THE WALL OF FACES

Some may think you are forgotten
Though on earth you are no more
But in our memory you are with us
As you always were before….

Willis Newton Moore's tells your story in an interview with the Atlanta Veteran's History Project. RIP LT. Parsons and Mr. Moore.

Dear Lt James Parsons, Thank you for your service as a Field Artillery Officer. Your 76th birthday was this month, happy birthday. Saying thank you isn't enough, but it is from the heart. It is Holy Week and Passover. Time passes quickly. Please watch over America, it stills needs your strength, courage and faithfulness, especially now. Rest in peace with the angels.

December 1966, home for Christmas, on leave from U.S. Army basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO, I was disembarking from the Greyhound bus, ironically, at the north side of Parson's drug store. Crossing Main street, in front of Parson's drug store, was 2nd Lt. James (Jim to us) Parson, also home on Christmas leave from the Marine Corp. He was happy as a lark and had the biggest smile. We both spoke a bit about the military, shook hands and then went to be with our families for a few days before our leave time expired.. Of course, I never saw Jim again. It was a great shock to me and a tremendous shock to the small town of Warsaw. He was a fine man. He had a fine, greatly respected family who lost so much the day 1st Lt. Parson was killed in RVN. He will be forever remembered and honored by the town of Warsaw, MO., and all who had the great honor to know him.

You took me to the picture shows on Saturday afternoon when I was a very little girl staying with my grandmother Bessie who worked for your dad in his pharmacy in Warsaw, Missouri. I have a picture taken with you on your bicycle in front of my grandmother's house. You would be 75 years old now. When you died, I was 12. You became a synecdoche of the losses of Vietnam, the reason to oppose thankless wars and to learn more about history in order to demand responsible government from our state and national representatives. You didn't live long enough to talk to me about all those places that I visited, first in imagination and then in reality, but I carried your memory with me when I travelled. When I visited the Wall (the Vietnam War memorial in Washington), I found your name and talked about doing so when I lectured on memory and memorial monuments to my students at Harvard after I became an historian of France. I carry you with me even still today as I think about Warsaw, Missouri where your father and my grandmother worked together in that little drugstore that had once belonged to my father's uncle E.T. and his wife Maude (nee Bagby). I wish you had lived to see this world of the twenty-first century even if the current crisis jeopardizes so many human connections. I woke up thinking of Warsaw today, in this 7th week of lockdown. I am writing this because your sacrifice reminds me of why it is important to fight for equality and human rights.