Local veterans join national campaign to tell stories of Vietnam

Local veterans join national campaign to tell stories of Vietnam War's fallen
By Mike Baird
Posted March 18, 2010 at 4:23 p.m.

CORPUS CHRISTI — Local veterans have joined a national campaign to personalize our Vietnam War dead.

One is a former Miller High School drum major who watched Hurricane Beulah’s approach in September 1967 as he left for Vietnam. Army Cpl. Robert Ochoa was concerned about his parents who were patching their roof on Koepke Street, but they made it through the storm.

Two months later they learned during Thanksgiving dinner that their son was killed from a hand grenade blast Nov. 21.

Juan Saenz, 68, a surviving Vietnam veteran who was a neighbor of the family, carried Ochoa’s photo Thursday in a ceremony at Nueces County Courthouse announcing the national campaign to build The Education Center at The Wall. It’s a planned two-story underground adjunct to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The centerpiece will be a Wall of Faces with images of the more than 58,000 fallen alongside media footage and oral histories from loved ones.

Delia C. Alaniz, 81, of Corpus Christi already has provided photos and a letter from her son. Marine Pfc. Paul Alaniz Jr. was shot in the head on Mother’s Day, May 12, 1968, by a sniper in Quang Tri, Vietnam, she said.

“Paul was only in Vietnam eight days,” Alaniz said Thursday while pressing her hand against his photo. “I want everyone to remember my hero, my son.” She keeps her cell phone ring tone set with the sound of a saxophone, which he loved to play.
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Local veterans join national campaign to tell stories of Vietnam