OPENING CEREMONY ~ 1:00 pm
Master of Ceremonies ~ CMDCM Roger Dumont, USN, Retired
Fly Over ~ Flown by LT. CMDR. Steven Grant and co-pilot LT. Christopher Manor in a P-3C Orion from VP-8 of Naval Air Station, Brunswick, ME
Colors will enter with music of the Public Safety Pipe & Drum Co.

 
Posting of Colors ~ Maine Select Honor Guard
Naval Air Station, Brunswick, ME

Franco-American Veterans
Brunswick Police Department
Lewiston Air Force Jr. ROTC
American Legion Post 153, Auburn
Lewiston Professional Fire Fighters Honor Guard

Pledge of Allegiance ~ Cadet Major Corey Boucher
National Anthem ~ Gwen Bassinger
Welcome Address ~ Stephen Wentworth, Program Chairman
CMDCM Roger Dumont, USN, Ret., Recognition of U.S.Navy
Michael Martel, Market Manager, SCI Northeast
Ann Dehetre-Arsenault, Fortin Group
Peter Arsenault, Fortin Group

Honorable Laurent F. Gilbert, Sr., Lewiston Mayor
Honorable John Jenkins, Mayor of Auburn

Invocation ~ Rev. Michael Seavey, St. Joseph's Church
Patriotic Selection: "God Bless the U.S.A." ~ Rita Gagnon
Guest Speaker ~ Honorable Laurent F. Gilbert, Sr.
Mayor of the City of Lewiston and Vietnam Veteran
Pipers ~ Maine Public Safety Pipe & Drum Corps
Remarks ~ CDR Peter A. Garvin, U.S. Navy
Benediction ~ Rev. Michael Seavey
Firing Squad ~ Naval Air Station, Brunswick, ME
TAPS ~ Richard Leblanc
Retire Colors ~ All Color Guards
Administrative Remarks ~ CMDCM Roger Dumont, USN, Ret.

Erik Tiner and Ann Dehetre Arsenault sit in the entry way of Mill 5 prepared to sign in volunteers and provide instructions for the days events. 

Brunswick Naval Air Base volunteers are prepared to look up names for the thousands of visitors that are about to arrive at the Vietnam Memorial Wall and attend the opening ceremony.

Gordon Kimball of Gray Maine requested a copy of page 367 for the purpose of tracing genealogy. American Legion Historian provided the request to Ann Dehetre Arsenault. Ann sent Mr. Kimball a copy.

PR1 Ryan H. Nixon, w/c 13A LPO/ Supervisor greeted thousands of veterans and visitors as they entered the West side of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. It was the official opening of the Vietnam Memorial Wall to the public.

Vietnam Veteran Merle Davis leaves a framed poem at the base of the wall.  

Replica Opens to Visitors

Audio Slide Show: Opening the wall

Daniel Hartill , Staff Writer, Sun Journal
Saturday, September 29, 2007

LEWISTON - Even before the firing squad's salute opened the replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to visitors Friday, the mementos began appearing.
Yellow roses sat at the base of one panel. There were photos and handwritten notes to sons and fathers who died decades ago.
There was also a note scrawled in crayon, mounted on construction paper and addressed to Thomas J. McMahon, a Lewiston man killed in Vietnam in 1969.
"...We never met. I still want to say, 'thank you,' and you are the hero to save people," the child wrote.
The sentiment was echoed again and again Friday, as soldiers, former soldiers and civilians gathered to remember the 58,256 who died during the war.
In a 90-minute ceremony, there were songs, salutes, speeches and silences. A P-3 Orion from Brunswick Naval Air Station began the event with a flyover, twice passing over the wall and the audience of more than 300.
At the podium - whose GPS coordinates had been plotted the night before for the Navy pilot - a retired command master chief from the Brunswick base addressed the Vietnam veterans in the crowd:

