BANGOR – The newly dedicated bronze statue of an injured Vietnam soldier being carried by another soldier and a nurse brought back strong memories for Donna Wardwell Wilson on Memorial Day.

The injured soldier is a portrayal of her younger brother, a Marine who was killed by a mortar shell on Sept. 4, 1967, in Vietnam. It was a day she could not forget, in a war she said shouldn’t have happened.

The same Monday her brother Eric Michael Wardwell died, her parents asked her to come home. There she found a military vehicle outside and a military official inside. The officer stood up, and Wardwell Wilson saw her brother’s picture on the table and her father crying. He never cried, she said.

Wardwell Wilson became choked up as she talked about her brother’s death during a ceremony Monday to dedicate the statue and other monuments to Vietnam veterans. It was long overdue, many said, including Wardwell Wilson.

Although her brother didn’t come back, she said, many who did were ostracized, not receiving recognition for answering their country’s call to duty.

“Nobody remembered them. People didn’t recognize them for what they did,” she said. “They couldn’t come home in uniform” without facing turmoil.

Against a backdrop of sunshine and music, Gov. John Baldacci formally welcomed an estimated 1,000 people, including a large gathering of both World War II and up to 500 Vietnam War veterans, to the ceremony at the Cole Land Transportation Museum.

“You’re here today and, as governor of the state of Maine, I say welcome back home,” Baldacci said at the gathering, which included an earlier service for about 300 World War II veterans.

Baldacci called for cooperation among people and their communities to face difficult problems such as the dangers American soldiers confront in Iraq.

“Our strength as a state, as a community and as a family is in each other,” Baldacci told the appreciative crowd.

In an unanticipated but poignant moment before the formal ceremony began, the American flag started to slip down a flagpole until it almost touched the ground. Joseph Martin of Limestone and Bangor City Councilor John Cashwell, both Vietnam veterans, rushed forward and prevented it from touching the earth.

Martin said he threaded his way through the crowd to reach the flag out of a deep respect for it and the country he served. He also picks up flags that fall off cars.

“We never let the flag go down,” Martin said.

For some, the Memorial Day service provided a chance to meet others who had served in Vietnam and to trade stories and memories. Retired Chief Warrant Officer Tom Stryker, now living in New Jersey, was reunited with one of the Huey helicopters he piloted while serving with the Army in Southeast Asia. The restored helicopter serves as a monument to the Vietnam-era veterans along with an M-60 tank. Both are visible from Interstate 395.

“It looks smaller,” was Stryker’s reaction to the helicopter he had flown. Once, on a psychological warfare mission on Jan. 20, 1970, the engine failed over the jungle near An Loc. Stryker took the helicopter into a controlled crash, landed with a hard jolt on a roadway and then waited for an Army unit sweeping for mines to arrive.

Galen Cole and his family have been instrumental in making sure veterans aren’t forgotten. Cole asked Stryker to come to the ceremony after finding his name on a maintenance record.

Monday’s ceremony included the dedication of a granite memorial listing the names of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in Vietnam, although some former Vietnam soldiers said the list of 339 Mainers listed as missing in action or dead didn’t include four soldiers who committed suicide during the war. Organizers of Mobile Memories, a collection of pictures, stories and memorabilia from the Vietnam War, include those four names among those who died in the name of their country.