For Vietnam vets, the war still remains

WASHINGTON -- Even now, the sound of a helicopter or a Vietnamese phrase can carry Len Funk back to the war.

Mike Kentes still sits in a bar or restaurant where he can keep an eye on the door.

And Hugh Jordan's ears still ring from the thunder of the heavy guns.

Twenty-five years ago, the three were young and proud as they attended the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
This weekend, thousands like them are again gathering in Washington, this time to observe the 25th anniversary of the Wall, as it is widely known.

But now the men and women of the Vietnam War era are aging and gray. Many have jobs near the top of their fields, and, numbering 7.2 million, they make up the nation's largest veterans group. Seventeen of them sit in Congress.

"Military veterans of Vietnam have had an extraordinary influence on American society," said Jan C. Scruggs, founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which built the Wall.

Scruggs, who had been wounded in the war, launched the crusade for the Wall with his own money, then raised $8.4 million for the project in three years.

Architect Maya Lin's design -- a polished black granite chevron bearing more than 58,000 names of those killed or missing -- was at first controversial but would become among the most visited memorials on the Mall.

In recent interviews, Kentes, 59, Jordan, 61, and Funk, 65, said the war is a vital part of who they are. It helped define them, they said, mostly for the better. It continues to do so, they said, and probably will forever.

Kentes was unemployed in November 1982, with a wife and a 6-month-old son, and had not put the war behind him.

But now here was the Wall. "It was like being back in Vietnam, having all the guys there," he said.

Since then, he said, life has had ups and downs. He and his wife had another son, then divorced seven years ago.

When Jordan showed up at Washington's Shoreham Hotel for pre-dedication festivities that weekend in 1982, he could find no gathering place for the outfit in which he had served in Vietnam, the Americal Division.

So he and some friends commandeered a desk. They started collecting donations, got enough money to rent a hospitality suite and stock it with beer, and soon had a regular reunion going.
Jordan said he has been lucky since the dedication. He has two college degrees and became a project manager with the Department of Homeland Security.

"I often wonder, if I hadn't served, what would I have missed?" he said. "I think my life became richer. You learn about yourself. I know who I am."

Len Funk was on a business trip to Washington that weekend in 1982.
Vietnam once had been a big part of his life. He had served there as an Army adviser in 1969 and 1970 and went back in 1972 as a State Department employee, he said in an interview at his home in Arlington, Va. He left in December 1974 -- four months before Saigon fell.

Eight years later, the Washington hotels were filled with veterans like him.

"It was the first time we felt we could talk about this," he said. "It was the first gathering, kind of. . . . It was, 'OK, we can talk openly about this. We don't have to be ashamed of it.' "

Now, 25 years on, being a Vietnam veteran has "cachet," he said.