Manuel "Manny" Sustaita was a Vietnam veteran, civil activist, and the founder of Waco Citizens for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Though an insurance salesman by trade, he spent most of his life advocating for veterans and their families, Hispanic communities, and other underserved groups in Waco.

Sustaita was born in 1944 in Waco. As a boy he sold newspapers, shined shoes, and did other odd jobs to help support his family. In his free time, he played sports with the Waco Boy’s Club and especially enjoyed playing basketball. Though his parents did not speak English, they required their children to learn it, resulting in Sustaita and his siblings speaking what he called “neighborhood Spanish,” a mix of Spanish and English. Sustaita struggled with academics, and he dropped out of high school when he was fifteen.

Sustaita joined the National Guard at age sixteen, partially because of a desire to travel, and partially because of his love for movies like To Hell and Back and The D.I. Popular in the fifties and sixties, these movies depicted life in the military in a thrilling and heroic light, and Sustaita was moved by the example of the heroes in these films. For someone under the age of eighteen to join the military at that time, they had to have written parental consent. His father could not write, so Sustaita forged his signature. In 1963, Sustaita enlisted in the Marines. After training in San Diego, he went to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina and then to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. After this first deployment, he served in Costa Rica and the Mediterranean before volunteering to join reconnaissance in Okinawa. With reconnaissance, he toured in the Philippines, Thailand, and finally went to Vietnam in 1965. Sustaita’s battalion operated out of an American air force base in Da Nang. Their primary objective was to scout for the division, and they chiefly had contact with Viet Cong guerilla units. Sustaita did one tour of duty in Vietnam before returning to the United States and serving at Camp Pendleton in California. He finally left the Marines in 1966.

When he returned to Waco, Sustaita became a life insurance salesman, drawing on his sales experience from his childhood jobs and love for interacting with people. After working for MetLife Insurance for a while, he started his own insurance company, called Multi Services Associates. He married Patricia Rivera Sustaita, and they had two daughters before getting divorced in 1981.

Sustaita made a name for himself in Waco as a civil activist. He was a founding member of the Cen-Tex Mexican American Chamber of Commerce, and he later served as its president. He served on the board of the Waco Boys’ Club and was involved with the Red Cross, but perhaps his most memorable contribution to the Waco community was his work on the Waco Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Sustaita was deeply moved the first time he visited the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. Knowing that there were many people in Waco who had lost brothers and sons in Vietnam, as well as a significant number of other veterans, he resolved to build a memorial for the people of Waco. He, along with the Waco Citizens for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial, began the planning process in 1987, but due to a series of delays, the memorial was not dedicated until 2004.

After a lifetime spent serving his country and community, Manuel Sustaita died peacefully on May 20, 2020. He left behind a legacy of activism, having worked tirelessly to aid veterans, the Hispanic community, and all who needed help in the Waco area.

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Tragedy marked the experiences of many during the Vietnam War. On the home front, Americans increasingly questioned the country’s role in the conflict and lamented the loss they watched unfold throughout the first widely televised war. Americans especially worried over the conditions of US prisoners of war (POWs) held captive in North Vietnam—POWs that had been kept in physically and psychologically harmful conditions for extended periods of time. The North Vietnamese captured and imprisoned these Americans, often pilots in the US Navy or Air Force, for nearly ten years. Prisons in Vietnam received nicknames such as “Alcatraz,” for their severe environments, and “Hanoi Hilton,” an ironic name given to a primary torture site. Some POWs never returned home from their internment and remain unaccounted for.

In the late 1960s, the US Department of State sought to improve the treatment of American POWs and stepped up efforts to bring them home. Local communities pursued ways to assist in these efforts. Texas businessman Ross Perot became especially interested in sending humanitarian supplies to POWs, and he believed that ordinary citizens could make more of a difference than the federal government. Citizens of Waco, along with other towns and cities across the country, heeded Perot’s call.

Beginning in 1970, under the auspices of the Prisoner of War project, thousands of citizens in Waco advocated for American POWs through a letter-writing initiative titled the “Write Hanoi Campaign.” After Perot visited and spoke at Baylor University on March 10, 1971, Wacoans further invested in the project. The city, inspired by Perot’s message, proclaimed the day as “H. Ross Perot Day in Waco” and embraced his invitation by forming a local delegation that would negotiate directly with officials from North Vietnam later that year. Twelve men and women formed an advocacy group on behalf of American POWs, and local attorney C. Cullen Smith served as chairman. By mid-March 1971, they had collected 40,825 letters and petition signatures that demanded humane treatment of POWs in Vietnam, and the delegation prepared to present them at the Paris Peace Talks in April.