"I have two words: 'Welcome Home,'" said Roger Dumont, himself a veteran of two tours in Vietnam.
Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert, who also served in Vietnam, talked about losing his best friend and helping to ship the caskets of fallen soldiers when he left the Army.
Auburn Mayor John Jenkins asked people to support the Iraq war's soldiers in hopes that future walls may not be needed.
However, this wall is needed, said visitors, who began arriving at dawn despite gray clouds and sometimes steady rain. "I'm so glad I came," said Paula Allen of Harrison. She'd never seen the wall in Washington nor seen any of the replicas that travel the country.
Standing beside the wall, she was struck by the sheer number of names, more than she could have been from just hearing the numbers.
"You feel that a lot of people died," she said. In a few minutes, she found some of her schoolmates from the Class of 1967 at Oxford Hills High School and two uncles. She held a rubbing of one in a hand and her voice broke slightly.
"They were never coming home," she said.
Dennis Allen of Greene (no relation to Paula) said he spent several minutes looking up names of classmates from school and buddies he'd known.
He did two tours there, serving aboard an amphibious assault ship in the South China Sea. He'd take his liberties in Vietnamese ports, but most of his time was spent on the ship, he said.
"The guys in the jungles were the heroes," he said quietly. "I wasn't like that."
He was grateful for the wall's visit, though. The last one to come was in 2001.
"It's been a long time coming," he said.
With the rain, fewer people than expected turned out Friday, said Michael Martel, one of the organizers of the visit. More were expected today and Sunday, when weather forecasts called for sun.
However, crowds were steady. And some veterans even found haven beside the wall, in a tent staffed by counselors from local veterans centers.
By noon, as many as 10 people - from a variety of conflicts including the war in Iraq - stepped inside to talk.
"We're here to support the vets and let them know that there is a place to talk," said Tina Higgins, a counselor from the Lewiston center.
The wall acts as a catalyst for some vets to seek help, she said.
"It's touching them all deeply," she said.

Kennebec Journal

LEWISTON

Robert Mcdonald held a strip of paper on the three-quarter size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on display in Lewiston and rubbed a graphite pencil over the name of his regiment chaplain, Vincent R. Capodanno.

The retired Lewiston police detective and Vietnam veteran said Capodanno won the Medal of Honor "saving people's lives."

Mcdonald, 60, had two other friends with names etched in the wall. The names are those of 58,183 men and women who had their lives taken away from them in a war shrouded in controversy.

Just fewer than 300 were from Maine.

A member of various veterans' organizations, Mcdonald said he felt obligated to help out with the 240-foot memorial that travels around the country.

The ex-Marine will be reading names of those from Maine remembered on the wall.

"I watched them bring it here and there were lots of people cheering and it was really nice," Mcdonald said Thursday. "But when I come here, it angers me. I feel we were let down and at such a young age. And for what?"

The wall will be on display to the public at Lewiston's Veterans Memorial Park from today until Sunday. On Thursday, 5,000 students visited the memorial in the morning, but heavy rain in the afternoon kept away the people with disabilities and nursing home residents for whom the memorial was open.

After the rain cleared, people started to trickle in. Most of the people around the wall were volunteers including Roger Martel, 60, of Lewiston, an E-5 with the Army Corps of Engineers in Vietnam.

He leads the memorial's construction and site committee.

Martel, a retired Lisbon Public Works Department worker, said 27 young men from Lewiston have their names on the wall -- a lot, he said, for a small city.

"Lewiston has a high concentration of veterans," Martel said. "Maybe it's because of our blue collar background. Back then, (if) we didn't go to college, we were drafted or enlisted. In my case, I enlisted."

Like most veterans, Martel said he has friends on the wall. He said he went to school with Forest Hodgkins who died in Vietnam before Martel got there.

The wall, he said, is the best way to memorialize the sacrifices his friends made.

Thomas McMahon, a Lewiston native with his name on the wall, is the most decorated Mainer to lose his life in the Vietnam war, Martel said. He was killed on March 19, 1969.

"(The wall is) absolutely the best thing that can be done for a vet," he said.

His son -- Mike Martel of the Fortin Group, a local funeral company that helped bring the wall to Lewiston -- said he expects 50,000 people will visit the wall this weekend.

He said volunteers erected the 48 panels, landscaped around them and put up the lights and chairs.

"Our volunteer group is made up from the funeral home staff, vets and military personnel over at the base," Mike Martel said. "We were ready when the school children came through, right before the rain started."

Ron Duchette who served in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam from 1970 to 1971, was busy sweeping away puddles on the walkway Thursday so people wouldn't get their feet wet.

The 57-year-old subcontractor from Lewiston said he has always wanted to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

"I've always wanted to go, but never had enough money," Duchette said. "Organizations like Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars have buses going down there from time to time. I'm semi-retired now, so I want to try and do that."

One of the few visitors who came out after the storm did a rubbing of a friend whose name is on the wall.

Bert Belisle, 62, of Lewiston, who served in the Coast Guard, said his friend, Daniel Ouellette, is one of the few people with his name on the wall who isn't dead.

"There's a couple of incidences of that," Belisle said. "He teaches at Westport High School. He was shot down and badly injured. By the time they found him, he was listed killed in action. It was just a paper snafu."

The Brunswick Naval Air Station firing squad and color guard was spectacular at every event. Patrick Mcguire, firing commander was sharp and impressive. At every ceremony hundreds watched as Tyler Sibley walked to the apex and placed a spent shell at the base of the apex where the 1959 and 1975 stones come together. For those who witnessed this solemn ceremony of respect and honor for those who gave all will never forget these precious moments.