Maui woman helps find photos of fallen Vietnam soldiers

Six years ago, Maui resident Janna Hoehn agreed to help gather photographs of Valley Isle soldiers who died in Vietnam — honoring them as part of a virtual “Wall of Faces” on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund website.

Once she finished the Maui project, she kept going in an effort to help find all of the 58,315 photographs of the fallen.

Hoehn and dozens of other volunteers nationwide have completed the vast majority of searches and are now down to finding some 5,940 photographs in the Faces Never Forgotten project.

“We’re almost there,” said Hoehn, a Maui florist. “It has been the most rewarding experience of my life.”

The availability of information on the internet has accelerated search efforts, enabling volunteers to find obituaries and hometowns, then contact relatives or high schools with yearbooks to secure a photograph.

“I don’t know what I’d do without the internet,” Hoehn said.

Going state by state, she said, the volunteers are close to completing Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana, Arizona and Texas.

She said she’s just begun Kentucky.

But not all the searches are easy.

Hoehn said the soldiers sometimes enlisted in a state other than their home state, and relatives move to other areas, making the search difficult.

She’s hoping that as in the past, news articles about the Faces Never Forgotten project will help to provide a surge in people submitting photographs of dead or missing American soldiers who fought in Vietnam.

Hoehn recalled visiting the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., about six years ago and being overwhelmed emotionally by viewing the names of 58,315 American soldiers, missing and killed.

But she couldn’t help feeling that there was a connection missing.

She randomly did a wall rubbing of MIA Gregory Crossman’s name, then later found a photograph of him on the internet and kept it.

Then about six years ago she saw a television broadcast about the Faces Never Forgotten project and sent the photograph of Crossman to project founder Jan C. Scruggs.

Scruggs responded about a week later, asking whether Hoehn might be willing to locate photographs of Maui Vietnam veterans.

Hoehn agreed and went through the Maui telephone book, high school yearbooks, and microfiche at the Kahului library, along with securing publicity from newspapers in her search.

She finished gathering 42 photos of Maui County soldier in six months, then worked with Oahu resident Billie Gabriel to complete the whole state. She said Gabriel’s brother James, the first fallen of Hawaiian descent, was killed in the Vietnam conflict in 1962.

Hoehn held two fundraising events and made a display at Walmart and Safeway of the Maui soldiers killed or missing to raise funds for the Vietnam Memorial Veterans Memorial Education Center.

Some — friends of the fallen soldiers — wept upon seeing the display. “Putting a face to a name changes the whole dynamics of the Vietnam Wall,” she said.

“It makes that person real — someone’s father, son, brother, uncle, cousin, best friend — someone whom is still missed every day by his or her family.”

To find out whether a photograph of someone who died in Vietnam might be needed, contact her at neverforgotten2014@gmail.com. The website is vvmf.org/thewall.