Like many veterans of the Vietnam War, former Army 1st Lt. Bill Shugarts didn’t really advertise his service.

“Those initial years were really, really, really hard,” he said. “In my case, I took my 4 1/2 years of service off my résumé in order to get a job.”

After a commitment that included training as a combat engineer and a tour in Vietnam with the 23rd Infantry Division running supply convoys, Shugarts returned to civilian life and graduate school, ultimately working as an executive for several companies and raising a family. 

Following the death of his first wife in 2003, Shugarts met Jan Scruggs, founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, and he agreed to return to Vietnam with several other veterans for Project RENEW, an organization that deals with unexploded ordnance.

After returning home, Shugarts was at a crossroads. “[Scruggs] said to me, ‘Why don’t you become a volunteer at the Vietnam Memorial, the wall that heals?’” 

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In 2007 Shugarts began volunteering, serving as a docent at the wall. He said at first it was difficult, but he began to experience what volunteers call “wall magic,” those moments of interaction and connection with veterans and visitors.

“The most important thing you can do as a docent is ask a couple of leading questions and then shut up and you just listen,” he said. “Every name on the wall has a story.” 

Between comparing notes on service with fellow veterans, learning about a loved one behind a name on the wall from family members, tourists to Washington, D.C., or even former Viet Cong soldiers, the act of volunteering moved Shugarts to immerse himself in veterans causes over the past 17 years. Today, he is a National Park Service master docent and a National Museum of the United States Army docent, he started veterans’ groups at his church and in his community in Spotsylvania, Va., and he works on a wide range of veterans’ issues.  

Shugarts said a shared sense of the greater good links volunteerism and being a veteran.

“You can pretty much count on that person,” he says of veterans. “It doesn't matter what rank or what service. There's instant chemistry, instant camaraderie, instant respect. It's earned. To me, that's the key.”