Westchester’s efforts to commemorate Veterans’ Day has run into a wall, literally and on purpose.
The Veterun race will be held Sunday, Nov. 8, starting and finishing at Mayfair Park, 10835 Wakefield St. Each year, more than 1,000 runners and walkers turn out for the event.

For its 20th anniversary, Veterun has been expanded to a five-day event commemorating the sacrifice of American servicemen and women.

The event is sponsored by the Westchester Chamber of Commerce, the Westchester Park District and the Village of Westchester.

Started in 1990, proceeds from the Veterun have been used to build a Veterans’ Memorial in Mayfair Park and are also donated to the Wounded Heroes Foundation, which provides care packages to injured men and women of the armed forces and provides financial and other assistance in certain situations.

This year, participants and guests will have an opportunity to pay their respects to those who served, alive and dead, in front of perhaps one of the most recognized symbols of the Vietnam War.

The Moving Wall, a half-sized replica of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., will be on display in Mayfair Park. Inscribed in the wall are the names of 58,253 service men and women who died in Southeast Asia between 1957 and 1975.

To launch the exhibit at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, Roger Mattingly will share some of his experiences as an Army publications photographer covering the war from 1970 to 1971 in a program entitled “War Correspondent in Vietnam With a Camera.”

The program is free and open to the public.  

Mattingly was 22 when he covered the invasion of Laos in 1971 on infamous Highway 9 between Khe Sanh and the Laotian border. It was his first job after graduating from the University of Missouri, working for the Army’s Public Information Office. That was his first job out of school, working for, as he put it, “The Ministry of Propaganda.”

During the invasion he traveled with the civilian press corps in the company of corespondents from the New York Times, Life Magazine and Newsweek.

“We were traveling with a South Vietnamese armored column. As we were making camp that night around sunset, there was a friendly fire incident where a Navy jet dropped a cluster bomb,” Mattingly said. “It killed six or seven outright and wounded a hell of a lot more, set a lot of the tracks on fire.”

Curiously to civilians, but maybe not so with those who have seen combat, Mattingly does not get a lot of veterans to come to his program, which he presents several times a year.

“A lot of Vietnam veterans don’t want to talk about the war because of the things they did,” he said. “I just shot photos. I can talk about that and show the photos. Most people just try to shove it down and forget about.”

Chamber spokesman Tom Sullivan said sponsors were really excited about the fact they have been able to put this schedule of events together with the Wall being a focus.

The group has sought to get the Wall to Westchester for several years. The problem is the exhibit generally does not travel this far north this late in the season.

“It’s been a long process and the fact that it’s coming is really great,” Sullivan said.

Volunteers are still needed to support the exhibit. More information on volunteering is available at (708) 865-8200.

More than a name on a ‘Wall’
Before he was Cpl. Charles Albert Slager, USMC, he was Chuck, Judy Stresney’s little brother.

A handsome, quiet kid from Berwyn, he was  one of five siblings, and  taught his baby sister how to tie her shoes. He was also a heck of a high school athlete with a baseball scholarship heading his way.

That all ended on Oct. 18, 1966 in Quang Tin, Vietnam, when the Marine rifleman was chosen by either a grenade or a mortar round.

It did not kill him outright.

“We got a telegram that said he was wounded, prognosis guarded,” Stresney said. “A couple of days later came another saying he passed away.

I was there when they rang the doorbell with that fateful telegram. I believe that we all pretty much went into shock. There were so many people killed all over there. I remember us all being quiet and not knowing what to do. When we got the final telegram we were unable to speak. I remember it as being awful. There was no way to comfort the younger ones or explain it.”

It has been 43 years since the telegram changed her and her family’s life.

“It was a long time before I could watch a war movie,  talk about the war,” Chuck’s older sister said.

Stresney, who now lives in Wheaton, has been to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., on more than one occasion and took part in the Wall’s 25th anniversary, where survivors took turns reading the names etched in the cold, black granite. Starting at 5 a.m., it to took more than 17 hours to read the 58,000 names of those who perished.

Earlier this month, she visited the Wall with some of her cousins who had never seen it when it was on display in Downers Grove last month.

“It’s always very somber,” she said. “No one said much while we were there. We reminisced about my brother.”

Stresney said she plans on visiting the Moving Wall when it comes to Westchester this week.

“He was the big brother protector,” she said. “You just wonder what life would have been like had he lived.”

- By Joe Sinopoli, staff writer

Local servicemen who died in the Vietnam War
• Cpl. Norman William Bartels, U.S. Army
HOMETOWN Berwyn
DIED Oct. 25, 1968
AGE 21
ON THE WALL Panel 40W Line 031

• Spec. 4 John Peter Johnson, U.S. Army
HOMETOWN Berwyn
DIED Jan. 5, 1968
AGE 20
ON THE WALL Panel 33E Line 049

•Spec. 4 Gary Edward Becker, U.S. Army
HOMETOWN Berwyn
DIED May 26, 1968
AGE 20
ON THE WALL Panel 66W Line 001

• Spec. 4 William Rassano, U.S. Army
HOMETOWN Berwyn
DIED Sept. 23, 1967
AGE 20
ON THE WALL Panel 42E Line 038

• Sgt. Michael John Donovan, U.S. Army
HOMETOWN Berwyn
DIED June 7, 1968
AGE 20
ON THE WALL Panel 59W Line 021

• Cpl. Charles Albert Slager, USMC
HOMETOWN Berwyn
DIED Oct. 18, 1966
AGE 19
ON THE WALL Panel 11E Line 089

• PFC. Michael Peters, U.S. Army
HOMETOWN Brookfield
DIED Oct. 27, 1967
AGE 20
ON THE WALL Panel 28E Line 085

PFC. William Joseph Boland Jr., U.S. Marine Corps
HOMETOWN Cicero
DIED  June 29, 1968
AGE 19
ON THE WALL Panel 54W Line 014

• PFC. Alan Richard May, U.S. Marine Corps
HOMETOWN Cicero
DIED May 20, 1967
AGE 21
ON THE WALL Panel 20E Line 061

• Lance Cpl. James Craig McPhillips, U.S. Marine Corps
HOMETOWN La Grange
DIED Oct. 24, 1969
AGE 21
ON THE WALL Panel 17W Line 113

• Sgt. James William Robinson Jr., U.S. Army
Congressional Medal of Honor
HOMETOWN Lyons
DIED April 11, 1966
AGE 25
ON THE WALL Panel 06E Line 103

• Maj. Wayne Edward Pearson, U.S. Air Force
HOMETOWN Western Springs
DIED Feb. 22, 1969
AGE 29
ON THE WALL Panel 32W Line 082

1st Lt. James Derrill Stevenson, U.S. Army Reserve
HOMETOWN Western Springs
DIED Oct. 25, 1969
AGE 24
ON THE WALL Panel 17W Line 11