An award-winning exhibit honoring the 3,417 Texans who were killed or are missing in action in Vietnam is coming to Honey Grove.
On March 29th of this year - the 42nd anniversary of the last day American combat troops left Vietnam - the State of Texas honored its veterans of that war with the installation of the Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Monument on the statehouse grounds in Austin. More than 4,500 people witnessed the long overdue honor bestowed on Texas Vietnam veterans as the monument was accepted by Texas Governor Rick Perry on behalf of the people of Texas. Included in the ceremony was a tribute to the 3,417 Texans who died or are missing in Vietnam. Entombed inside the monument are personalized dog tags honoring each of these men by name, rank, branch of service, date of loss and home of record. Texas suffered the third highest loss rate of any U.S. state during Vietnam.
The Texas Capitol Vietnam Veterans Monument Committee, believing that people across Texas should have the opportunity to pay tribute to these fallen military heroes, created the Texas Vietnam Heroes Exhibit. The exhibit features duplicates of the tags entombed in the monument and a scale model of the statehouse monument. Honey Grove is the latest stop in a tour of Texas that has included exhibition in the LBJ Presidential Library, the USS Lexington Museum, the Institute of Texan Cultures, the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, the Houston Museum of Health, the Texas Tech Museum, the Cavanaugh Flight Museum and other facilities around the state.
North Texans will be able to visit the exhibit at the Bertha Voyer Memorial Library located at 500 North 6th Street in Honey Grove through November 15th. The library plans a series of educational events in conjunction with the Texas Vietnam Heroes Exhibit’s visit.
The Texas Vietnam Heroes Exhibit, escorted by a motorcycle honor guard, will arrive in North Texas at the Bertha Voyer Memorial Library located at 500 North 6th Street in Honey Grove Texas at 10:00 a.m. October 9th. The first exhibit crate, draped in an American flag, will be unloaded in a solemn ceremony honoring the Texas military heroes who gave their lives in Vietnam. A welcome ceremony will follow.
Audio Transcript:
Haslett: The exhibition features a 3-dimenional artwork that presents reproductions of the dog tags of those Texas veterans who died or were ruled missing in action in Vietnam. There are 3,417 dog tags in the exhibit, each one bearing the name, rank, branch of service, date of loss and home of each soldier, sailor, marine, airman or guardsman. Texas suffered the third highest loss rate of any U.S. state during Vietnam.
The Texas Vietnam Heroes Exhibit, escorted by a motorcycle honor guard, will arrive in Honey Grove at the Bertha Voyer Memorial Library tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Honey Grove is the last stop in a tour of Texas that has included exhibition in the LBJ Presidential Library, the USS Lexington Museum, the Institute of Texan Cultures, the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, the Houston Museum of Health, the Texas Tech Museum, the Cavanaugh Flight Museum and other facilities around the state. So, why is this exhibition coming to Honey Grove? The answer to that question starts with U.S. Army veteran Jerry Suitor.
Suitor: I’m from, well I went to school in Windom, Texas but right now I’m from Honey Grove.
Haslett: Suitor had an unusual role in the war. He was a scout dog handler in the infantry.
Suitor: I had orders to go to Vietnam. While I was at home on leave, I was in a hunting accident. They sent me to Fort Sam Houston. Well I had to have some more surgeries so they sent me to Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio, and when I got out they said well we’re going to send you Fort Benning, Georgia, and I said Fort Benning, Georgia? And they said yes, you’re going down to pick up a friend. And I said a friend? And they said, yeah you’re getting a dog. It was a full-blood German shepherd from Heidelberg, Germany, and he could actually understand German, which I couldn’t speak, but one of the instructors could, and the dog would actually do the commands.
Haslett: Walking point with a scout dog in contested or hostile territory was the type of assignment where close calls with danger or death were inevitable.
Suitor: Well yes, anytime you go out it’s close, but you know, we had several incidents. My dog actually saved me from walking into a punji pit one night. That’s where they have the bamboo stakes and they hide it in the trail. He’s found a booby-trap grenade, and we’ve had several alerts. And usually whenever he alerted, like I said at night time, rather than risk the men of the unit, we called in artillery support, and whenever they got through firing the next morning, we would go in and clean up whatever was left. It was amazing, that if there’s not supposed to be something out in the jungle and that dog smells it, it’s kind of similar to a bird-dog or a hunting-dog. You work with them and you train them, and whenever something’s out there that’s not supposed to be there, that dog is going to let you know, and they were all trained not to bark. It was a silent warning and usually by perking their ears up or they’d start looking real quick in one direction or start pulling on the leash, and usually if it was a booby-trap the dog would just sit down. He would not let you cross in front of him.
Haslett: Suitor learned of the traveling exhibition, and thanks to the help of the Honey Grove library and the generosity of donors throughout the region, was able to raise the money necessary to bring the mobile tribute to Honey Grove.
Suitor: Everybody around here they have been so helpful, they have really backed me on this, and I am very pleased with the people in this part of the country.
Haslett: The ceremony welcoming the exhibit is at 10 a.m. tomorrow at the Bertha Voyer Memorial Library.
