On the hillside ahead on your right, you will see a white shape that does not look like anything else in this landscape — a tall, curved, sail-like wall rising off the ridge. That is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park, and I would ask you to give it your attention, because there is nothing else quite like it.
Almost every war memorial in this country was built by a government, a legislature, or a committee. This one was built by two parents.
The chapel was raised in nineteen seventy-one by Victor and Jeanne Westphall, for their son David, a Marine lieutenant killed in Vietnam. They called it the Peace and Brotherhood Chapel. They built it with no federal money, no state money, and no official recognition of any kind — more than a decade before the black granite wall went up in Washington DC.
Think about the sequence there. This hillside in New Mexico had a memorial to the Vietnam dead years before the nation's capital did.
It is a state park now — management passed to the New Mexico Department of Veterans Services in twenty seventeen — with a visitor center, exhibits, and a chapel that is open, quiet, and free.
If you have the time, take the turn. It is a short drive up from the highway and there is parking. Veterans come here from all over the country; you will often find someone sitting inside who is not a tourist.
Boone is going to tell you how it came to be built. Give it a listen before you decide whether to stop.
Photo: Billy Hathorn at en.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0