Michigan Vietnam Monument
Reported by Erik Smith
Web produced by Rachel L. Miller

Mike Sand is on a mission to raise enough money to build the Michigan Vietnam Monument.

The images of war still haunt us and they should, for time has not healed the wounds, nor has it paid for the young lives it stole from America's homes.

Time has merely tried to hide and obscure it, or perhaps even worse, revise it.

For the Vietnam generation, time has continued, but the hands of the clock remain frozen at the hour of betrayal. The angst was supposed to end with the abandonment of Saigon or perhaps beside the flag-draped coffin of the last American to fall. The shooting had stopped, but the bleeding didn't and it hasn't.

That's why Mike Sand, a dedicated high school teacher from Fraser, can't let it go. He can't let us forget the names of 2,649 sons and daughters from 83 different Michigan counties who perished in the Vietnam War.

Sand says the names of those from Michigan killed in Vietnam compiled on paper would look like a small town phone book.

"It doesn't seem like a lot when we talk about millions and billions today, but when you see the names on a wall, it will overwhelm you," he says.

Sand has spent too many years now trying to convince people that the lives of those 2,649 people really matter, that they need to be honored, remembered, preserved.

He has spent more time, in fact, on the Michigan Vietnam Monument Commission than he did repairing our fighters and bombers at that clandestine air base in Thailand where he was stationed during the war.

Simply put, Sand hasn't forgotten what time might one day allow other generations to forget.

"I came home and tried to get on with my life," he says. "I spent 10 years in the bush or in a closet, not letting anyone know I'd served. And then I met a fellow that had this hat that said 'Vietnam Veterans of America.'

"I inquired. He said, 'Man, we have to get together. We have to find each other, because we came home alone.' This was our final selection, and we refer to it as tension and strength."

In his long battle to bring a Vietnam memorial to Michigan, there have been a good many advances and a few forced retreats, but the site is secure, the plans are all drawn and approved, and money has been raised. But not quite enough money to push the dream off the architect's paper and into the eternity of the Michigan Capitol grounds.

A sketch of the proposed memorial.

"The design is circular. If we can get people to come on board with us, raise the money, the shovel can go in the ground, and we hope to be built in conjunction with the new hall of justice that's going up in Lansing," Sand says. "That would be so ironic and so wonderful that justice can finally come."

The idea of a Michigan monument has its critics, those who think the names carved on the granite wall in Washington should be enough, that the pain of a useless war should be buried in the same graves as those who fought it.

But Sand knows better. He knows the monument is for the living and those who have yet to live.

"Michigan has about 450,000 Vietnam vets," Sand says. "You imagine each person that served has eight people close to them also touched by the war, and there's so much bitterness and hurt that needs to come out and it still will. It will."

Almost four decades after the nightmare of Vietnam began, it is still unreconciled. It still hides in the eyes of those who were there, still lingers in the hearts of those who refused to serve, and that's why Sand and the other 400,000 Michigan survivors of Vietnam want and deserve this tribute.

Mike Sand is looking forward to the day they can break ground on the Michigan Vietnam Monument.

"I received an Air Force commendation medal, and I didn't know if I should wear it or not," Sand says. "But in my heart, because of my dad, I felt, you know, that flag flew for him and it flew for me, and underneath that is that POW flag, and I'm going to wear it for them."

Click here to find out to visit the Michigan Vietnam Monument's Web site and to learn how you can help.

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