Honoring Owen’s fallen Vietnam Veterans
Former classmates and community members gather to restore memorial
Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
October 28, 2021
Marshall Blankenship points to a section of the star in the Owen High School Vietnam Veterans Memorial as Carroll Hipps examines his work. The two men were joined by nearly 20 members of the community, Oct. 23, to make improvements to the memorial. Photo by Fred McCormick
In many ways, the 10 young men whose names surround the flagpoles in front of Owen High School were much like their present-day counterparts who pass daily by the stone wall upon which they are affixed. They undoubtedly pondered what their futures held beyond school, and experienced the bonds that bind teenagers to their families, friends and loved ones.
The distinct and tragic difference, however, is that Jerry Bruce Harris, Herbert Coleman Wright, Ronald Lynn Hurst, Billy Gary Stewart, John Williams Hansard III, James Onley Weaver, Donald Woodson Wright, Wesley Eugene Melton, Bruce Clinton Elkins and Wendell Lee Brown, like many of their peers of the era, courageously left their homes for Vietnam, and never returned.
Preserving their memories is a priority for the classmates of the former Owen students, and the approximately 20 members of the community who gathered at the school’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Oct. 23, for a restoration project honoring the five Swannanoa and five Black Mountain natives who were lost to the war.
Marshall Blankenship and Carroll Hipps were among the hundreds of young men from Western North Carolina who enlisted in the military to fight for their country in the 20-year conflict between North and South Vietnam. Blankenship joined in the U.S. Marine Corps in July of 1967, while Hipps signed up for the U.S. Army at age 17, and was in Vietnam less than a month after his 18th birthday. The two veterans have been committed to preserving the memory of their fallen friends for nearly 40 years.
Blankenship, Hipps and many others from the community launched their efforts in 1982, when a wooden plaque with the names of their peers was mounted in the high school’s previous location, which is now home to Owen Middle. That plaque now hangs in the high school’s cafeteria.
Ten years later, as a modern high school building was being planned for the Owen District, they were among around 50 people who campaigned and fundraised to establish a prominent memorial on the new campus.
The horseshoe-shaped Vietnam Veterans Memorial in front of Owen High School recognizes all of the former students who fought in the war, and the 10 local men who died in battle. Photo by Fred McCormick
“We went to school with these men, and knew many of them well,” Blankenship said. “They weren’t old men like me and Carroll, and a lot of them didn’t even get to finish high school. They joined the military instead. This valley was very patriotic then, because the Korean War had not been forgotten and World War II was still being honored, so for young boys who weren’t going to college, defending your country was the thing to do.”
Honoring the 10 men, who were killed in action between 1966 - 1970, is a personal obligation for Hipps and Blankenship.
“There are still families of some of them here,” Blankenship said. “We need to keep their memories alive, and let their families know that the Valley hasn’t forgotten them.”
Those who died
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Owen is displayed in a heavily trafficked area of the school. The stone horseshoe-shaped wall around the three flagpoles holds 10 granite plaques, each of which contains a name, date of birth and death, rank and branch of military service.
Near the opening of the horseshoe rests a granite marker dedicating the monument to “those from the Swannanoa Valley who served. And in memory of those who died.”
Dedicated in 1992, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was proposed by local veterans and community members when Owen High School moved from its former location to its current one. Photo by Fred McCormick
The center of the display is marked by a large star cut into the concrete floor.
While each plaque tells a concise story of a fallen soldier, the collective tale is one of great sorrow for the community. Eight of the men died before the age of 23, and all of them left behind friends and family who were dramatically impacted by the loss of loved ones.
Blankenship has chronicled the history of the memorial in a pair of handmade wooden binders that he plans to one day donate to Owen and the Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center. The information he has gathered includes details about each of the men, including service records, the circumstances of their deaths, newspaper clippings and school yearbook pages.
Jerry Bruce Harris, a Black Mountain native, was drafted into the U.S. Army through the Selective Service System and began his tour in South Vietnam in August of 1965. Six months later, the Owen graduate was listed as a casualty of small arms fire in South Vietnam. He was the first from the Swannanoa Valley to die in the war.
It would be 16 months before the conflict claimed another Black Mountain native, Herbert Coleman Wright, Jr. The Marine lance corporal was killed in battle near the demilitarized zone, but his full story would be told years later, and include a vital chapter at the Owen memorial.
“By 1995, the new school was open, the memorial was in place, and everybody had moved on with their lives,” Blankenship said. “I got a call from a woman in Black Mountain whose last name was Wright. She said there was a lady in California who wanted to talk to me.”
The woman who was trying to contact him, he learned, believed Blankenship might have known her father when he served in the Marines.
“(Wright) fathered a child in California before he left for Vietnam, and he was killed six weeks later,” Blankenship continued. “The young pregnant woman never knew what happened to him, and their little girl grew up not knowing her daddy, or anything about him.”
