While area residents have the opportunity to participate in a variety of Memorial Day weekend activities to honor those who lost their lives in service to their country, there are other ways we can honor those who fought and died for freedom.

Linwood Green of Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 185 in Hampden reports his organization has established an educational project to honor the 343 Mainers who died in the Vietnam War.

“Mobile Memories: Unlocking the Past” is a traveling museum that will help students understand the history of the Vietnam War and Maine’s part in the war.

Green said Unicel is helping the effort. The corporation “has raised $9,000 for us in Maine and New Hampshire,” enabling Vietnam Veterans to buy a vehicle and a trailer to transport the memorial.

“We wouldn’t be where we are today without the help of Unicel,” Green said. “But we still have a long way to go. We have about 300 more stories to tell.”

Unicel informed Green just this week that all activation fees collected in Maine and New Hampshire during Memorial Day weekend will be donated to the project.

“We’re hoping their fund-raiser will give us enough to perhaps get the 90-foot wall that we’re building and getting ready to get out to the public,” he said.

However, one of the major hurdles the post is working to overcome is finding office space.

Green writes that this post “is currently homeless, and looking for a good home.”

To most efficiently complete this project, the Vietnam veterans need an office in which to do the work.

Green explained the memorial includes pictures and letters that service personnel wrote to friends and loved ones back home, as well as photographs and personal information about each Maine member of the military who died in Vietnam.

The office is needed “to set up the computers, scan pictures and compile information to go into the Memorial, as well as into the computer database,” he said.

The group envisions establishing “a comfortable place for parents, brothers, sisters and friends … to bring their pictures to be scanned, and share their stories of what is missing” from their families.

With no office in which to do the computer work or to meet privately with the families, making this project a reality is becoming exceedingly difficult.

Green hopes the group will have a facility that would be open seven days a week, and since all the money being raised is going toward the traveling museum, it leaves “a limited amount of funds to pay rent for office space,” he pointed out.

Green hopes someone will come forward and offer these Vietnam veterans a place to meet and complete this worthwhile project.

If you can help, call Green at 866-4102 or 478-6220.

More information about the project is also available at www.bairnet.org/organizations/vva.

From Anne Crowley, president of the Carmel Firemen’s Auxiliary, comes news about continuing efforts to raise $25,000 to obtain a thermal-imaging camera for that department.

While Carmel Elementary School pupils in kindergarten through fourth grade were conducting a penny drive and raising $710.10, the Carmel Parent Teacher Club and pupils were working on a bottle drive that raised $1,006.78.

When these projects were completed, the Parent Teacher Club donated $283.21 to bring the total of these fund-raisers to $2,000.

A recent benefit supper added $835 to the goal and an anonymous donation from a Carmel resident has brought the current total to $12,625.56, Crowley reported.

After the Carmel Memorial Day Parade, the auxiliary will host an open house at 11:30 a.m. Monday, May 27, at the fire station.

Members of the public are invited to enjoy free sandwiches, cupcakes, soft drinks and coffee.

The public is invited to attend “A Service Remembered” at 7:30 p.m. Memorial Day, Monday, May 27, at St. John’s Catholic Church, 297 York St., Bangor.

A 40-voice choir, led by music director Kevin Birch and co-director Daniel Williams, will present the same program the choir will perform next month in Luxembourg to commemorate the liberation of that country by U.S. servicemen during World War II.

The performance will include the national anthem, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Shenandoah” and other songs accompanied by the music of the historic Hook pipe organ.

Admission is free, but donations to help defray the cost of the trip will be appreciated.

Representatives of the Cole Land Transportation Museum remind you that carillon bells will play at 9 a.m. Monday, May 27, in unison with carillons at U.S. military cemeteries in Holland, Luxembourg and the Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Augusta.

Also, World War II veterans may sign up for free walking sticks at 10 a.m. across from Fleet Bank on Exchange Street in Bangor before the Memorial Day parade at 10:30 a.m.

The public and all veterans are invited to continue the Memorial Day commemoration after the parade by buying lunch from members of the Hampden Academy Band Boosters near the Maine World War II Veterans Memorial at Cole Land Transportation Museum on Perry Road in Bangor.

The boosters will sell hot dogs, hamburgers, soda and coffee, and participants are encouraged to bring lawn chairs and help honor those who fought for our freedom.

A Memorial Day program and USO-type show will be performed by the award-winning Hampden Academy Jazz Band at 1:30 p.m. at the museum.

Admission to the museum, with more than 200 exhibits displaying the history of land transportation in Maine, is free to all who attend the afternoon ceremonies.

And for World War II veterans who already have their walking sticks, museum volunteers will present them with 2002 reflective commemoration stickers.

Joni Averill, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402; 990-8288.