Published: May 23, 2008 11:29 pm         

‘Little Sis’ greets visitors to memorial

RAINELLE — Monica “Little Sis” Harvey is well known for giving out a hug or two to veterans, but add them all up and she says its more like “13,000” hugs.

Harvey, of Nebraska, is in Rainelle this holiday weekend and will be at the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall. For the last three years she has crisscrossed the nation with the monument. For every veteran who visits the wall, and others, Harvey is there with a heart-felt hug — only if they want one — and a heart-shaped pin that has an engraved Band-Aid in its middle.

“The pin is a Band-Aid for their heart and they can also wear it like a watch because I think it’s time that we brought our soldiers home,” Harvey said.

The traveling wall, which will be featured at the Rainelle Industrial Park through Monday, is a three-fifths scale of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. It stands six feet tall and is almost 300 feet long. The memorial wall’s Web site said it was made for a specific purpose.

“ ... to help heal and rekindle friendships and to allow people the opportunity to visit loved ones in their hometown who otherwise may not be able to make the trip to Washington,” the Web site says.

Harvey said a “supernatural” freak accident in 2001 was the driving force behind her involvement with veterans.

“I lived through a runaway horse and wagon veterans parade wreck where I was thrown head-first through a brown cloud and lived,” Harvey, who believes the brown cloud that day was God, said. “The veterans adopted me to tell my story.”

Harvey said this stop in Rainelle marks the 31st time she has visited one of the six traveling walls to hand out pins and hugs to veterans. Since 2005, Harvey estimates that more than 13,000 pins, and probably just as many hugs, have been personally given out.

“I am giving out the hugs that my World War II dad could not give me,” Harvey said. “It’s my healing heart, but the Vietnam veterans have chosen me as their little sister to reach out to other Vietnam veterans because my wreck was two weeks before Sept. 11.”

— E-mail:

cgiggenbach@register-herald.com