No matter where he and Bonnie are headed, they can’t pass Exit 100 without turning in, even when there’s no Memorial Day program at North Carolina’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

And when there is, like there was Saturday a week ago, well, it’s a foregone conclusion.

They’re there.

“They hold it a week early so people can go to it and still go to the memorial services in their own communities, like the one here at the National Cemetery,” he says.

And they never doubted they’d be there, especially this year, when the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon has focused so much attention on Vietnam.

Not that Wayne needs a quarter century anniversary to remind him of Vietnam or the war.

“Our daughter’s at Chapel Hill,” he says, “and we go to see her about once a month. And we always stop at the Wall. Even if we don’t get out, we stop and look.”

But usually they do get out and get close enough to read the names they know sandblasted into the special bricks in memory of those who didn’t come back from Vietnam. And the names of those they didn’t know.

“There’s Richard Propst,” Wayne says, his eyes knowing exactly where to go. “I went to school with him. And with Rick Lowder. They were in the same unit. Rick Propst wrote home that he saw Rick Lowder get killed, and before the letter got home, he had been killed himself — on his 20th birthday. He had only been there three weeks.”

He went to school with Herman Sturm, too. His name’s there.

But it wasn’t on the list of those from Rowan County on the Vietnam Wall in Washington and that’s what pushed Wayne Hinson into righting that wrong.

He had to find out about him. And he wanted to visit his grave.

So he went to Rowan Public Library, but the library had no list. Nor did the county. Death certificates for soldiers who died in Vietnam aren’t registered in Rowan.

So he had no way of finding out where they were buried except by contacting relatives, and he hesitated about doing that.

Maybe the National Cemetery ...

He found one there — Rick Propst. But only one, so he and Bonnie and their children, Suzanne and Gary, decided to look at West Lawn Cemetery between China Grove and Landis — and they found Rick Lowder’s grave.

Birth of a project

Cemetery folks suggested he try funeral homes, and he soon realized a project had been born — after he found out where Herman Sturm was. That took calling his mother.

He was reluctant.

But she’d be pleased that someone was concerned, Bonnie told him, and she was.

And that was the encouragement he needed.

He needed to get all their names and the names of the places where they were buried so anyone else who wanted to visit a grave could know where to go. In no time, he had a list and presented a copy to the Post and the Rowan Public Library.

But he knew it might not be complete because more names have been added since he put the first list together.

For example, the Post first reported that Pfc. Robert M. Brown Jr. of the U.S. Marine Corps was the first serviceman from Rowan County killed in Vietnam. He died on Dec. 12, 1965.

He was born in Cleveland in Rowan County but was living in Baltimore, Md., when he entered service. The note about his death appeared in Isabelle Blackman’s Negro News and Activities column in The Post.

Hinson had heard of Holman but never thought to check the Negro News column. So, until this month, Hinson had never added Holman’s name to his list.

So Wayne and Bonnie keep their eyes open and follow up on leads.

And visit the Wall in Davidson County.

“This isn’t as visible as the Wall in D.C.,” Bonnie says, “but if you’re here awhile, you see the people come.”

On this day, a man leaves as they arrive. A few minutes later a couple comes, walking slowly around the path outlined by a high protecting bank and crepe myrtle trees and benches that invite you to pause. To let a memory play itself out again. Maybe to pray.

And as they leave another man comes in to the big grassy area that can hold a crowd but feels like a warm and private place and walks slowly the length of the high brick wall, pausing here, then a little further on, and further still, reading names.

North Carolina’s Wall was dedicated to the 216,000 North Carolinians who served in Vietnam and more than 1,600 who were killed or missing in that war.

“But there are 1,616 names up there now,” Wayne says. “They’ve added a few extra ones.”

He feels a bond with all of them and all the others who, like himself, went to Vietnam and came home again.

Though he thinks of himself as a pretty shy guy, he can talk to anyone who was in Vietnam.

“It doesn’t matter what unit they were in,” he says. Or what they did then or what they’re doing now. If they were there, he feels that bond.

“If you weren’t going to college when you graduated from high school,” he says, “you knew you were going to the military, so I enlisted in December of ’67 on delayed entry and entered in April of 1968.”

Bond never changed

By August, he was in Saigon with the 716th Military Police Battalion.

“I had thought about going into law enforcement,” he says, so he made a special effort to get into the Military Police.

“But once I had three years in service, I decided against it. Over there whenever you were talking to someone, when you were going to apprehend someone, they had a weapon on them. It made you a little cautious ... ”

But changing his mind about law enforcement — he’s happy in his job as a supervisor at the Rack Room distribution center on Cedar Springs Road — reflects the way he changed his mind about the war.

“I really believe it was political,” he says. “I didn’t believe that then. I enlisted in the Army. The Army told me to go, and I went.”

But there’s no change in the bond he feels with those who came home and those who didn’t.

So he wears his POW/MIA stainless steel bracelet inscribed with Freddie Cristman’s name.

He didn’t know him, but they’re connected.

He decided he wanted to wear a bracelet in memory of someone. “And I wanted someone from Salisbury, so I called Da Nang Enterprises and had one special made with his name and information on it. He was a chief warrant officer, and he was lost in action March 19, 1971, in Laos.”

So he wears that bracelet all the time.

And he wears his black cap with “Vietnam Veteran” stitched on it or the green cap that’s got his unit’s number on it just about every day.

And his truck always turns toward the Wall at Exit 100.