11-07-2003

From the Editor:

A Quiet Campaign for a New Vietnam Memorial

By Ed Offley



For Jimmy Mosconis, today’s mission started a long, long time ago in a place called Xuan Loc, South Vietnam.



It was May 28, 1969, and the young platoon sergeant with the Army’s 199th Infantry Brigade was marching in the jungle when his unit came under an enemy ambush. Mosconis and three other soldiers dashed behind a tree to take cover, and an explosion nearby sprayed them with fragments.



One of the soldiers panicked and began running through the open, and Mosconis sprinted after him. Then a bullet grazed him in the chest, and Mosconis went down. A third soldier remained behind, shooting his M-16 rifle one-handed because of his own injuries.



Thirty-four years later, Jimmy Mosconis is leading a campaign to bring an element of the Vietnam Memorial to his hometown of Apalachicola, Fla., a quiet fishing community on the Florida panhandle. He and a small group of veterans and supporters have founded a nonprofit foundation to acquire a full-scale replica of the “Three Servicemen” statue designed by the late Frederick E. Hart that was added to the Wall two years after its dedication in 1982.



Hart, who was also a combat veteran of Vietnam, long expressed a desire to have exact replicas of the “Three Servicemen” statue erected in a small town in each of five regions of America. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation in 2001 selected Apalachicola as the first town that will receive a copy of the seven-foot-tall statue, which depicts three GIs posed as if they have emerged from the jungle to discover the Wall bearing the names of over 58,000 comrades who lost their lives.



Mosconis told DefenseWatch he was particularly interested in erecting the statute in his hometown because one of his fellow soldiers in that nearly-fatal ambush was Jan Scruggs, who founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation in 1979 and still heads the organization today.



“It means many things for our small community,” Mosconis told a local reporter when the project was unveiled two years ago. “Franklin County has a lot of Vietnam veterans, and this whole area [the Florida panhandle] has a lot of Vietnam veterans.”



Mosconis and his fellow organizers say while the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. is a national shrine for veterans and family members of those who died, not all can afford to travel to the nation’s capital to visit it. Placing the “Three Servicemen” statue in regions around the country will make it easier for them to visit a part of the national memorial, he said.



“This is something that has never been done before,” said Mosconis, who is a county commissioner and businessman. “It’s a learning experience for people [at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation] in Washington as well as us.”



The Apalachicola site will represent the southeastern region, where a large number of American draftees and recruits were born and raised, Mosconis said. The other four locations have yet to be selected.



Mosconis and seven other residents organized the nonprofit Three Servicemen Statue South Inc., in 2001, and are attempting to raise the $1.5 million it will take to acquire the statute and develop a site. The organization is working with City of Apalachicola to select a site in a downtown park that the city has pledged to donate. The statue will cost $500,000, site development another $500,000, with a planned endowment of $400,000 to maintain the site and another $100,000 for administrative expenses.



Mosconis said that the 9/11 terror attacks and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had caused support and donations to falter for a while. One board member, Vietnam vet Jimmy Elliott, is currently serving in Iraq as a master sergeant with the Florida Army National Guard. Mosconis said he and his fellow organizers remain optimistic that they will meet their goal to dedicate the statue on Veterans Day in 2004.



“It’s got to be a first class – nothing less than what you see in Washington,” Mosconis said.



Tax-deductible contributions can be sent to the organization at;



Three Servicemen Statue South Inc.

99 Market St. Suite 204

Apalachicola FL 32329



Telephone: 850-653-1318



The organization also has a website, which is temporarily down for upgrading. For further information contact info@threeservicemenstatuesouth.org.





Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/c....8475327537412


Sempers,

Roger