Lavonia Vietnam Vet Honored at Memorial Wall in Washington Today

Price, Stewart Photo1Today is Flag Day and in Washington, DC, a Lavonia Vietnam Veteran is one of three veterans from Georgia who will be honored for their service today in a special ceremony at the Vietnam Veteran Wall.

The “In Memory Ceremony” honors 121 veterans from across the country who served in Vietnam.

“We do the ceremony on Flag Day because we feel like those who are being honored in the ceremony have suffered far longer than those who passed away during the war,” Vietnam Veteran Memorial Fund spokesperson Allyson Shaw said. “They have had physical and psychological wounds from the war that they’ve suffered with for years. So we feel like Flag Day is a very appropriate time to do this.”

Stewart Chester Price was a native of Lavonia.

Price was a Specialist in the U.S. Army serving from August of 1969 to August of 1971 and was in Vietnam from January of 1970 to December of 1970.

“It’s a priviledge and honor for him to be remembered for serving his country like he did and sacrificing like he did all those years we had together here at home, said his widow Wanda Price.

Wanda Price was unable to attend the ceremony today in Washington.  She said even though her husband of 40 years returned home from the war, he brought back scars, both physical and emotional;  scars that stayed with him the rest of his life.

“Sometimes we’d have nightmares. He had difficulty sometimes with the things that happened over there,” she said. “He didn’t talk much about what he saw over there.”

Price died in 2010 from the effects of being exposed to Agent Orange while in Vietnam.

“He was diagnosed with Agent Orange at the VA hospital in Atlanta,” Wanda Price said.

Agent Orange is the nickname for the highly toxic herbicide, Dioxin, which was used during the war to defoliate jungles.

Those exposed to the chemical suffered the effects for many years afterwards, with various symptoms and illnesses, such as liver failure, cancer, personality disorders, and a host of gastrointestinal and neurological disorders.

Shaw said today, Price’s name along with the names of the other 120 veterans being honored will be read allowed during the ceremony.

“We will have all of the family line up with photos with tributes to their family members and they will say their names,” Shaw said. “Then they will take those photos and tributes and place them at the base of the Vietnam Memorial.”

Shaw said afterward, those personal tributes will be gathered by the National Park Service and stored in an archive for future generations to view and study.

Two other Georgia Vietnam veterans will also be honored Friday.  They are Arthur Ray Martin from Jefferson, GA and Larry Hugh “Butch” Rogers from Aragon, GA.