Traveling Vietnam Wall in Myrtle Beach draws loved ones of those who died while serving

There are 58,307 names on the Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall that currently sits on a field in front of Crabtree Memorial Gymnasium near the Market Common.

That's 58,307 loved ones. Most of them are sons, brothers, fathers and husbands.

And 58,307 stories of heroism, sacrifice and incomprehensible hardship.

Here are some of their stories.

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Panel 29 West, Row 6.

Michael DiGenno.

“He made us all very proud,” his older sister, Madeline Meredith said in front of the wall.

He would be 75 if he were alive today. But his sister still pictures a 21-year-old in her mind. The loss still feels fresh, she said.

Their mom, who died in 1999, never really got closure, she said. “But closure is a horrible word.”

He had a closed casket funeral complete with Taps and the 21 Gun Salute.

“If it was open casket, she would know it was really him,” Meredith said.

“When you just get a box...” she started as her voice then trailed off. Her eyes were on the picture of her little brother she was holding close to her chest attached to an American flag.

DiGenno was killed by an artillery shell on March 11, 1969, during the Vietnam War only a few weeks after his 21st birthday.

“He was a good kid,” Meredith said.

When he was first born, however, Meredith said she saw him as competition. When their mom would give him a bottle, Meredith would take it and drink it herself.

“When my mom asked me why I did that, she said I told her, ‘I don’t like Bonesy,’” Meredith said, laughing at the nickname she gave him as a toddler.

DiGenno thought it was funny, too. He’d sometimes refer to himself as her “kid brother, Bonesy,” she said.

She remembers her mother going to Sears after he enlisted and putting together a care package for him, complete with Christmas gifts.

And in the next letter he sent home, he said he and his friends really enjoyed the package, especially the socks.

He was generous.

A while before enlisting in the Marines, Meredith said her brother had a bicycle with a basket on it. He would use it to deliver groceries to people in their hometown, Hurlock, Maryland, who couldn’t make it to the store themselves.

Their father did not live in the same household as Meredith, DiGenno, their two little sisters and their mother, so DiGenno made himself the man of the house, Meredith said.

“He always made sure we were OK,” she said. “We didn’t have a whole lot but we had each other.”

When DiGenno’s class had a class reunion years after his death, they invited his family and they were presented with a painting, memorializing his sacrifice.

And Meredith again called her little brother “a good kid,” but said, “I’m his sister so of course I’d say that, but I think if you were to ask others who knew him, they’d say the same.”

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Panel 29 East.

250 names.

173rd Airborne Brigade.

“We’re a bunch of raggedy paratroopers,” Gene Cartier, a Vietnam War veteran a part of the brigade said.

Cartier and his buddies, Ignacio Zarate, Leo Hill and Sam Mingle all carried out Panel 29 East to its temporary spot on the Myrtle Beach field to honor their fallen brothers whose names are etched on the wall.

Hill ran his finger over Earl Webb’s name.

“Earl Webb was our medic. He got killed coming out to help me when I got wounded,” Hill said. “Robert Bickel was hit in an ambush along with six other guys. The other guys were killed instantly. He had severe wounds, but he was able to crawl, and he was crawling back to our position asking for help and an NVA dropped out from behind a tree and shot him five times in the back.”

Bickel was 19.

Cartier said all of the 250 names on the wall died around Thanksgiving in November 1967.

“Nobody likes Thanksgiving,” he said.

Hill said the biggest battle was over on Thanksgiving Day and that they were given turkey to eat that evening.

“Nobody can eat turkey. Not to this day.”

The four men were standing in the rain by the 250 names when they said they didn’t mind the rain. They had been through worse.

Cartier said that in June and July of 1967 in the central highlands of Vietnam it rained 22 hours a day.

“In the jungle, you got the triple canopy but when it rains, it forces the heat down, so now you’re in an oven,” Mingle said.

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Doc Russo, a Navy veteran, has driven the wall everywhere it has gone since it started travelling in 2006.

“I have a cousin on 35 East on this wall,” he said.

Russo also has a cousin whose name is on another wall that was erected on the field honoring those who died in the September 11, 2001, attacks.

During Sunday’s closing ceremony for the wall, Russo told the crowd a story from when he brought the wall to a small town in West Virginia.

He said the wall was on a field next to a small house in a one-street, one-traffic-light town that he couldn’t remember the name of. A woman he affectionately nicknamed Grandma was on her porch everyday watching the wall. She eventually approached Russo and showed him a name etched on the wall.

“She said, ‘This is the first time in 47 years my son has been home.’ That’s why I do what I do,” he said.

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The wall was erected Thursday and has attracted dozens of people whose loved ones died while serving in the United States’ military.

Here are other Memorial Day events happening in the Myrtle Beach area on Monday and Tuesday:

- Jack Platt Veterans' March with Battlefield Cross Ceremony will be at 9 a.m. on Monday along Ocean Boulevard from 16th Avenue North to 9th Avenue North

- Memorial Day Remembrance Ceremony will be from 11a.m. on Monday at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center

- Courage in Korea: A Soldier's Story, which is a free military documentary will show at 2 p.m. on Monday at Grand 14 Cinema at The Market Common

- The Festive Brass Concert Performance will be at 7 p.m. on Tuesday at Ballroom ABC of Myrtle Beach Convention Center