Earlier this week, Doc Russo was driving through a rainstorm in Melbourne, Fla. Behind his one-ton pickup was a 40-foot trailer carrying a 300-foot aluminum replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall.
He gets 10 miles per gallon. “Every time I pull into a gas station it’s $125,” he said in a phone call while driving.
“Loaded up, the truck and trailer is about 32,000 pounds,” he said, “so if I had to guess, I’d say the wall itself is 16,000 to 18,000 pounds. That’s why we require 10 people to get it up when we get there, and 10 people to take it down. It comes apart in four-foot sections.”
“There,” in this instance, is American Legion Post 419 in Amagansett, where the wall will be on display from Friday, May 23, through May 26. Mr. Russo calls himself the “wall manager,” or “the wall guy,” and says Amagansett is just one of 16 to 18 events he’ll hold with the wall this year.
He’s already booking into 2027. “It’s not like there’s no demand.”
So why drive a 300-foot wall around the country from April to November each year?
“There’s a lot of people that will never make it to D.C. to see, what I call, ‘The Big Wall,’ ” he said.
“Getting to the wall is one of the steps in the healing process for combat vets from Vietnam. A lot of guys have survivor’s guilt. Maybe they missed a patrol and lost a bunch of buddies. Then there are family members who bring their kids and grandkids. We were in a little town in West Virginia once. At the end of the event a little old lady comes up to me. She looked like my grandma. She said, ‘I want to thank you for coming to this tiny little town. This is the first time in 47 years my son’s been home.’ I don’t need another reason beyond that to do what I do.”
“I tell everybody, if you don’t tell their stories, they’re going to be forgotten. The wall is about remembering. Over the decades, we’ve paid a price for our freedom. The wall is a physical representation of that price.” There are over 58,000 names on the wall.
Locals may remember a Vietnam Wall visiting Amagansett 20 or 30 years ago, but that wasn’t Mr. Russo’s wall. In fact, there are four traveling walls, but his only started traveling 18 years ago, and has never visited the East End.
“Two years ago, one of my members asked me if I could get the wall out here. I contacted the traveling wall people, picked a weekend, and started fund-raising,” said Dave Martin, a member of the legion. The member, Leo Toole, died in April. “He was a previous commander for the legion. A good guy. I’m just trying to pull it off. I think it’s important to share the history.”
Mr. Martin raised about $20,000 to bring the wall to the South Fork. The wall itself required only $8,000, but housing, Porta-Potties, lighting, and advertising all cost money. The wall will be open 24 hours a day during its stay here and it’s free to the public. It will be lighted all night.
“It’s not a money-making thing, I can tell you that,” said Mr. Russo. “It’s a labor of love. Any money we have left over at the end of the year goes into a homeless veterans facility we run in Melbourne, Fla. We host 18 to 20 vets at a time.”
“There will be at least two people there all night for security and to assist any visitors,” he said. “If people come out at 2 a.m., they know exactly where they’re going. They may be going to see a buddy and they don’t want to see any people. If they show up at that time, they need to be there. There are guys that come with two cans of beer, open one, and drink the other. Usually something like Pabst, something they had in Vietnam.”
How old is the youngest guy on the wall? 15. (“He had some paperwork fudged,” said Mr. Russo.) How many women? Eight. There are even Coast Guardsmen on the wall: Six. There are Canadians on the wall, and there are Mexicans too.
The wall can elicit complicated feelings. Mr. Russo told a story of a woman who walked up and down the wall in tears one day. She was looking for no one in particular, he said. As a college student, she protested the war. Until she saw the names on the wall, she never understood how many people died. “We don’t really know why we were really there,” he said.
“I am not looking forward to going over the George Washington Bridge and bringing this thing down the Major Deegan,” said Mr. Russo. “Traffic is not my friend.” While he lives full time in Florida now, he grew up in upstate New York and his wife is from Long Island. It’s not post-traumatic stress disorder, but he hasn’t forgotten the traffic.
