Fallen Heroes - Faces With Names Records

In 2009, Dr. Ricardo Romo decided to join the national project started by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to find pictures of every casualty of the Vietnam War. As an alumni of Fox Tech High School, a San Antonio area High School, Dr. Romo was unable to find a complete list of the Fox Tech High School students that were killed in action during the Vietnam War. Thus, Dr. Romo began to work on organizing a volunteer group that would commit to researching and collecting photos of the 362 Vietnam War KIA's from San Antonio and Bexar County. This launched UTSA's Institute of Texan Cultures Faces with Names Project. With a team established, support was shown from state politicians and the community through a series of events, such as Veteran's Day Memorial events and project exhibitions. By 2012, the volunteer team included Charlie Calderon, JR Garza, Rosalinda Berlanga, Bea Zepeda, Sylvia Spradlin, Mark Marquez, among many other volunteers and community leaders that lent their time to the project. By 2013, a list had been created of all 362 casualties.

The collection also includes material obtained by Charlie Calderon, as they were in the process of developing Fallen Heroes - Faces with Names Project. The David F. Merrell's Casualties of the Vietnam War from San Antonio Assignment Materials were a welcome addition of early work done to locate the names and information of the casualties of the war in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. These materials, collected between 1991-2003 offer an example of earlier work done to preserve the memory of those lost to the war, and the family and friends who remembered them. Guided by David F. Merrell, students divided in groups were to complete an extensive English project to collect information on individual soldiers from the San Antonio area. Materials they accessed were varied, but included newspaper clippings, online sources, and transcriptions of short interviews they conducted with family and friends of soldiers. Students would work on this assignment, with the final goal of writing a detailed biography of the soldiers. These materials were given to Dr. Ricardo Romo and his team by Mr. Merrell's widow when work on the Fallen Heroes - Faces with Names Project was taking place.

Source: Project Documentation from the collection.