It’s been almost 46 years since she lost her husband, but the news that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was looking for a photo of him for its Wall of Faces museum brought back a rush of memories for Margaret Wilhite.
“When he was in boot camp at Fort Ord, his mother and I stopped by to see him,” Wilhite said. “We got to talk to him for a few minutes.”
Then a week or so ago, a friend alerted Wilhite, 69, to a story in The Durango Herald about the search for a photo of each of the 58,037 military personnel who were killed in Vietnam.
Wilhite supplied the newspaper with a graduation photo – she’s not sure whether it’s high school or college – that will be emailed to a woman in Hawaii, who is locating photos for the museum project.
Janna Hoehn, who lives in Maui, started gathering photos four years ago – she stopped counting at 1,400 – on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund for its Faces Never Forgotten project.
A two-story underground museum, still probably two years away from breaking ground, will house the Wall of Faces. It will sit adjacent to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., Hoehn said. An estimated $30 million of the $115 million cost is already in hand.
The photo of Troy Wilhite, which will be found on Panel W17 Row 46, will allow her to scratch La Plata County off her list, Hoehn said. She has 233 names to locate in Colorado where she began her search two weeks ago.
Margaret Wilhite has visited the Vietnam War Memorial.
“We were married less than five years when he was killed,” said Wilhite, who has gone it alone since.
Wilhite, who was born and raised in Durango, graduated from FLC with a degree in business administration and owned a store in Farmington that sold used children’s clothing for a few years before moving back home.
Wilhite met her future husband in the kitchen at FLC where her mother worked, and he earned meals for working. They married five weeks later.
Wilhite turned five years in the kitchen at FLC as a student and then followed graduation into a culinary career – 13 years at the DoubleTree Hotel and Escalante Middle School for eight years and counting.
“I have to keep working,” Wilhite said. “I get a widow’s allotment, but it’s not enough alone.”
Photos of all the military personnel killed in Vietnam from Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota and New Mexico have been found, Hoehn said. She also has found all the photos from 33 of California’s 58 counties, which lost 6,000 military personnel. But Los Angeles County, with 900 dead, will be a challenge.
Hoehn works 40 hours a week on the photo project, in addition to running her floral business of more than 20 years. In her tedious search, Hoehn calls libraries and schools for leads, looks for yearbooks and obituaries and follows up tips.
Brothers Jim and Tom Reece from North Carolina are soliciting photos in that state, Hoehn said.
“We need more boots on the ground,” Hoehn said.
daler@durangoherald.com
Only $30 million of the funding needed for the underground museum where the Wall of Faces will be displayed has been raised. The error has been corrected in this story.
