Vietnam Veterans Memorial replica visits Henderson

Thursday, March 27, 2003 | 10:59 a.m.

The 9mm Tokerov was taken from a dead Vietnamese soldier by a U.S. Army sergeant who wound up being one of the more than 58,000 names on the wall.

"I could never bring myself to go to the real wall in Washington," said Cornell, a Henderson resident who was helping set up a copy of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at the Henderson Promenade at Liberty Pointe. "So now I brought this (pistol) to bring the circle around."

The replica of the Washington, D.C., memorial, called The Wall that Heals, will be on display at the Henderson park at 200 S. Green Valley Parkway today through Sunday.

Linda Anderson and her husband, John, haul the wall around the country in an 18-wheeler. The couple drove the wall into Henderson Tuesday, shortly after the news broke that U.S. Marine Corps 2nd Lt. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr., a former Tonopah resident, had been killed in Iraq.

The replica of the memorial has always had a profound effect on people who view it, and the impact seems even greater since the war in Iraq began, Anderson said.

The couple arrived Tuesday from Ohio. They drove through Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona as the war unfolded.

"People stop us at rest stops; they kind of want to talk," Linda Anderson said. "They see our rig and don't think of us as strangers. They are worried about what's happening there and what could happen here.

"This (wall) is a way for people to have a release of emotions, and we expect to see more of that now."

The Andersons set up computers wherever the wall is shown to help people seek the location of names of loved ones based on information as spotty as a unit or a hometown.

Some of those who were stopping at the wall as it was being set up Wednesday also thought of loved ones who are in Iraq or about to ship out.

Cornell was eager to talk about his pistol, a Sgt. Ronald Dennis, a friend nicknamed Shorty, and Cornell's son David, who is soon off to Kuwait.

Cornell had found Dennis' name on the wall and jotted its location on a scrap of paper: Row 15W, Line 89.

Not long after Dennis had taken the Tokerov off a dead Vietnamese soldier, he was killed in the war and the gun wound up with his best buddy, Shorty, also a veteran, Cornell said. Cornell befriended Shorty in Tucson in the '90s and told the fellow veteran he was a gun dealer on the side. Shorty offered to trade the Tokerov for another pistol.

"He said he didn't want to remember the death of his friend anymore," Cornell said.

So Cornell did the remembering. Dennis was added to Cornell's personal list of Vietnam War deaths, a list that includes a second cousin and a group of high school friends.

And Cornell hopes his son, David, a 21-year-old paramedic with the Arizona National Guard, won't ever wind up on any list. David is set to ship out to Kuwait on Sunday, his father said.

"Maybe I can put the war behind me, even though my son is going," Cornell said, his eyes moist.

Ernie and Pat Buschmann, a retired couple, passed by shortly before the construction of the wall was finished. They had just finished buying tickets for an event at the Henderson Pavilion, next door.

The Buschmanns have a grandson in the Army at Fort Polk, La. They think he will soon be off to the Middle East because he has been told to ship things such as his TV back home.

Ernie Buschmann was in the Air Force from 1956 to 1958 but never saw combat.

"If I had stayed in, I probably would have been in Vietnam," he said.

"I was lucky. These guys weren't," he said, pointing to the wall.

After his wife spoke of friends from her high school in Albany, N.Y., whose names were on the wall, Ernie Buschmann wrinkled his forehead.

"This is starting to hit home for me," he said. "I don't want to see this many people dead again. But I don't think we're going to get out of this cheaply."