Woman finds photos of every fallen soldier from Utah for Vietnam memorial

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SALT LAKE CITY — After searching for more than a year, a woman from Hawaii has found photos of every soldier from Utah who died in the Vietnam War.

Janna Hoehn has been working with the goal of finding photos of every fallen soldier for the Faces Never Forgotten project, which is run by the Vietnam Memorial Fund. The same organization supports the iconic memorial in Washington, D.C.

The photos Hoehn finds are added to the Wall of Faces, an online memorial dedicated to remembering those who died. When she first started focusing on Utah, 85 of the 364 young Utahns who died in the Vietnam War were missing photos.

To find the missing photos, Hoehn reached out to news organizations like KSL.com, and readers responded. She also worked with another man to contact high schools and school districts in an effort to search yearbooks.

“Some of them are so hard to find and when that last one comes in it’s like, ‘We did it!’” Hoehn said.

Hoehn dedicates about 40 hours per week to finding photos of fallen soldiers while still running her floral business in Maui. She started out with one name, but soon felt driven to find pictures for everyone who died.

Now, Hoehn has finished finding photos for Montana, Nevada, Utah and Oregon, in addition to helping complete the efforts for South Dakota. She has two left to find for Nebraska, four left for Colorado, and five or six left for Washington.

“Little by little, we got it all done,” she said.

Four other states that Hoehn did not work on have also been completed: Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and New Mexico.

Hoehn is currently working on finding pictures for fallen soldiers from Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Texas. Anyone who would like to help with the effort can contact her at neverforgotten2014@gmail.com.