It had already been an overwhelming day, physically, when a stranger walked up to me at Charter Oak Park in Manchester, Conn., and turned it into an overwhelming day emotionally as well.

My husband, Peter, and I were among the 50 or so volunteers who had signed up to help install “The Wall That Heals,” a three-quarter-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that had already traveled to 21 other communities this year by the time it came to Manchester on Sept. 18. We barely had the aluminum frame in place when a stranger approached me, holding what looked like a biker vest.

The man’s name was Doug Bates. He said he was in the city landfill several years ago and on a pile of trash was a large, brown leather vest festooned on both sides with a mixture of military =-type patches, embroidered names and even what he thought might be service medals. He couldn’t believe someone had thrown it away. He had kept it at home ever since, until he read that the mobile replica of the Wall was coming to Manchester.

I had been told during training that morning that it’s not uncommon for visitors to leave behind personal items such as photos and letters, but those people usually had a personal relationship with one of the fallen heroes inscribed on the Wall. In Doug’s case, he was a Good Samaritan rescuing a sacred piece of history from an undignified end.

At home, Peter framed my new project perfectly: “This vest has a story to tell. Before there was a Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, there were vests, and these guys used the vests as visual ways to commemorate and remember their friends who had fallen in combat.”

If you think of it like putting a puzzle together, finding the corner pieces was easy. In large red letters on the back of the vest were the words IN MEMORY OF. Next was a patch the size of a dinner plate identifying the unit Company H, 75th infantry, Ranger Air Borne Long Range Patrol. And then, VIETNAM. The inner pieces were seven tightly packed rows of 36 names, split up by the years these soldiers had lost their lives.

Back in Washington, site manager Tim Tetz was able to confirm that “L Kirk” was actually Lafayette Kirk, who served in Company H of the 75th Ranger Regiment. After an online search, I discovered that Kirk died in March 2024 in Michigan, where he is buried. The vest is a story about a man who lived up to the code of duty, honor, country.