Supported by the US State Department, the Waco delegation visited Paris for negotiations with officials in North Vietnam in April 1971. Avoiding approval or disapproval of the war, the effort remained focused on the POWs. Once in Paris, a portion of the group met with officials to persuade them to better the prison camp conditions and improve the treatment of American POWs. Though an immediate change did not occur, in 1973, Operation Homecoming resulted in the return of 591 American POWs held captive in North Vietnam. Upon their return, some shared reports of prison conditions, and Waco’s Mayor Karl May contended that the Waco delegation had “some reason to believe our efforts were not in vain, since prisoners who have returned tell of a change for the better after that time.”

When the group left Paris on April 16, 1971, they wanted to commemorate the inspiration for their efforts. The delegation, mournful of the imprisonment of American POWs and grateful for the freedoms they experienced in the US, discussed how to memorialize the moment. Inspired by the architecture of Paris, they decided to construct a fountain. They planned to inscribe the word “freedom” in seventy different languages at the base of the structure. As they began the process of raising money and planning for the duly named “Freedom Fountain,” they refused large donations and instead requested smaller donations from those across the community. This way, as in the Write Hanoi Campaign, all could contribute. Groups like the Waco Jaycees pledged to raise $10,000, and sixth graders from North Waco Elementary School donated $14 in coins.

More than 750 people attended the dedication of the fountain in May 1973. There, two freed POWs, Colonel George Hall, who had recently settled with his wife and family in her hometown of Waco, and Captain Ronald Bliss, who later attended Baylor Law School before moving to Houston, joined the ceremonies. Wacoans also buried a time capsule underneath the fountain, which contained names and addresses of those who donated their funds along with additional information about the fountain and its origins. At the time of the dedication, the community had raised over $50,000 in support. Still in its original location, the Freedom Fountain sits at the south end of the Waco Convention Center with the word “freedom” inscribed in fifty-four different languages. There, Waco residents can remember the community’s efforts to support American POWs during the Vietnam War and reflect on the meanings of national and global freedom.

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During the 1960s and 70s, the Vietnam War rocked American communities from coast to coast, leaving death and division in its wake. McLennan County was no exception. The Waco Vietnam Veterans Memorial stands on the banks of the Brazos River as a silent but powerful testimony of the war’s impact on both the Waco community and the nation at large.

While Waco’s memorial did not become a reality until several decades after the war’s end, its origin rests in the wartime experience of local veteran Manuel Sustaita. Sustaita joined the U.S. Marine Corp in 1963 at seventeen years of age. As part of the Delta Company, 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, Sustaita was among the first marines to see combat in the conflict. This experience in Vietnam, including the death of his closest friend, Lance Corporal Joseph Ray Wynn Jr., left a deep impression on the young Marine. The idea of a Waco veterans memorial first emerged on Sustaita’s 1985 visit to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC, during which he was overcome by the visual magnitude of the war’s destruction. Writing several years later about his visit to the national memorial, Sustaita recalled, “I thought it would only take a few minutes to look up my [friends’] names…[but] I was wrong. Just to recover from the emotion and…the task of trying to find the name on that massive piece of stone was unreal.”

Sustaita wanted Wacoans to be able to share in a similar memorial experience, even if they were unable to travel to the nation’s capital. In 1989, Sustaita founded the Waco Citizens for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Inc., where fellow Wacoans Guy Cox and John Householder joined him as board members. This advisory board—comprised of veterans, Gold Star mothers, and local professionals—began the “Adopt in Memory Of” effort, in which individuals and religious, educational, business, and civic organizations could commit to raise $1,000 for the memorial in memory of a deceased casualty. A design for the memorial was settled on in 1989. The structure would consist of three pavilions total, symbolizing the experience of the country before, during, and after the war.

All of these preparations culminated in the site’s groundbreaking on Memorial Day 1990. Due to setbacks the memorial was not officially dedicated until 2004. The first pavilion of the memorial reads “Before the Vietnam War, We Were Whole.” The second reads, “The Vietnam War Brought Destruction and Turmoil.” On the third and final pavilion is inscribed, “The Sacrifices of Those We Honor Make This Hallowed Ground—Let us Strive to Reunite and Heal.” Under the third pavilion stands a monument into which the names of the fallen are etched. One linear wall also contains five bronze seals of the five branches of military service. The memorial includes a quote from Patrick Henry, which reads, “The battle is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”

A ten-year anniversary event was held in 2014, at which time nine names were added to the monument. Including the seven names added in February of 2018, the total now stands at eighty-three. Situated along the city’s revitalized river trail, the Waco Vietnam Veterans Memorial stands not only as a reminder of a sobering chapter in local and national history, but of the participants in that history whose voices are now silent.

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