'Wall of Faces' Seeks Photos of All California Soldiers Lost in Vietnam War

By Samantha Clark

Janna Hoehn’s first stop during a trip to Washington, D.C. was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. At random, she picked a soldier’s name to etch — Gregory John Crossman, who is listed as MIA.

She hoped that if she sent the etching to his family, they would share a photograph of him. When she didn’t receive a response, she searched for Crossman’s photograph herself.

Eventually, she found it. Elated, she sent Crossman’s picture to the founder and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, Jan Scruggs, who emailed Hoehn less than a week later.

“He asked me to help find photos for the Maui fallen heroes,” said Hoehn, who lives in Maui. She then visited libraries to read obituaries and went to high schools to flip through year books. She combed phonebooks for people with similar names of soldiers.

“Within six months I had a photo of all 42 of the Maui boys,” she said. “And it just bloomed from there.”

County by County Outreach

Now as a volunteer, Hoehn is looking for all the missing photos of her home state: California. She’s tackling the entire state county by county. So far, she’s completed 20 and has collected just under 700 photos. But California has 58 counties and 5,500 men killed in the war.

So Hoehn is using local newspapers to get her story out to communities and to ask for help.

“Sometimes it seems like when these newspaper articles come out, the whole town gets involved. People want to know, ‘How can I help, what can I do?’” she said.

The photographs are for two new Vietnam Veterans memorials that are aimed at changing the dynamic of remembrance. Of the 4 million visitors to the wall annually, 40 percent of them weren’t alive during the war. Pictures resonate differently with the names listed on the glossy granite wall, said Tim Tetz, the director of public outreach for the memorial fund.

“We don’t want to forget their faces and the personalities,” Tetz said. “Everyone can say, ‘Hey, that is the person I know,’ or ‘Hey, that person looks like me.’”

All of a sudden, it personalizes that name, he said.

In a planned museum next to the memorial wall, the photos will be displayed on two-story tall screen on soldiers’ birthdays.

They’re also posted on the online Wall of Faces, which has a profile page for each soldier whose name is inscribed on the wall. Viewers can click through photographs of soldiers and leave notes or stories. Many are birthday wishes, memories and family updates, personalizing the memorial in a way that people can identify with.

Photos 'Make Them More Real'

“When you look at the face of the soldier, it makes them more real,” Tetz said. “When you see their dimples or them in front of their hot rod or in their football uniform, that makes you remember who that person was. And you realize that they had lives like ours.”

He said the campaign is collecting photographs that aren’t just military portraits, but soldiers on their wedding day or at prom.

“We want the photos that makes you most remember what that person was like, that captures their personality” Tetz said. “You’re looking at the face of the soldier, not just a name.”

They’ve collected more than 35,000 photos to date. Tetz said that the campaign needs people like Hoehn, who says she needs help collecting thousands more for California. She’s about to tackle Los Angeles County and return to Bay Area counties because they are so large.

Tetz said the people who can dig into their communities in ways he and Hoehn are unable to are the reason why the campaign is successful.

“Every time someone sends me a picture, I get a big tear in my eye but then I get a big smile on my face because this soldier is never going to be forgotten ever,” Hoehn said.

The email to contact Hoehn for this project is: neverforgotten2014@gmail.com.