Vietnam Memorial Founder Dies

By Joseph Ditzler Of the Journal

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

A man revered nationwide by veterans of the Vietnam War for embracing them, when few in a divided nation would, died Tuesday at his home in Angel Fire. Victor Westphall, 89, who created the first nationally known Vietnam War memorial out of the proceeds from his dead son’s life insurance policy, was found dead, apparently of natural causes, at 9 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Colfax County Sheriff’s Department.

The Vietnam Veterans National Memorial along U.S. 64 north of Angel Fire began as a chapel erected by Westphall in memory of his son, Marine Lt. Victor David Westphall, who died May 22, 1968, in an ambush in Vietnam. The elder Westphall took the $30,000 life insurance payment from his son’s death and within months started building the chapel, a soaring white vision of promise on a hill with a sweeping vista of the Moreno Valley. It became a place where veterans came to heal, said many who remembered Westphall on the day of his passing.

“He was a real hero to us Vietnam veterans in that he had the guts, when the rest of the country was looking at Vietnam as a very unpopular war, he was looking at a way of not recognizing the war but the heroes who died in that war,” said Gus Cordova of Taos, who served as a U.S. Army medic in Vietnam in 1970.

“It was an inspiration and a healing place to a lot of guys,” said Bob Ulibarri of Albuquerque, president of the New Mexico Council of the Vietnam Veterans of America. “He brought a lot of guys back to civilization.”

A native of Hebron, Wis., Westphall, a U.S. Navy veteran, earned a bachelor’s degree in art education from Milwaukee Teacher’s College and a doctorate in history in 1956 from the University of New Mexico, where he later taught. By the mid-1950’s he was already successful in the homebuilding business and with his wife, Jeanne, was raising two sons, Victor David and Douglas. He once remarked that history was his avocation and building his vocation; “building is more profitable.” Nonetheless, he was recognized for his knowledge of New Mexico history.

At Milwaukee, he coached track, boxed, wrestled and played football. As a bicyclist, he swept the field at age 74 at the 1987 World Senior Olympics. But those he knew him remembered him first as a spiritual man.

“In Vietnam you had what they called a stand down,” said John Garcia, secretary of the New Mexico Veterans Service Commission and a 1969-70 Vietnam veteran. Stand downs allowed combat troops to rest and refit, physically and mentally. Westphall did something like that for veterans, many of them teenagers, returning home from military service to apathy or hatred. “Dr. Westphall created something spiritual in the healing process for Vietnam veterans,” said Garcia. “Dr. Westphall gave us the platform to tell our stories and heal ourselves. It's a great legacy.”

Westphall turned over the memorial, dedicated as the Vietnam Veterans Peace and Brotherhood Chapel, to the Disabled American Veterans in 1982. In 1993, Westphall prevailed over DAV in a legal dispute over his salary, living arrangements at the site and management of the memorial. Five years later, citing financial reasons, DAV returned the memorial to Westphall.

Veterans remark consistently on the serenity they find inside the 50-foot-high chapel and on the hill outside. “Guys without a spiritual life one way or another find themselves in that chapel praying, thinking of friends, family, buddies they lost in Vietnam,” said Mark Rittermeyer of Lakeland, Fla. A self-described chaplain to veterans and bikers, he last visited the memorial on the 15th Run for the Wall, a 12-day coast-to-coast odyssey by biker vets from Ontario, Calif., to Washington, D.C., ending Memorial Day. The memorial is a regular stop on the annual trek.

Ulibarri said visits to the chapel made a difference in his life at a time when the experience of combat had left him troubled and restless, even years later. “A lot of guys got into a lot of drinking; I know I got into it, thinking it would ease the pain,” he recalled. At the chapel, and in meeting Westphall, he found a place in which to reflect, and a man who treated him like an old friend. “It made me realize I wasn’t the only one having the problem. A peacefulness came over me,” he said. “A feeling comes over you that puts you at ease ... and brings your heart to a realization.”

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