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T-Shirt Designer Refuses to Remove Dead Soldier's Name From T-Shirts

Robert Vandertulip from Irving checks for his son’s dead name regularly on Google and often asks anti-war group sites that feature his name to remove it. An Arizona man Dan Frazier has put Mr. Vandertulip's sons name onto his anti-war printed T-shirts that he sells online and refuses to remove the name from the printed T-shirts . One of the shirts that feature on Frazier’s website lists the name of every soldier who was killed in Iraq, and is printed with the words “Bush Lied” on the front and “They Died” on the back. A bill is now being filled in Texas so that a military member’s name, dead or alive, cannot be used for commercial purposes without permission by the family, or actual service member. This would not have any impact on state based web sites using the same name or images but this bill will help towards the national campaign that Vandertulip has started. However, two other states have passed a similar bill. Frazier says that he does have the right to sell the printed T-shirts featuring the soldiers’ names but Vandertulip's father and Linda Harper-Brown Rep of Irving disagree. Harper Brown said, "It just doesn't seem right to profit on the death of a soldier who put his life on the line for us and our freedom"

Frazier starting selling the printed T-shirts in June 2005 and has upset many military families in many states. He says he has the right to use the name as an act of free speech even though he has upset many people. The t-shirts now include the names of the troops who died in Iraq through October 23rd. Frazier donates one dollar from every t-shirt that he sells to charity and says that he makes barely any profit because of design costs. He says he has sold more t-shirts recently because of the opposition against them, "This activism on the part of the families has not achieved the goal they had in mind."