The Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall will return to Putnam County next month.
Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter said the county applied to host the traveling exhibit again after setting a state record for visitors during a previous 2018 appearance.
“We always want to show as much honor as we can to our veterans, especially our Vietnam veterans,” Porter said, “They came back from war to not a pleasant welcome and we’ve always tried to make up for that.”
Porter said the exhibit will be accessible to the general public 24 hours a day throughout its stay in Cookeville. Porter said the schedule includes an opening ceremony on the morning of October 22nd and a dinner for Vietnam veterans on Thursday night.
“One thing that we’ve noticed that we thought was special, a lot of those Vietnam veterans, they won’t go during the day to see it, they’ll be out there at two or three o’clock in the morning when there’s nobody else there so they can spend some quiet time with it, and we think it’s a special thing to be able to get it and we think our community will really show out and show up to see it again,” Porter said.
The national display will be housed here October 22-October 25 at the new fairgrounds on Tennessee Avenue. The new fairgrounds facility features a large midway area designed to accommodate the wall along with necessary amenities. Porter said the site provides handicap parking and a large lot capable of handling hundreds of visitors at any given time.
“It takes a lot of planning, we’ve been working on this for a year and we got all of our county departments along with some of our sponsors and we have a lot of volunteers that will be involved in this,” Porter said. “There will be at least two people around the clock helping people out there at the wall so that everybody has a good experience.”
Local organizers are involving younger residents through groups such as the Junior ROTC and Tennessee Tech athletics to help them understand the history of the Vietnam War. Porter said the county website will host a complete schedule of events.
“We’ll have an aerial view showing them where the wall will be compared to where the parking and everything else is and we want to make sure that they have a good experience. So we’ll have as much information up as we can,” Porter said.
Residents interested in assisting with the event can find a volunteer sign-up link on the official Putnam County website.
