Run for the Wall: Veteran rides to D.C. to honor the fallen

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Vernon Smith, above, holds a photo of Col. Thomas William Whitten, right, who was killed in action in Vietnam in 1969. Smith is riding with the Rolling Thunder Run for the Wall motorcycle tour to place Whitten’s photo at the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington.

BRISTOL, Va. – An aging Vietnam veteran with graying hair and a failing back, Vernon Smith clutches a photo of a brother-in-arms.

In the picture the year is 1969 and the youth, just a few months from graduation at Abingdon High School, has volunteered to go to Vietnam.

Wearing his class ring and a serious expression, Tommy Whitten has enlisted as an infantryman in the U.S. Army.

“There were not a lot of jobs around here,” Smith said, “so a lot of guys would go ahead and enlist so they would have an opportunity to make their life better.”

Smith, a 1969 John Battle High School graduate, enlisted in the Air Force for the promise of an $80 a month paycheck. After surviving a tour in Vietnam, he spent 20 years in the service.

For Whitten, the opportunity ended when he was killed by hostile fire in Vietnam on March 21, 1969.

“He liked to hunt, he liked to fish, and just what every teenager likes to do,” said Nancy Whitten, the aunt who Tommy Whitten lived with when he enlisted.

She said she tries not to think about it, but her nephew has been forgotten.

“They were so young, so young, and it wasn’t all that long before they were killed, and then nobody ever mentioned them anymore,” she said of the young people from the area who went to fight in a bloody, unpopular war.

“I think it’s a good thing that someone is taking an interest in it and wants to recognize them, not just Tommy but all of them.”

Even at the school he attended, Whitten isn’t recognized for his service; his name is absent from a plaque memorializing the Abingdon High School graduates who served and died in Vietnam.

Killed just a month after his arrival in Vietnam, he died before his high school class graduation was held.

Smith said he didn’t know Whitten personally, but feels a connection to all of those who served. A desire to honor them spurred his research into the names of Washington County men who died in Vietnam, he said. During that research, he found connections he didn’t know he had.

Smith went to school with a sister of Giles Gilmer, who died in the war in 1969. His wife’s sister was, at one time, married to George Cox, who died in 1968.

He sought out the relatives of several Washington County men who’d died in the war to ask if they’d like him to place anything near their names at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Arlington, just outside Washington, D.C. This week, he’s bringing items to the Wall memorializing the nation’s Vietnam dead in honor of Whitten, Gilmer and James Perry Singleton, who died in 1968.

Smith left Wednesday with Rolling Thunder on this year’s Run for the the Wall, which every Memorial Day weekend brings thousands of motorcyclists to the memorial.

Along with a few others from Southwest Virginia, he joined a pack of about 600 bikers when they stopped for lunch at Black Wolf Harley-Davidson.

They went on to spend the night in Wytheville, which for 10 years has greeted the bikers with speeches, American flags and a celebration of support with schoolchildren in the town square, followed by a steak dinner.

“We’re a very patriotic town,” said Jack Hunley, a Wytheville town councilman who came to Bristol so he could ride with the pack into town. “We respect those who serve to give us the freedom that we have.”

The ride begins in California and crosses the country in 10 days along two different routes.

Then, on the weekend, riders from both routes converge with thousands of others in the nation’s capital to honor and support America’s veterans. On Memorial Day, they parade to the Wall, where the names of 58,178 service members who died in the Vietnam War are inscribed in stone.

“That’s what I do every year, I go and visit my boys,” said David Hampton, a Vietnam veteran from Muskogee, Okla., who rode from California and stopped in Bristol on Wednesday. “Most of these guys all have friends that are on the Wall, and it’s just a remembrance ride because we ride for those that can’t.”

The bikers rolled off the interstate Wednesday with a constant, steady roar, and with American flags waving.

Smith said he’s wanted to participate in the ride for a long time – and decided to do it before his age and health would no longer permit him. He said he’s honored to play a part this Memorial Day in helping to revive the memory of those who’ve served.

“I just figure time’s getting short,” he said.

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