Vietnam Veterans Memorial

By the autumn of 2005, the white chapel on the hill above Angel Fire was already thirty-four years old, and thousands of visitors a year were finding their way up U.S. Highway 64 to sit in its quiet. Then, on Veterans Day 2005, the memorial entered a new chapter. The site became Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park, New Mexico's thirty-third state park, and the only state park in the United States dedicated solely to Vietnam veterans.

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.

The most famous memorial in America now has a counterpart in the Moreno Valley. Just north of the Peace and Brotherhood Chapel at Angel Fire stands a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall — 250 feet of black granite carrying 58,318 names.

On a hill above Angel Fire, a white chapel rises out of the grass like a pair of wings. It is one of the most moving sights in the Moreno Valley, and it began with a family's grief.

Marine First Lieutenant Victor David Westphall III was killed in action near Con Thien, Vietnam, on May 22, 1968. Back home in New Mexico, his parents, Victor and Jeanne Westphall, decided to turn their loss into a place of peace. Using the money from their son's life insurance policy, they began building a chapel on the hill above the valley that same summer.