Wanted: Millbrae Faces of Vietnam Heroes

What if a face could be attached to every name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.?

The Vietnam Veteran Memorial Fund hopes it is possible, and asks for your help.

Two Millbrae servicemen who died in Vietnam are listed on the Wall, but have no pictures.

2nd Lt. Thomas Winston Mallon is honored on Panel 19E, Row 15 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Mallon was born December 31, 1935. His date of casualty is listed as May 2, 1967, killed in the South Vietnamese province of Quang Tin. Mallon served in the Marine Corps.

Capt. Donald Lloyd Swanson is honored on Panel 14W, Row 87 of the Veterans Memorial. Swanson was born September 19, 1943. His date of casualty is listed as January 31, 1970, killed in the South Vietnamese province of Thua Thien. Swanson was in the Army.

The National Call for Photos is a project organized by the VVMF to match a headshot or portrait photograph to every service member listed on The Wall.

The pictures will be displayed in an exhibit at the future Education Center at The Wall, an underground visitors center to be built near the Vietnam Veterans and Lincoln memorials. Every day, the center will celebrate the birthdays of service members who died during the Vietnam War by featuring their photos on a giant digital wall.

So far, 25,526 veterans have complete profiles with at least one photograph, according to George Pojani, a research associate at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. These profiles are currently featured on The Virtual Wall, an online database of the Memorial's veterans.

To locate photos for the project, contributors can visit www.vvmf.org/thewall and search for veterans who enlisted in their area. The VVMF recommends contacting family and friends of the veterans to find photographs or visit local libraries and search through yearbooks or newspaper obituaries.

To submit a photograph, contributors are asked to obtain a high quality scan of the image and post a remembrance at http://www.vvmf.org/remembrances. The VVMF will send an email to contributors when their photograph is posted with a matching profile.

Relatives of service members with complete profiles are encouraged to submit photographs to the VVMF, even if there is already a photo available.

Pojani says that the contributors to the National Call for Photos will help improve the visitor's experience at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

"It's a place where people can go back and find stories about all the casualties on the Wall," Pojani said about the future Education Center. "It will be more personal than just names on the Wall."

For more news about Millbrae and surrounding areas, follow us on Twitter and "like" us on Facebook. Get Patched in daily - for free - by signing up for our newsletter. 

Want to blog for us? Simply click here.