re: Interesting (or sad) facts about the Vietnam Memorial Wall

There was a man in my church parish who always had a smile on his face and corny joke for the kids. One year, the parish fair was over April 1st weekend. I was about 11 or 12 and I saw the man and his wife at the fair. I ran over and said hello, then asked what good April Fools jokes he'd played. He told me, "I don't celebrate April Fool's Day." Since this was the kind of thing that seemed to be right in his wheelhouse, and I was too young and dumb, to recognize the look on he and his wife's faces, I kept pressing him, sure there would be an eventual punchline. He finally said, "It was April 1st when we got the telegram telling us our only son had been killed in Vietnam." His wife immediately started crying. It was fricking awful. It makes me sad just thinking about it 40 something years later.