Photo tribute to father she never knew, lost in Vietnam

There are no memories. Just cracked photos, old family stories, and a silver star that Maryann Libbey-Litrenta uses to cherish her father, Army soldier Malcolm Pierce Libbey, who died in the Vietnam War.

"I never grieved," said Libbey-Litrenta, 44, sitting in a coffee shop near her home in South Philadelphia. Petite, with long blond hair, she wears her father's dog tag on a silver chain around her neck. She was 10 months old when the staff sergeant, his Army battalion's bunker under attack in Long An province, provided covering fire as his comrade operated the only remaining radio. "I missed him. I turned that into he won't be forgotten."

Libbey-Litrenta will bring a photo of her father, the last one the Army took of him in uniform, to Independence Mall on Thursday morning to be scanned in a special tribute project beginning at 11:30 a.m.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and the History Channel, in a "Call for Photos," have been trying to match every one of the 58,272 names on the Memorial Wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington - 1,520 from Pennsylvania. The plan is to use the images for a newly built education center at the wall.

At an event in Times Square on Tuesday, 110 photographs were collected. Later in the month, the call will head to Atlanta. So far, through outreach efforts with various veterans groups, the fund has secured more than 21,000 photos.

"Through these photos, we celebrate the courage and valor and honor embodied by our service members," said Lee Allen, spokesman for the fund. "It's important to put photos with the names, and stories with the photos, where generations will remember."

Libbey's name appears on Panel 27E, Row 95 of the wall. He died on Oct. 12, 1967.

Over the years, Libbey-Litrenta, a widow who works part-time at the Wells Fargo Center, has been slowly piecing together an image of who her father was. She relied on her mother, who recently passed away, her older brothers and sisters - made closer through the photo project - and her father's remaining siblings.

"My father came from absolutely nothing," she said. Born in the summer of 1930, he grew up in a one-room house in Rockland, Maine. He and his siblings made their own guitars, and he taught himself how to play flamenco music. He married young, joined the Army, and later remarried.

Libbey-Litrenta eventually posted pictures of her father on online sites such as Vietnam Wall and the Wall USA, looking for anyone who might have known him. One day a veteran reached out. He remembered her father as a tough drill instructor who kept him out of harm's way.

"To this day," Libbey-Litrenta said, "he credits his life to my father's training."

It's something she takes to heart. Her father was a leader, brave, a hero.

For them to put faces to these names "means more than they will ever know," she said. "Remembering him helped me find out who I was.

"I don't know if he lived his life thinking that this may be my last day, but he knew the responsibility. When I think of my father, it's honor and pride."