Van of Valor

By Dr. Kevin Wallace
Van of Valor

NORTH PORT, Fla. – In August 2025, the Van of Valor, an old converted FedEx van with over 300,000 miles, rolled into the granite-lined landscapes of New Hampshire. 

We were 83 days into a continuous 280-day mission, crossing 27,116 miles to document the living pulse of American sacrifice. 

From the driver’s seat, I, Dr. Kevin Wallace, watched the odometer climb while Lauren Wallace, our mission co-founder and anthropologist, prepared her cameras and notes for the 317 interviews we had set out to capture.

As we navigated the winding roads toward Hollis and Dover, Lauren adjusted her lens, focusing on the men who carried their battle stories in their very gait. 

We learned about Stewart Jackson, a Vietnam veteran whose eyes still held the sharp clarity of a soldier on patrol. Later, in Dover, we met Capt. Brendan Meehan, a pilot who refused to let a combat injury ground his spirit.

Lauren leaned in after capturing a particularly poignant shot of Meehan’s flight gear. “Stewart and Brendan remind us that a wound isn’t just a mark of a bad day at work,” she observed, her voice steady behind the camera. “It’s a permanent membership in a fraternity of resilience. They don’t just survive; they lead”.

The van’s engine hummed a low tune as we reached Laconia. We weren’t just here for the living; we were here for the families of those whose homecomings were delayed by decades. 

We stood on the soil where PFC George A. Curley Jr. had finally been laid to rest in 2025, over 70 years after disappearing into a North Korean camp. 

Lauren looked at the archival photos of Curley, her anthropologist’s eye tracing the lines of a young face frozen in 1951. 

“These men occupied the darkest corners of human experience,” she whispered as she backed up the day’s footage. “Whether they escaped like Parker or returned in a flag-draped casket like Curley, their stories are the ultimate testament that the human spirit cannot be caged forever.”

Our final stop was the New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery in Boscawen. Here, the names of the fallen, men like Francis Byrne, who received his Purple Heart just weeks before passing, and PFC Wayne T. Provencher, whose name is etched into the Vietnam Wall of Faces, echoed through the silent rows of white stone. 

The van, now inscribed with nearly 450 names of the fallen we had encountered on our journey, felt like a mobile cathedral.

As the sun set over the granite hills, Lauren captured a final wide shot of the cemetery. 

“The fallen don’t have voices anymore, so they use ours,” she said, checking the audio levels one last time. “Each name on this van, each face in our files, is a thread in the fabric of this country. If we stop telling their stories, the fabric begins to unravel.”

Mission complete. 

280 days. 

27,116 miles. 

The mission to tell the story will perhaps never end. And, back there in New Hampshire, we found the heart of the “Live Free or Die” spirit still beating in every story we touched.

To reach the staff, email Manteo.Creative.SPOT@gmail.com. To read more or support this non-profit mission, visit www.HelpVoV.com.