William “Billy” Webb was born and raised in Abingdon, one of two children and the only son of Grant and Mary Gray Webb. He was in the the first graduating class of the then new Abingdon High School. As a teenager, Billy was a newspaper boy and could be seen every morning before school riding his bicycle on the streets of Abingdon, delivery the Bristol Herald Courier, rain or shine. He graduated from VPI and was commissions a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. Soon thereafter, at the age of 24, he was ordered to Vietnam. In early June 1966, after being in Vietnam for only about 3 weeks, Billy and a young Sergeant we scouting an area to establish a base camp about 20 miles north of Saigon. Upon reaching the top of a small hill, then known as Hill 23, he and the Sergeant were ambushed and killed by the Viet Cong.

Later Billy’s company established headquarters at the foot of the small hill where Billy had died. In front of the company headquarters hut was a little dusty dirt road. Billy’s comrades, who did not want him to ever be forgotten, proudly erected a simple “street sign” naming the little dirt road “Webb Avenue” in Billy’s honor. On another nearly road they placed another sign honoring the young Sergeant.

The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong swept through the base, after our troops had been withdrawn, and desecrated the signs and destroyed and any recognition that Billy and the Sergeant were ever there, or had ever lived or died.

Billy Webb was the only soldier from our area of whom we are aware who ever had a memorial erected in his honor on foreign soil, only to be later destroyed by the enemy. Thirty seven years later, here in Abingdon, Virginia, Billy’s hometown, we rectify that desecration, not only in honor of Billy, but all our fallen American heroes.

June 5, 1966, was to be a happy for the Webb family. It was Mrs. Webb’s birthday. It was to have been a day of celebration; instead it became a day of grief and a day of perpetual mourning for this family. It was on this day that our beloved Johnny Wood of Channel 5 brought the news to Mrs. Webb that his cousin, Billy, had been killed a few hours earlier, thousands of miles from his home. Johnny’s father, Mrs. Webb’s brother, had also served our Country was one of America’s first Army aviators in World War I. Billy left surviving his father, Grant Webb, who was a soldier in World War II, his mother, Mary Gray Webb, his 16 year old sister, Sandra, his young bride, Rebecca and their Siamese cat, Sydney, and many cousins. Rebecca was from the friendly pleasant village of Newsoms, Virginia, which is hundreds of miles from Abingdon in Eastern Virginia, not far from the Atlantic Ocean. Because she wished to be close to Billy, Rebecca asked that he be buried in Newsoms. There is where he lies today beneath a gravestone with a simple but profound epitaph: “Gave his life for his country in Vietnam.”

Rebecca tried to go on with her life and later remarried, but always carried Billy deep within in heart. On September 22, 2001, Rebecca passed away and in her dying wishes, requested that she be buried alongside her young warrior, Billy. Today Billy and Rebecca now lie side by side and I believe Billy’s soul is not at peace, at long last.

Nearly four decades after Billy Webb’s death, his spirit lives on and his story provided inspiration for this Park. When Mrs. Webb, now a widow, approaching her 91st birthday, learned from her daughter, Sandra, that the Town of Abingdon had named a street after Billy, she bravely and compassionately said what well could be the words of thousands of other brave, unselfish and giving American mothers about their lost sons and daughters: “But he’s not the only one.” Sandra, who had captured the significance, symbolism and spirit of the Town’s action, gave her heartfelt reply to her mother: “Momma, he represents them all – Momma, he represents them all.”

Taken from speech given by Emmitt Yeary