READERS' STORIES

An e-mail conversation I had with Ralph Fries about his Vietnam Memorial Unit Display at Coronado.

It is good to hear from you. This project of mine has stirred a lot of interest about the Memorial.

The patch that you are thinking or talking about belongs to the Seals for their training and Military Pentathleon games. The present location of where the PBR is being moved to the area where the 116 Monument is now. It has been a long hard grind to get where we are today for acquiring what little ground for the 3 boats. So I know that they will not give up any more ground for another boat. It took Admiral Zumwalt to get what we got now while he was still alive. It is a great idea but I don't think it will work here. The extreme red tape that I have endured getting this far has been amazing and it isn't really over with yet. We are in the midst of trying to get the cement foundation pads for the boats and monument programmed in now.

I have a web page about the Memorial. It covers every aspect of the project.
It is http://www.vietnamunitmemorialmon.org 
You can attach my web page to your link. I would appreciate that very much. What I need now is financial support. I still have a long ways to go till I have sufficient funds to start the major construction and manufacture of plaques.

Thanks for contacting me,
Ralph J. Fries
Coordinator USN/USCG Vietnam Unit Memorial Monument/Boat Display Project

Recently I was in San Diego when the "Refurbishing the past" article was run in the San Diego Union. That was a great article, as I knew of that PCF at Bangor, Wa.  I would like to get some more information on the Memorial Park that you are planning and propose an addition.

I am a Vietnam Veteran, however my tour was done on DD's, but we interacted with the PTF's in DaNang. As a result of that connection please visit www.ptfnasty.com . From a simple little web page, we have grown to be a huge page chocked full of PTF information provided mostly by Vets that served aboard them. Most of these guys serve under BSU-1, but not with the PCFs. They are eager to get a PTF on the West Coast to participate with. We have them located, there is a price, but where to put one is the question.

It seems that if there was the room in your park, (right, another 80' X 24' patch ) that may be the perfect place to park one for static display. It would be somewhat "All in the Family," so to speak being there. Since they are wooden boats, some kind of shelter would be needed to keep the weather damage to a minimum. As you can see from the pages, I have visited most of the available boats as a tourist or potential buyer.

So, I am not trying to horn in on your project, just consider that this may enhance it, or widen the scope of the project for more exposure.

Have you done anything about a web site for your project? Certainly we could add on to our site, or create one with you to get the appeal on the web.

As I have said to most of the other guys, there is no personal monetary gain from my participation. It's the love of the boats. After reading some of the great e-mails from the guys that served on them, I couldn't let this website drop.

Let me know what you think.
Dan Withers