Mercer County Vietnam War Memorial

Mercer County Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Nov. 2020. Photo from Paul Ligeti.

Historical Overview

Mercer County Park has many amenities for recreation, immersion in nature, and more. One of them is the County's Vietnam Veterans' Memorial.

Located off South Post Road and Old Trenton Road, the memorial is designed to create a sense of seclusion. A winding concrete sidewalk snakes through a ring of evergreen trees that almost entirely encircle this park-within-a-park. Once inside, much of the outside world's noise fades away.

The park features a rectangular garden plaza centered around a bronze plaque installed Vietnam Veterans United Inc. - the community group that made this memorial possible. Past the plaza are four towering 11-foot tom.-like stone monoliths, encircled by a ring of dozens of smaller granite stones. The monoliths, for their part, feature glass enclosures with the actual medals earned by several of these service-members: the Purple Heart, the Vietnam Service Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, and the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal. Below these enclosures are brief descriptions of the medals' significances. And the dozens of smaller stones encircling the monoliths feature the names of 85 soldiers killed in combat, as well as etchings of images such as combat boots and rifles. On top of all of these stones are smaller pebbles, left there as a reminder that someone had visited and honored these soldiers.

Smaller individual soldier stones, Nov. 2024.

American flags abound throughout the park, and lighting fixtures ensure that the park remains well-illuminated, even in the dark. A bronze sculpture of a gun and pair of combat boots stands in the ring around the monoliths. At times, next to the sculpture is a wreath on a stand in honor of the fallen.

Vietnam Veterans United formed in the late 1980s from a group of that war's veterans - both combat and non-combat.[1] Its main goal was to create a County-level Vietnam War memorial - not just for those killed in action, but also whose deaths could be traced to other things such as exposure to the defoliant "Agent Orange" or post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).[2] The group spearheaded numerous fundraising events, raising about $165,000 for the memorial's construction.[3]

On September 22, 1991, a crowd of around 400 people gathered to dedicate the memorial. The event was sorrowful and emotional, as attendees remembered people with whom they grew up. Still, the ceremony was meaningfully powerful, and offered a sense of closure and healing for some of those present.[4]

All these decades later, the memorial reminds visitors of those American service-members who died in that brutal conflict.

Bronze sculpture in outer ring, Nov. 2024.

Bibliography

"Serving their country, then community." The Times. July 7, 1990.
Ibid.
"Vietnam Vets remember their fallen comrades." The Trentonian. September 23, 1991.
Ibid.