Face Number 50,000

BY LOANA HOYLMAN

The 50,000th photo has been found for the Wall of Faces, which will be part of the proposed Educational Center near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Army veteran Johnny Byard found the photograph of PFC Bobby Joe Quinn, from Morristown, Tenn., who died in Vietnam in 1967 from a mine explosion while he was helping with a road-clearing project.

Finding Quinn’s photo was a bit serendipitous. Byard was reading a local paper thathad a photo of his father, a World War II veteran. Right there, next to his own father’s photo, was one of Bobby Quinn, a name Byard recognized from a list of missing photos.

Byard sent the photo to John Thomstatter with whom he works on the Wall of Faces project. Thomstatter sent Quinn’s photo on to project headquarters, not knowing at the time that this photo marks number 50,000 of the 58,270 Americans listed on The Wall.

The photo was added to the archive on the 50th anniversary of Quinn’s death. Byard and Thomstatter are Search Team Members of The Villages, Florida, Chapter 1036. The men work together to find photos to add to the Wall of Faces. They discover about one a day. They rely on genealogy groups, libraries, the Internet, and historical groups.

“The Wall of Faces project has changed our image of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to more than just a list of the 58,000 soldiers who died in Vietnam,” Thomstatter said, “The photos are vivid, real images of their sacrifices, lives, and heroic stories.”