The Wall That Heals is a three-quarter scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that travels around the U.S.
Nicolet College hosted the memorial for four days in 2023.
Now, a retired panel from that replica has a permanent home on campus.
Skip Dulin, a Vietnam Veteran and member of the Northwoods Honor Guard, read the poem “The Spirit of the Wall” by Judy Gorman King during a ceremony at Nicolet College last week.
“You came to see my name today. I saw you standing there. Man, you sure look different with the silver in your hair. But me, I haven't changed,” read the beginning of the poem.
The ceremony included Dulin’s reading of the poem, a 21-gun salute, and the playing of To the Colors.
It was all to honor a new Vietnam Veterans Memorial that will have a permanent home at the Lakeside Center Patio at Nicolet College.
The memorial is a small panel from a retired section of the Wall That Heals that sits upon a metal pedestal. The base was welded by a class of veterans at Nicolet.
The panel was gifted to Nicolet College after it hosted the wall in May 2023.
Casey Lehmann with Nicolet is a veteran herself who helped bring the wall to campus.
“I didn't realize quite what the impact was going to be until I started to see the emotions and things like that that I saw from the visitors and how many people came. We had over 8000 people come for that. And, I mean, that's amazing,” said Lehmann. “The stories I heard. I sat down with one veteran on the bench, and he showed me pictures from when he was there. I mean, just to have that closure and feel comfortable talking to me, that's awesome.”
Lehmann feels honored to have permanent piece of the wall on campus. She hopes it’s a place for reflection and remembrance.
“To be able to have this on our campus and have a place for those veterans that need some place to go and to give the respect and everything, or just to be able to reflect on their time or who maybe they lost, it's really, it's really important for them,” said Lehmann.
The memorial being at college, Lehmann also hope people will educate themselves on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the war.
“Learning and being open to knowing more is important,” she said. “That's part of what we do here. We teach, right? We educate. That's another important part.”
Veteran and Northwoods Honor Guard Chaplin Tony Schoone feels the same.
He volunteered the midnight shift when the wall was on campus and was part of the ceremony last week.
“Take away what Skip talked about in that poem,” said Schoone.
“I guess I'll go now that I seem to have said it all. Think of me once in a while, that ghost that stays with the wall,” Dulin said, finishing the last lines of the poem.
Of the 40 names on the panel section at Nicolet College, two are from Wisconsin and three are from Michigan.
As of 2017, there are 58,318 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
