If a picture is worth a thousand words, then there are volumes of stories to be told about the 58,300 American soldiers who died in the Vietnam War.
And Janna Hoehn has made it her mission to find pictures of each every single one, including those of 47 who grew up in the mid-Peninsula.
"We could use an army of Jannas," said Lee Allen, a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund in Washington, D.C., which is trying to put a face to every name etched on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. "We're getting more and more of these pictures of those casualties who are in danger of being forgotten by history."
The Wall of Faces, as the project is known, is being collected on an online website. It will also be displayed in a planned Education Center at The Wall that the nonprofit hopes to open in a few years adjacent to the black granite tribute.
It was during her first trip to the Memorial Wall about five years ago that Hoehn decided to learn more about the lives lost during the Vietnam War. Although she did not know anyone personally who had died, the controversial war was waged during her high school years in Southern California.
Hoehn picked the name of Gregory John Crossman and did a pencil rubbing of the engraving. With that, her curiosity was piqued. When she returned home in Maui, she tried to find Crossman's family so she could send them the memento from the Memorial Wall.
Although she never found any of Crossman's relatives, a helpful cousin found a college photo of the fallen Army sergeant. A few years later, when Hoehn read that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was looking for photos of Vietnam's fallen soldiers, she submitted Crossman's picture. And then she set out to find more faces.
"They deserve to be remembered," Hoehn said during a phone interview. "The Vietnam veterans were not treated in the same way our veterans are treated now when they come back from the war. It has always bothered me. I feel like this new Education Center is righting a wrong."
The Memorial Fund currently has pictures of about 34,000 veterans of the 58,300 who died, Allen said.
Hoehn said she now is focused on securing the images of California veterans and has asked for help from readers of The Daily News. She has provided the names of 47 veterans who had lived in the mid-Peninsula cities the Bay Area News Group serves. The email address to send pictures to isneverforgotten2014@gmail.com. If a veteran's name is not on the list, she said that means the organization already has a picture.
"I get people who email me and say, 'You forgot my brother,' and I know they're distressed," Hoehn said.
Retired police officer David Morrill said there's value in looking into the eyes of a veteran killed in service. When he was a teenager living in San Carlos, his father David Morrill and uncle Merwin Morrill both died in Vietnam. Pictures of the brothers are both on the Wall of Faces website.
"All of those people on the Wall, they're somebody's son or daughter, father or mother, aunt or uncle," said Morrill, who now lives in Alabama. "If you're forced to look at a picture of somebody, other than a name, that tells you these are real people."
Email Bonnie Eslinger at beslinger@dailynewsgroup.com; follow her at twitter.com/bonnieeslinger.