July 2007

Book Review

Run for the Wall: Remembering Vietnam on a Motorcycle Pilgrimage

by Raymond Michalowski and Jill Dubisch

Rutgers University Press, 2001

ISBN-10 81352928X

ISBN-13 0813529288

Richard B. Verrone

Begun in 1988 as a one-time event to memorialize the names of the dead inscribed on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Run for the Wall is an annual May motorcycle ride in which men and women journey from the West Coast to Washington D.C.  The riders on the Run for the Wall join the thousands of riders in “Rolling Thunder,” an annual Memorial Day motorcycle parade and rally in the nation’s capitol. Once in Washington, the Run for the Wall riders eventually make their way to the large black granite memorial that has inscribed upon it the names of the American Vietnam War dead, over 58,000 souls.

Authors Raymond Michalowski and Jill Dubisch participated in the Run for the Wall journey in 1998 both as riders and observers.  Their participation in this motorcycle pilgrimage is chronicled and analyzed in their very readable ethnographic account Run for the Wall.  The purpose of the journey itself is both political and emotional, the authors argue, in that riders seek to increase public awareness about the men and women who remain either prisoners of war or missing in action in Southeast Asia and, at the same time, “memorialize the dead and heal the living” (7).  The “dead” are the names on the Wall.  The “living” are the riders themselves.  As the procession makes its way across the country through numerous communities, the journey also serves as a "welcome-home" ritual many veterans feel they never received upon their return from the war.

The authors are in a perfect position to participate and observe all that occurs on the Run—Michalowski is a sociologist and Dubisch is an anthropologist. Their professional training allows them a unique insight into the Run and provides them with the tools to make certain conclusions about the event.  They identify the Run as a “social phenomenon,” one that is a “collective endeavor that combines the political history of the Vietnam War, the emotional power of the Wall, and homemade rituals and secular pilgrimage into a strategy for constructing new meanings about the Vietnam War and its aftermath” (7).  From the social experience of the journey, not just from the physical ride and a visitation to the Wall, veterans and their family members who join them on the Run have the possibility of obtaining psychological and emotional healing that had previously been absent—or incomplete—since the end of the War. Undergoing this process of healing, the authors argue, allows the veterans to explore and create new identities as veterans of the Vietnam War and gives more meaning to their war experience. The Run itself offers the framework within which a new construction and making of memories about the War and veterans can occur. The Run is classified as a pilgrimage, according to the authors, because it involves the same type of experience and purpose associated with religious pilgrimages: the Run to the Wall has a specific purpose, a ritual journey, and a sacred goal (arrival at the Wall to honor the dead).

In the book Michalowski and Dubisch cover a wide variety of topics: the role of gender on the Run, individualism and community on the Run, dealing with the memories of the Vietnam War and the politics that surround it, how veteran bikers fit into American popular culture, the Run as the “welcome home” parade the veterans never had, and the power of ritual and emotional, psychological and sometimes spiritual healing. The book works extremely well when dealing with the veterans on an individual level. The reader is exposed to personal experiences from the Run, the Vietnam veteran experience, and what the Run does to participants during and after completion.

What is perhaps the most interesting section of the work is the examination of how particularly cherished beliefs of American culture—individuality, community/brotherhood and freedom, for example—play such a significant part of binding together and strengthening the Run participants throughout their journey to Washington and reinforce those beliefs in their personal lives outside of the biker culture and their veteran experience. The authors do a particularly good job examining the mentality of the Vietnam veteran and the American motorcycle culture. More could have been done on the origins of the biker culture in general, but the authors describe in detail how motorcycle culture is woven into the fabric of American culture and thus the veteran community. When combined with American individualism, freedom, the sense of community, independence and personal rights, the veteran biker community is a solid, almost impenetrable brotherhood with a common experience and purpose. The Run for the Wall is a living embodiment of this.

There are a few issues that get lost in the text, namely the MIA/POW issue. There is also not enough discussion and analysis of the fact that the majority of Vietnam veterans do not belong to the veteran biker community. Rather, they lead typical American mainstream lives which do not involve riding motorcycles. In addition, the authors could have taken their research a little farther and dedicated a chapter to how the rest of the American public views the Run, the Vietnam veteran and the veteran biker.  Because they are immersed within their research project itself (they are participants in a Run), Michalowski and Dubisch come across as biased toward their subjects. A more objective analysis would have faired better. 

Overall, however, Run for the Wall is an excellent study of this particular event from the inside out and from the perspective of the American Vietnam veteran biker. The authors do a very good job demonstrating the passion these veterans and their families show toward their fallen brethren and their pride in being members of their own special community. Using the Run as a case study, the authors highlight American secular ritual and the meaning of pilgrimage, unique political action and the social construction of memory. Run for the Wall is well worth the read and should be a part of any modern Americanist, American popular culture and Vietnam War library, as well as that of the motorcycle historian.

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