors Vietnam Vets excluded from wall

TORRANCE (AP) Air Force pilot, Maj. Irwin Mayer was killed in a 1969 plane crash in Taiwan while ferrying troops and supplies to the front lines during the Vietnam war.

But because he died outside the combat zone, government rules prevented his name from joining the 58,229 that grace the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Now his daughter Nancy says her father will finally get the recognition he deserves.

Mayer, and nearly 400 veterans whose deaths occurred off the battlefield and as a result of armed service, will be honored Monday in Washington, D.C.

The ceremony, in which relatives read aloud the names of loved ones, is designed to pay tribute to the servicemen and women who gave their lives because of the Vietnam War but were ruled out for inscriptions on the famous black granite wall.

The monument, which was built in 1982 and inscribed with a dedication to all Vietnam veterans, has provoked resentment among some families whose loved ones were skipped over.

``When they built the wall and didn't include his name, it felt like a slap in the face,'' Nancy Mayer of Manhattan Beach, told the Daily Breeze of Torrance. ``That they were remembering some of the people but not everyone didn't seem right.''

U.S. Department of Defense guidelines limit the etchings to service members killed by injuries in combat areas, excluding causes of death such as wartime accidents in nearby countries and Agent Orange-related cancer.

Those whose deaths were tied to post traumatic stress disorder were also excluded.

The Vietnam memorial is just one example of the problems that can arise when honoring the dead.

The Arizona Memorial in Hawaii, for example, includes only names of seamen killed aboard the USS Arizona during the Pearl Harbor attack. No such honor exists for more than 2,000 troops who died on the ground and on other ships during World War II.

The planned World Trade Center memorial has led to questions about whether it should feature names of victims who could succumb to toxic chemicals spread by the towers' fall years after the attack.

``What parameters do you have, where do you draw the line? That's the difficulty,'' Alan Greilsamer, a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, told the Breeze. The organization oversees the monument and the fifth annual ``In Memory'' ceremony that will honor Irwin Mayer.

``The hard thing is the numbers you're dealing with,'' Greilsamer said. ``If you were to add tens of thousands of new names not saying they're not worthy you still only have finite numbers of spaces on a 500-foot wall.''

Irwin Mayer's inclusion in Monday's ceremony marks the end of years of campaigning by his wife and four daughters to etch his name in the wall. Now his name will be stored in the National Archives.

``When I first found out about the project I couldn't believe it. I thought it was so wonderful,'' said Nancy Mayer, 39, who will attend the service in Washington with a dozen relatives. ``It just did my heart a world of good.''

On the Web: www.vvmf.org

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)