Two North Carolina residents are currently working hard to honor fallen Vietnam veterans by putting a face to their names.
According to The News & Observer, brothers Jim and Tom Reece, along with their friend Rosa King, have been tracking down families throughout North Carolina to collect photographs of their loved ones who were killed during combat in Vietnam. So far, the trio has gathered together photographs of most of the 1,820 fallen North Carolina soldiers, but are still 174 short, the news outlet reported. Once they have all the photographs collected, they hope to feature them on veterans and genealogy websites so that they can be viewed by the public.
However, that's not all. The photographs will also be included in a project for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. According to the memorial's website, the Faces Never Forgotten exhibit will project the images of every fallen servicemember on a two-story screen located beneath the monument.
"Four million people a year visit The Wall, and 40 percent of them weren't alive in 1982 when it was dedicated. More than half weren't alive when the war was going on," Tim Tetz, director of outreach for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, told the news source. "We've got all these people who look at that black granite and see the names, and they say, 'How does this really impact me?'"
The fund announced in November that New Mexico is the first state to have a complete photograph archive.