LA Mesa Middle School To Rescue Vietnam War Memorial

LA MESA – The Vietnam War Memorial in downtown La Mesa is, in a way, a little like the war itself – left like a memory to fade in the California sunshine. Plants and grasses have died away, trees are in decline. The lights are broken and the mortar and metallic signs are more than showing their age.
On Friday May 21, much of that will begin to change. A group of eighth graders from La Mesa Middle School, spurred on by their teacher to think beyond their own needs, have identified the monument for improvements they will execute. From 9:30 to 3 p.m. that day, students will begin planting plants donated by New Way Landscaping and distributing new top soil as well as adding student-designed mosaic art work with the help of Arizona Tile.
“The students decided that veterans and troops overseas would be their target for helping,’’ their U.S. History Teacher Jennifer Schroeder said. The students collected funds from throughout the school and earlier this year sent seven boxes of treats to active duty soldiers. “At the same time they focused their energies locally with the American Legion and the Vietnam Memorial,” Schroeder said.
In fact the students did some clean up already, cutting out old trees and removing dead plants while making plans for a larger improvement project. They’ve been working under the guidance of a landscape architect, Kathleen Brand, the mother of one of the students.
The students have more ambitious plans for the site, but lack the funds at this point to add more benches and repair broken water pipes.
Still, the students will spend the day Friday doing what they can and polishing a memorial to a painful part of local and American history that played out long before they were born. However, the ages of many of the fallen memorialized on the structure’s fading plaques are not that much older than these students – a point Schroeder will undoubtedly make as the students work.