Photos Sought For Fallen Local Vietnam Vets

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

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund hopes you can.

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 the 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.

Among the Rohnert Park area names on the VVMF website are:

David Lee Harding — 1949-1970

Edwin Allen Zumwalt — 1950-1969

John Herbert Snyder — 1947-1967

Briggs Kinney Sicilia — 1937-1969

Robert Leon Sharpless — 1949-1968

Barry Martin Searby — 1948-1970

Robert Eugene Schulze — 1948-1970

Jerry Dean Schroeder — 1943-1968

Dana Gale Rosa — 1948-1966

Joseph Michael Rodriguez — 1948-1968

Edward George Rainford — 1944-1968

Babe Pinole — 1944-1968

James Allen Bullington — 1945-1967

Charles John Catelli — 1947-1969

David Michael Chaney — 1941-1967

Mancol Raymond Clifton — 1930-1968

Ronald Lewis Doolittle — 1947-1968

Dale LeRoy Davis — 1947-1968

Charles Dudley Dorman — 1946-1968

Gregory Lynn Dunn — 1949-1967

Rickie Davis Fisher — 1948-1967

Frederick William Haas — 1946-1968

Joseph Austin Hadley — 1947-1968

Michael Patrick Hourigan — 1947-1968

GB Jackson Jr. — 1948-1968

To submit a photograph, contributors should 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."

Elk Grove Patch staff contributed to this report.