Two days after his 21st birthday — which made him old enough to vote — Marine Pfc. Patrick M. Berwert, of Topeka, was killed on March 25, 1968, in the Vietnam War.

Today, 46 years after his death, Berwert is one of 17 Topekans whose photograph the Kansas Press Association is seeking.

Photographs collected by the KPA will be submitted to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation project called “Faces Never Forgotten.”

The pictures will be added to the Wall of Faces in the new education center at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.

In an online version of the Wall of Faces, you can read details about the individual, including date of birth, date of death, his branch of service, rank, home and county of record, and the province where he was killed, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported.

Readers also can submit online remembrances of the serviceman.

Compiling photographs of Kansas servicemen killed in the war started several months ago when the Kansas Press Association received a letter from another press association suggesting the KPA help with the project, Doug Anstaett, KPA executive director, said this week.

“We took it on as a labor of love,” Anstaett said.

But finding the photographs has been a challenge.

Of 265 photographs of Kansans sought in the project, 42 have been submitted to the KPA as of Sept. 3.

A total of 627 Kansas service members were killed in the Vietnam War. When the project began, photographs for 362 Kansas servicemen already were accounted for.

“We found it is a more difficult process than we (first) thought,” Anstaett said. “We have found family members who said they didn’t have a picture.”

Anstaett credited Rich Gannon, KPA director of governmental affairs, with his dogged efforts to track down survivors of the dead servicemen to get a photograph of each.

In one instance, Gannon traced a soldier’s family to a sister and called her phone number only to get a recording saying her voicemail was full.

It appeared to be a dead end.

But Gannon made a blind call to someone in the soldier’s hometown. That someone knew the soldier, Gannon got fresh leads, and he got a photograph, Anstaett said.

About one-third of the dead servicemen don’t have photographs, Anstaett said.

“That’s why we’re having to kind of enlist people to become reporters” to track down photographs, Anstaett said.

One relative showed up at the KPA office bearing information about his relative, including the soldier’s Distinguished Service Cross. But he didn’t have a photograph.

“The objective is to get a picture of every serviceperson who died in Vietnam,” Anstaett said.

Some photographs have been found in clippings from old newspapers, high school yearbooks, historical societies, relatives of the servicemen and through the American Legion in Kansas and Vietnam Vets of America, Chapter 912.

“Public librarians have been very useful in helping find someone,” said Emily Bradbury, member services director for the KPA.

A photograph with the Topekan in uniform is preferred, but the project will accept one without a uniform.

“It’s really about the face and putting the face with the name,” Anstaett said. The person submitting the photo can jot a few lines about the service member.

Deadline to submit photos is Nov. 11, which is Veterans Day.

“All of them touch me,” Bradbury said of the 42 photographs submitted since the project began. Bradbury typed in the servicemen’s names, birthdates and casualty dates in the project.

“That was someone’s son,” said Bradbury, who has a son. “I can’t imagine sending him off at 19 years old and him not coming back.

That’s the biggest sacrifice you can make as a parent, sending him off to war and fighting.”

The photographs affect Anstaett because they are servicemen of his generation during the Vietnam War.

“So many lives were cut short,” Anstaett said of the more than 58,000 Americans killed in the war. “They made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.”

To see the names of all Kansas servicemen without photographs and the short list of those whose photographs have been found, see http://cjon.co/1ucg4xU.

To submit photos to the KPA, email them to Bradbury at ebradbury@kspress.com or mail them to her at the press association, 5423 S.W. 7th, Topeka, KS 66606, or fax them to (785) 271-7341.