The woman found Blankenship’s name in an article about the dedication of the memorial.
“It ended up that one day, me and Carroll were standing here, and a pretty young woman walked up,” Blankenship said, as he became emotional recalling the memory.
“We were about to leave, and a car pulled up,” Hipps added. “It was Coleman’s sister, his daughter and her mother.”
Wright’s daughter learned she had an aunt shortly after finding out who her father was, Blankenshp added, and they came to the memorial together to see his name.
“That was a day I will always remember,” he said.
In May of 1968, Army Private First Class Ronald Lynn Hurst became the first Swannanoa native lost in Vietnam. Five days later, Billy Gary Stewart, also of Swannanoa and a private first class in the Marines, died in the Quang Tri province of South Vietnam.
“(Stewart) joined the Marine Corps with me,” Blankenship said. “We went to Parris Island together. As a matter of fact, four of us from the Swannanoa Valley and two from Asheville joined the Marines together that day.”
Local casualties were frequent in 1968, which included the loss of two more Marines and Swannanoa natives: John William Hansard III and James Onley Weaver. Both men were 19 years old when they were killed in battle, also in Quang Tri.
Donald Woodson Wright (no relation to Herbert Coleman Wright) is the oldest of the men represented in the memorial. The Marine captain was 30, and beginning his second tour of duty in Vietnam, when a helicopter he was piloting was shot down in the coastal province of Thua Thien. Woodson, who graduated from Black Mountain High School before attending Western Carolina College (now Western Carolina University), is the only name on the memorial who didn’t attend Owen.
Wesley Eugene Melton was drafted into the Army at 19, and began his tour of duty in the Binh Duong province of South Vietnam in May of 1970, three days before his 20th birthday. The private first class was the casualty of an explosive device weeks later. His family was presented with a Bronze Star and Purple Heart, which were awarded to Melton after his death.
Sergeant Bruce Clinton Elkins, a native of Swannanoa, was only 22 when he fell victim to an explosive device in Binh Duong, in November of 1970. A member of the Army’s 11th Armored Cavalry, Elkins was serving on his second tour of duty.
“We were in the same unit in Vietnam,” Hipps said of Elkins. “I was with him the day he got killed. I knew him when we were growing up, he was only a couple of years older than me.”
The memorial originally featured only nine names when it was dedicated in 1992, but a 10th was added three years later when Blankenship discovered another Black Mountain native who lost his life in the Vietnam War.
Wendell Lee Brown graduated from Owen, but enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in West Virginia. He was a captain who had served eight years before the OV-10 Bronco he was piloting crashed while supporting ground troops in the Hua Nghia province in April of 1970.
Among the documents collected by Blankenship over the years, is an entry of a soldier whose infantry battalion received air support from Brown’s 19th Tactical Air Support Squadron.
“He was a brave and capable officer, and I believe it is safe to say that some of the infantrymen in our battalion are alive today because of the courage and devotion to duty of the Forward Air Controllers of the 19th TASS,” the entry reads. “Captain Brown, I salute your memory.”
A day of remembrance and honor
Marshall Blankenship, a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who fought in Vietnam, is one of several community members who have been caring for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Owen High School since its dedication nearly three decades ago. Photo by Fred McCormick
As Blankenship and Hipps met at the memorial Saturday morning, they were surrounded by friends, family and a host of people from the community. They were all there to pay their respects through hard work.
The project was launched last fall after Blankenship attended the funeral of Betty Melton, whose son’s name is among those featured in the memorial.
“She was a strong advocate for Vietnam Veterans, and a good friend of ours,” he said. “I spoke at her funeral, and her sons approached me saying that the memorial didn’t look good at the time.”
Hipps and Blankenship recruited friends and neighbors to help remove weeds, improve the landscaping and stain the concrete. The group also made plans to replace the weathered and cracking purple slate star in the center.
Blankenship and his niece, April Ballard, returned this year to find the condition of the star had worsened and new weeds were growing up through the old mulch. They organized a work party to re-mulch the memorial area around the memorial and replace the star with a maroon one, textured with river rocks.
Black Mountain-based Linc’s Lawn Care, owned and operated by Owen senior Lincoln Ballard, provided the mulch and some of the labor for the project.
Community members gather at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in front of Owen High School, Oct. 23, to complete a restoration project for the structure honoring the Swannanoa Valley soldiers who served, and those who were lost in the war. Photo by Fred McCormick
“Some of the people up here today were children who came out here 30 years ago to help build this, and some weren’t even born yet,” Blankenship said. “We all wanted to come out here and make this memorial something to be proud of.”
Blankenship's handmade binders holding the memories of each of the 10 fallen soldiers rested on the wall nearby as he reflected on the significance of the memorial, and the men whose names are inside.
“We don’t want these men to be forgotten. There was a time when people were proud to be Americans, and proud of that flag right there,” he said, his head motioning upward. “Some of us still are.”