CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — The Vietnam Moving Wall exhibit is making its final appearance of the year in New Lenox, which also happens to be home to its caretakers.
The Vietnam Moving Wall is a half-size replica of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Paul and Kim Chen have been taking it from town to town throughout the summer and fall full-time for the past six years. Paul Chen, a U.S. Navy veteran, actually started 10 years ago on a part-time basis.
He said the wall was in Joliet and while he was there volunteering, he became friends with its founder, John Devitt, who asked him to start taking it around the country with him.
“I was working at the Joliet Country Club. I was the shoe and locker room guy. I told them, I said, ‘I’m going away for a couple of weeks. I’m going to drive the Vietnam Memorial and they were all about it,’” he said.
The Chens said during the off-season, the wall will be stored in White Pine, Michigan where it will be prepped for the next season that begins in May 2022.
During the winter, the Chens said three more names will be added to it, just as there were on the real Vietnam War Memorial. This past season, the Chens have been everywhere from the Washington state to Vermont with the Vietnam Moving Wall.
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There are actually two walls that are half-sized replicas of the Vietnam War Memorial. Another couple cares for the other wall. Kim Chen schedules the places both walls will visit.
“Kim and I were the seventh couple in 37 years that only to have been the caretakers of the wall, which was a pretty big honor. A very elite fraternity we’re in,” Paul Chen said.
Paul Chen, 67, is a retired structural line welder. He and his wife will stop traveling with the wall when he can no longer get up and down on the trailer and they both no longer get goosebumps as people visit it. Kim Chen called it, “a labor of love.”
At 254 feet long, the Vietnam Moving Wall is 6-feet tall at its tallest point.
The panels look like granite, as the original memorial in D.C., but Paul Chen said it’s angle iron and high-gloss painted aluminum panels with names silk screened on.
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