Two years ago the city removed the memorial to Vietnam veterans that was on Heald Square, a concrete island in the middle of Wacker Drive just west of Wabash. “They moved it because of the Wacker Drive construction project,” says Barry Romo, a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. “We figured they’d put it back when the project was over.”
Romo became a company commander who trained infantrymen, and he saw plenty of combat. “I killed six men,” he says. “I had men underneath me that died that I loved.”
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In 1968 Robert was killed. “He was shot in the throat and drowned in his own blood,” says Romo. Harold asked that Romo be allowed to escort Robert’s body home. “I flew back to Travis Air Force Base,” says Romo. “Then I rode on a train from Oakland to Los Angeles, where the casket was picked up by the local mortician and driven to Rialto, where my brother lived. This was 1968, and Harold was about 46. He was in the American Legion, very prowar. His American Legion post is named after my nephew. But it virtually destroyed my family. You can’t imagine what that’s like.” He says his brother never got over Robert’s death.
A fountain was installed on Heald Square, which also held Lorado Taft’s statue of three Revolutionary War heroes: George Washington, Robert Morris, and Haym Salomon. The dedication ceremony was on Veterans Day, November 11, 1982. According to a Tribune account of the event, “The $360,000 white granite fountain was an ‘overdue’ thank you, said Mayor Jane Byrne, who turned on the eight-by-30-foot fountain in a noon ceremony in pouring rain.” The ceremony, the story went on, “included representatives of all veterans’ organizations, and was opened with an invocation by Catholic Archbishop Joseph Bernardin.” One of the ceremony’s highlights was when Byrne “placed in the fountain wall a time capsule containing the names of the Chicago-area servicemen who died in the war and a letter from President Reagan commending the city for remembering the war veterans.” Byrne says she put the time capsule “at the foot of the fountain at the east-side end. There was a block of granite left so I could insert the capsule. After that it was sealed up.”
“As part of the construction, all of the plaques, historical markers, and monuments that were on Wacker–and there were others besides the Vietnam veterans’–were removed and kept in safe storage,” says Brian Steele, a spokesman for the transportation department. “They have been refurbished, and they are going to be put back into place.” He says the city tried to be particularly sensitive when it removed the Vietnam veterans’ memorial. “On September 21, 2001, we held a decommission ceremony for that memorial with representatives of several veterans’ groups,” he says. “We took the plaque off the fountain, and we gave it to the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum”–at 1801 S. Indiana. “The plaque is on display there. The idea being that instead of putting the plaque in storage for two years we wanted to have it in some type of venue where people could see it. See, it’s not the old reflection pool that had significance. It’s the plaque.” Steele didn’t know that a time capsule had been embedded in the wall of the fountain, and no one he asked knew about it either.
There’s another interesting story attached to the missing plaque. It’s not the one originally installed in 1982, but a 1996 replacement, and unlike the original, it doesn’t include Byrne’s name. According to Steele, the replacement plaque was a gift from Vietnamese refugees who’d settled in Chicago, and it’s that plaque–wherever it is–that will get the recommissioning ceremony celebrating its reinstallation. “I don’t want this to be about me, but come on, can you believe this?” says Byrne. “They’re making a big deal about bringing that plaque back? That’s just unbelievable.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Yvette Marie Dostatni.
