When Walt Morgan was flown to Washington, D.C., this year on an honor flight for veterans, he visited all the big memorials — from Lincoln to World War II.
He made sure he spent time at the Vietnam War Memorial, visiting with the memory of those killed during the war in which he served. He touched the engraved names of Edward Wells (a 1964 Tenino graduate and his wife’s nephew) and David S. Price of Centralia, whose remains were recently repatriated after being identified in Laos. In that case, Morgan saw how the plus sign next to Price’s name (indicating someone missing in action whose body was never recovered) had just been carefully reworked by a skilled stone craftsman just the day before into the traditional diamond that marks fallen American fighters who had returned home.
It all meant a great deal to him. But the memorial that the 83-year-old found most moving was at the Pentagon to the victims of 9/11.
As we prepare to mark 24 years (!) since the Sept. 11 attacks, it was fascinating to catch up with Morgan during a recent afternoon visit.
I’ll admit, I didn’t know much about the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial. Morgan described a memorial designed with thought and care. Each person killed when terrorists flew a hijacked jet into the Pentagon is honored with their name on a bench. If the person was in the Pentagon, the bench is oriented so you can see the Pentagon as you read their name. If the person was in the airplane, the bench is pointing so you see the sky as you read their name.
The benches and their reflecting pools are organized by the birth years of each victim. The youngest, age 3, and the oldest, a 71-year-old (who was also a Naval veteran) were both on the plane. The height of a perimeter along the memorial subtly changes to reflect the ages of the victims.
“This really affected me,” Morgan said. “I lived through Vietnam. They was fighting World War II when I was born. Korea was over. My war was Vietnam. So I lived through that one and all. But to go back there and, being alive on 9/11, okay, now this was where I was at, doing this, when this happened. There are certain things in a person’s life that stand out.”
Morgan, who still grows an active garden at the home he and his wife share near Centralia High School, grew up along Pleasant Valley Road west of Napavine. A retired truck driver, he’s as Lewis County as they come, once living in an old Weyerhaeuser bunk house relocated after the company’s logging camp shut down.
