Vietnam veteran designs unique memorial

Proposed Belding Vietnam War memorial ‘unlike anything you’ve ever seen’
Greenville Daily News
By Cory Smith
August 08, 2014

Denny Craycraft’s vision for a Vietnam War memorial includes a total of 15 separate monuments to honor all Vietnam War veterans who died from Michigan, as well as the 12 soldiers who died from Belding and Greenville. — Daily News/Cory Smith

BELDING — Denny Craycraft can still hear the mortar blasts, the rapid fire of gunshots, and the screams of his fellow soldiers — all the horrors of war that encompassed him on a daily basis while fighting in Vietnam nearly half a century ago.

Craycraft, now a chimney sweep who operates his own business in Eureka Township with his son, served two tours of duty half a world away, but the memories still haunt him.

“I have never been able to figure out how I got back from Vietnam, especially with all the close brushes I had with death,” Craycraft said. “Did I recover? Mentally? No. Physically? Yes, I suppose.”

From 1967 to 1969, Craycraft battled overseas in a war that saw 2,654 Michigan veterans lose their lives. He nearly was one of them.

For more than three years Craycraft has campaigned for several war memorials in Belding.

His efforts, along with those of the Belding Freedom Wall Committee, have led to monuments honoring veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and, soon to be unveiled, World War I with individual monuments at Belding Veterans Park,which was established in 2012.

At Tuesday evening’s Belding City Council meeting, Craycraft unveiled his next project. He showcased a monument that will likely double in cost of anything that has been placed at the park to date, a Vietnam War monument that will not only honor local veterans from Greenville and Belding, but all 2,654 Michigan veterans who lost their lives in the war.

Included in Craycraft’s designs are a large wall, standing 6 feet in height, designed as two large wings approximately 20 feet in width, which would include the name of every Michigan veteran killed in the war.
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