LEWISTON -- Robert Macdonald held a strip of paper on the three-quarter size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on display in Lewiston and rubbed a graphite pencil over the name of his regiment chaplain, Vincent R. Capodanno.

The retired Lewiston police detective and Vietnam veteran said Capodanno won the Medal of Honor "saving people's lives."

Macdonald, 60, had two other friends with names etched in the wall. The names are those of 58,183 men and women who had their lives taken away from them in a war shrouded in controversy.

Just fewer than 300 were from Maine.

A member of various veterans' organizations, Macdonald said he felt obligated to help out with the 240-foot memorial that travels around the country.

The ex-Marine will be reading names of those from Maine remembered on the wall.

"I watched them bring it here and there were lots of people cheering and it was really nice," Macdonald said Thursday. "But when I come here, it angers me. I feel we were let down and at such a young age. And for what?"

The wall will be on display to the public at Lewiston's Veterans Memorial Park from today until Sunday.

On Thursday, 5,000 students visited the memorial in the morning, but heavy rain in the afternoon kept away the people with disabilities and nursing home residents for whom the memorial was open.

After the rain cleared, people started to trickle in. Most of the people around the wall were volunteers including Roger Martel, 60, of Lewiston, an E-5 with the Army Corps of Engineers in Vietnam.

He leads the memorial's construction and siting committee.

Martel, a retired Lisbon Public Works Department worker, said 27 young men from Lewiston have their names on the wall -- a lot, he said, for a small city.

"Lewiston has a high concentration of veterans," Martel said. "Maybe it's because of our blue collar background. Back then, (if) we didn't go to college, we were drafted or enlisted. In my case, I enlisted."

Like most veterans, Martel said he has friends on the wall. He said he went to school with Forest Hodgkins who died in Vietnam before Martel got there.

The wall, he said, is the best way to memorialize the sacrifices his friends made.

Thomas McMahon, a Lewiston native with his name on the wall, is the most decorated Mainer to lose his life in the Vietnam war, Martel said. He was killed on March 19, 1969.

"(The wall is) absolutely the best thing that can be done for a vet," he said.

His son -- Mike Martel of the Fortin Group, a local funeral company that helped bring the wall to Lewiston -- said he expects 50,000 people will visit the wall this weekend.

He said volunteers erected the 48 panels, landscaped around them and put up the lights and chairs.

"Our volunteer group is made up from the funeral home staff, vets and military personnel over at the base," Mike Martel said. "We were ready when the school children came through, right before the rain started."

Ron Duchette who served in the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam from 1970 to 1971, was busy sweeping away puddles on the walkway Thursday so people wouldn't get their feet wet.

The 57-year-old subcontractor from Lewiston said he has always wanted to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

"I've always wanted to go, but never had enough money," Duchette said. "Organizations like Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars have buses going down there from time to time. I'm semi-retired now, so I want to try and do that."

One of the few visitors who came out after the storm did a rubbing of a friend whose name is on the wall.

Bert Belisle, 62, of Lewiston, who served in the Coast Guard, said his friend, Daniel Ouellette, is one of the few people with his name on the wall who isn't dead.

"There's a couple of incidences of that," Belisle said. "He teaches at Westport High School. He was shot down and badly injured. By the time they found him, he was listed killed in action. It was just a paper snafu."

Mechele Cooper -- 623-3811, Ext. 408

mcooper@centralmaine.com