The Wall That Heals continues its temporary residency at Mack Park through Sunday afternoon. It includes the names of 3,150 Pennsylvanians who died in the Vietnam War, 41 of them from Indiana County.
Over the last four years, the Pennsylvania Department of Military and Veterans Affairs has been compiling photographs of all of the state’s fallen heroes from the war, and they are almost finished. In fact, they have all but one…Air Force Master Sergeant Matthew N. Harris Jr.
Harris died on May 28th, 1965. Very little is known about him, other than that he was from Philadelphia County. Any photo of Harris is acceptable, even a non-military picture. The Department of Military and Veterans Affairs is hoping someone who served with Harris might have a photo of him. The “Wall of Faces” (https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/) is an online project of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.
Interestingly, the official number of Pennsylvanians killed in Vietnam is 3,147. The variance with the 3,150 figure could be attributed to vets who lived in multiple states.
The Wall That Heals is open 24 hours a day at Mack Park, through Sunday at 3 PM. The ceremony welcoming the wall to Indiana is scheduled for 6 o’clock tonight.
