On Memorial Day, a reminder that fallen soldiers ‘all had stories’

Philadelphia’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial was empty when Joseph Lipscomb strolled across its gently curved amphitheater late Sunday morning. Motorists occasionally thumped across the Belgian blocks on nearby Spruce Street, and the sun peeked from behind a latticework of clouds.

The city seemed quieter, slower. Plenty of residents had fled to their favorite beach town for a long, cool weekend. But Lipscomb, 69, took a few moments to reflect in Society Hill on the true cost of the Memorial Day holiday, one that’s too often lost amid all of the barbecues and big sales.

He gestured toward a granite wall that bears the names of the 648 Philadelphians who were killed during the Vietnam War.

“They all had stories. They all had families,” he said. “A lot of people take for granted the sacrifices that others have made.”

Lipscomb, a lifelong Philadelphian, cited his family’s ties to military service: His father, John B. Lipscomb, was a Marine who fought in the South Pacific during World War II, and his uncle, Richard Lipscomb, was a medic in the Korean War.

The city’s Korean War Memorial, situated across Spruce Street, attracted even less foot traffic on Sunday, save for some tourists who posed for photos. That memorial honors 610 service members — from Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties — who were killed in the war.

“People lose sight of things,” Lipscomb said. “You have to make time for something like this.”

A Monday ceremony to honor military who lost their lives is expected to start at noon at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; the memorial’s board plans to unveil a plaque to honor veterans who died after the war, as a result of their service in Vietnam.

As a light breeze rippled through the memorial’s flags on Sunday afternoon, Mark Goren, 64, made his way across the amphitheater, pausing to study 5-foot-wide panels that depicted scenes from the war.

When Goren was just a boy in the 1960s, growing up in Northeast Philadelphia, the war seemed both remote — a terrible thing, happening in some faraway place — and uncomfortably intimate, confronting him through graphic news coverage on his family’s television.

Decades later, he can still recall the sense of unease that permeated the era.

“It was a terrible time,” Goren said. “So many people died.”

That generational tragedy and trauma were reason enough for Goren to stop at the memorial. “We don’t want to forget,” he said.

Pre-Memorial Day treks to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial are a tradition for John Livewell, 73.

He can still easily recite the day on which he was drafted by the U.S. Army — Sept. 3, 1969 — but he returns to the memorial because of six friends, young men he’d grown up with in Fishtown.

Their names are carved into the granite wall.

“Those guys never got to have life experiences,” said Livewell, who spent 10 months in Vietnam as a combat medic, and later worked as a Philadelphia police officer for 31 years. “They didn’t get to get married, or have families.”

Asked what thoughts came to mind whenever he visits the memorial, he summoned two words: “The loss.”