When the Vietnam Veterans Peace and Brotherhood Chapel was dedicated above the Moreno Valley in 1971, it stood nearly alone on its hill — a soaring white chapel built by Dr. Victor and Jeanne Westphall to honor their son David and the Marines lost with him. Did you know that chapel was only the beginning? Over the next half century the memorial grew, piece by piece, into one of the most complete places of healing for Vietnam veterans anywhere in the country, and one of its most beloved additions arrived by way of a battlefield in the Mekong Delta.
Click to see more photos of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial — the chapel, the gardens, and the Huey on the hill
The helicopter on display at the memorial is a Huey known as Viking Surprise, built in 1964 and one of the first smokeships used in Vietnam — aircraft fitted to lay down smoke to shield other helicopters. On March 26, 1967, during a rescue mission, it was so badly damaged — 135 bullet holes — that it was shipped home to Corpus Christi, Texas, for rebuilding. Remarkably, that was not the end of its service: the Huey returned to Vietnam for a second tour, later served with the New Mexico National Guard, and in 1999 the Guard donated it to the memorial at Angel Fire, where it still keeps watch over the valley.
The grounds grew around it. In 1982 the Disabled American Veterans assumed ownership of the memorial and bought 25 additional acres so a visitor center and museum could be added. Construction began in 1985, and the Westphall Visitor Center was dedicated in May 1986. Inside its 6,000 square feet, visitors find banners and photographs sent in by the units that served in Vietnam, a room honoring those killed or missing in action, a small statue of clenched hands bound together for prisoners of war, and the 86-minute documentary Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. Outside stand Doug Scott's statue of a soldier writing a letter home, rifle slung over his shoulder, and a copy of Glenna Goodacre's Vietnam Women's Memorial.
Stewardship of the hill changed hands as the memorial's reach grew. Ownership passed to the David Westphall Veterans Foundation in 1998. Victor Westphall died in 2003 and Jeanne the following year, and the two are interred together on the grounds they built. New Mexico State Parks took over management in 2004, and on Veterans Day in 2005 the site officially became the Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park — New Mexico's 33rd state park. In July 2017 it was transferred to the New Mexico Department of Veterans Services, whose charge is to keep it not as an ordinary park, but as a solemn memorial.
That is the quiet miracle of this hill above Angel Fire. A family's grief first raised a chapel; veterans, volunteers, and the state then gathered around it a museum, a garden, a walkway of memorial bricks, and a battle-scarred Huey that came home when so many did not. Stand beside Viking Surprise today, look out over the Moreno Valley David Westphall loved, and you can feel why more than 50,000 people a year still make the drive up the hill — to remember, and to heal.