Thomas J. Kinsman Medal of Honor Memorial
Lewis County, Lewis County, Washington
Marker Inscription
In Honor of Thomas J. Kinsman Congressional Medal of Honor for service above and beyond the call of duty United States Army * Vietnam 1968 Of those of the armed forces who served so gallantly Army - Marines - Navy - Coastguard - Air Force
The Story
This marker honors Thomas J. Kinsman, a United States Army soldier awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for valor in Vietnam in 1968, along with all who served across the armed forces. The nation's highest military decoration recognizes actions above and beyond the call of duty, and Kinsman's stands among the acts of gallantry from America's long, divisive war in Southeast Asia.
Why it matters
It preserves the memory of a hometown Medal of Honor recipient and honors the sacrifice of Vietnam-era service members.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Vietnam War reached deep into American life in 1968, the year this marker's honoree earned the nation's highest award for valor. It was the war's most convulsive year — a year of hard fighting abroad and deepening division at home, when the country argued fiercely over a conflict that touched nearly every town, including the small communities of the Pacific Northwest where a memorial like this one stands.
The men who fought that war were often very young, drawn from every corner of the country, and they served in a war without clear front lines, where danger could come from any direction at any hour. They came home to a nation that could not agree on what their service had meant — and that ambivalence is part of why local memorials to individual soldiers matter so much. Where the national conversation was fractured, a hometown could still honor its own.
Lewis County, Washington, is timber-and-farm country in the shadow of the Cascades, the kind of place that sent its sons to every American war and welcomed home those who returned. This marker plants the memory of one of them firmly in that home ground.
People & events
The marker honors Thomas J. Kinsman, a soldier of the United States Army who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for service in Vietnam in 1968. The medal is given only for gallantry above and beyond the call of duty — a standard so high that most who meet it do so in a single, decisive moment of choosing others' lives over their own safety.
The inscription honors Kinsman's specific act of valor while deliberately widening its embrace: it names not only him but all who served — Army, Marines, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force. That is a telling choice. A Medal of Honor is awarded to one person, but no such act happens in isolation; it happens among comrades, in the middle of a war fought by millions. The marker lets one man's recognized courage stand for the courage of the many whose names no citation records.
The details of exactly what Kinsman did to earn the medal belong to his official citation, and a visitor moved by this marker would do well to seek that record out and read it in full. What this stone asserts is simpler and permanent: that here, in his own community, his valor is remembered and his nation's highest honor is publicly claimed on his behalf.
Its place in the American story
The Medal of Honor is the thread that ties this quiet local marker to the largest American story. Since the Civil War it has been the country's supreme recognition of battlefield courage, and each recipient becomes part of a small, singular company that stretches across every war the nation has fought. To honor a Medal of Honor recipient is to place a hometown name into that national roll.
But this marker carries a second significance, particular to Vietnam. The men and women who served in that war too often came home without the public gratitude earlier generations received. Memorials like this one were part of how communities and the country eventually made that right — insisting that whatever anyone thought of the war, the service and sacrifice of those who fought it deserved honor.
By naming every branch of the armed forces, the marker also speaks to something enduringly American: that the nation's defense is a shared burden, carried by people from every background and every corner of the country. One recognized hero here becomes a way of saying thank you to all of them.
If you visit
Approach this memorial as you would any place set aside for honor: unhurried, and ready to read every line. The inscription is short, but it rewards attention — the single name lifted up, and beneath it the roll of all five service branches, gathering the many into the honor given to one.
Take in the setting, too. This is Pacific Northwest country, green and forested, the kind of small-community landscape that has always sent people into the armed forces. There's a quiet power in seeing the nation's highest military honor commemorated not in a great capital but here, close to where the honoree's own roots lie.
If you want to do the marker full justice, look up Thomas J. Kinsman's Medal of Honor citation before or after your visit and read the account of what he did. Standing at the marker with those facts in mind turns a name on a stone into a person and a moment — which is exactly what a memorial like this exists to make possible.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Thomas J. Kinsman
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Freedom Tree
Seattle, WA
Dedicated in 1972 at the height of the Vietnam War, this Freedom Tree in Washington State stands for prisoners of war and those missing in action. Living "freedom trees" were planted across the country during that era as rallying points for the POW/MIA movement, expressing hope that captured and missing servicemen would come home. This one is dedicated to "the sons of Washington" and to the ideal of universal freedom.
Larry Gilbert Dahl
Clackamas County, OR
This stretch of Oregon highway carries the name of Larry Gilbert Dahl, a U.S. Army soldier honored for his sacrifice. Dahl was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his gallantry during the Vietnam War in 1971, when he shielded fellow soldiers from an enemy grenade with his own body.
First American Colony on Puget Sound
Tumwater, WA
In October 1845, the first party of American settlers reached the falls at Tumwater, at the southern tip of Puget Sound, and put down roots in country still claimed jointly by Britain and the United States. Led by Michael Simmons and including the free Black pioneer George Bush, the group founded the earliest American colony north of the Columbia River. Their settlement helped tip the balance in the coming boundary dispute.
Korean War Memorial
Olympia, WA
This memorial in Olympia lists Washingtonians killed in the Korean War of 1950–1953, the bitter conflict fought to halt the invasion of South Korea. Often called "The Forgotten War" because it fell between the vast mobilization of World War II and the turmoil of Vietnam, Korea nonetheless cost tens of thousands of American lives. The memorial gathers those state losses in one place of remembrance.