Fort Worth’s first Vietnam War monument is one step closer to becoming reality.
At an April 8 meeting, City Council unanimously approved giving up to $200,000 to a grassroots initiative seeking to build a monument for Tarrant County Vietnam veterans in the western portion of Veterans Memorial Park, located at 4120 Camp Bowie Blvd.
The dollars will come from the city’s community partnerships fund and match fundraising efforts from the Tarrant County Vietnam Memorial Foundation, a group of Vietnam-era veterans who’ve spent over 10 years trying to establish the monument.
Members officially proposed the project to the city’s park and recreation department in 2020 and, since then, they’ve fundraised about $55,000 of the project’s estimated $350,000 price tag.
With the city’s funding match, the amount of funds members need to raise is almost halved, said foundation President Jim Hodgson.
“We’ve got anywhere from $100,000 to $150,000 left, but that’s a lot better than $300,000,” said Hodgson, who served as a Marine in the 1970s.
The foundation will now start advocating for more high-dollar donations from military-industrial names like Lockheed Martin and Bell Flight, as well as contracting third parties to do geological and engineering studies for the project.
The monument’s central aim is to give local Vietnam veterans the “welcome home” they never received, not to memorialize the war itself.
That mission is personal to Hodgson and other members of the foundation, who, upon returning from Vietnam, were spat on and hated for serving in the controversial war.
“Vietnam, to a lot of people, is just a little section in your history book. To me, it was part of my life,” said Bill Burgan, a veteran who signed up to speak at the City Council meeting in support of the monument. “I did not serve in Vietnam, but I served with a lot of men who served in Vietnam. Our attitude about the war was a little mixed until I attended that first funeral. That first flag-draped coffin changed my attitude really quick.”
The monument will feature a bronze tree surrounded by granite engraved with the names of the fallen, grouped by year of death. The memorial will include a base of brick pavers featuring the names of donors, as well as granite benches that represent the five branches of the military.
Hodgson described the monument as a “living” one because there also will be room on the monument for the names of victims of the war who are still living including those who experienced life-altering physical or mental injuries from their war experiences.
In addition to honoring the 223 Tarrant County service members who never came home from deployment, the monument will memorialize approximately 35 more Vietnam veterans whose deaths since the war are attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder, diseases attributable to their service or exposure to Agent Orange, a deadly Vietnam-era herbicide many service members were unknowingly exposed to.
“It’s important to our community to show not just the veterans that we respect and honor those that have died but also to show the families, the Gold Star families,” said Rick Irving, a veteran who spoke at the meeting. “For the (hundreds) of service people killed in Vietnam from Tarrant County, there’s thousands of Gold Star family members still in our community.”
After fundraising over the summer and fall, construction on the project is expected to last between March and September 2026. A dedication is planned for Veterans Day that year.
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
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