Exhibit offers poignant notes from Vietnam War

Boston.com: Exhibit offers poignant notes from Vietnam War
Kilroy was here.

That phrase, said to have originated with a shipyard inspector from Quincy during World War II, has been for decades familiar shorthand for the existential angst of the all-but-unknown soldier.

The self-expressive graffiti of the generation that followed Kilroy’s — the young Americans sent off to fight the most unpopular war in the country’s history — is the subject of “Marking Time: Voyage to Vietnam,’’ a new exhibit at Lowell’s American Textile History Museum. The project, which runs through Sept. 25 with a special veterans’ forum scheduled for Sunday, showcases canvases salvaged from the vast, 5,000-passenger US navy ship General Nelson M. Walker.

Troops sent across the Pacific on the ship, now inactive, left behind Kilroy-style markings on the canvases — inked jokes, doodles, mash notes to girlfriends, and scribbled lines attesting to their boredom and anxiety.

“Here I am, 18 going on 19,’’ wrote one soldier on the canvas above his bunk, “going to Vietnam to teach the Communists a better way of life, make sure that they wear their Levi blue jeans and drive Chevy pickups… . I thought, well, gee whiz, this may be the last thing that I see or the last thing that I possibly leave on this earth that would indicate that I was even here.’’

None could have known that, nearly 50 years later, their words and drawings would be seen by thousands of Americans. The exhibit, curated by Art and Lee Beltrone of Virginia, has visited dozens of institutions since the Beltrones became caretakers of a forgotten trove of artifacts from the old troop ship in 2005.

At the United States Navy Memorial in Washington in 2007, the curators surprised Vietnam veteran Mike Fasulo of Sharpsburg, Md., when they unveiled the canvas he had used as a private log.

“He just about died,’’ recalls Art Beltrone. “He was so shocked that anyone remembered him. It was a very emotional time for him.’’

For the opening of another exhibit, in their home state of Virginia, the Beltrones invited a veteran living in New York who was undergoing chemotherapy. “I didn’t think anybody cared,’’ the man said, choking up, when he saw the canvas he had personalized 40 years before.

Each time the Beltrones mount the exhibit in a new region (they have enough materials to keep two shows on the road, one for the eastern United States and one for the west), they highlight jottings by soldiers who hailed from the area. Among the remnants on display in Lowell with local ties: one length of canvas signed by last name only — Falabella from Malden — and his pay grade (E-3). Another was made by a 1965 graduate of Marblehead High School.