Earl Scott May is guilty of lying, and he’s guilty of conscience.

The Rumford man inexplicably told friends last year he was a Vietnam veteran, although the battles ended before he left grade school. He lied, but not for glory, which is the usual excuse for wartime tale-tellers. May, 45, cannot, even to this day, quite explain why he said what he did.

We know what he did with his lie, though. He used it for noble purposes: to honor Vietnam veterans, both living and passed, by collecting funds and working toward the establishment of a Vietnam memorial in Rumford, festivities for which were set for last weekend.

Then the bottom dropped out. May was caught in his lie, and the celebration unraveled. He went from hero to pariah, and he now claims his friends and family have been made to feel unwelcome in the community he’s called home for the past 12 years.

He deserves better.

May did a stupid thing. He admits it. In describing the first time saying the lie, May describes blurting it out. Those who heard it didn’t dispute it, he says, and the matter passed. It was only on the cusp of the celebration that his lie became relevant, and exposed.

“My heart was in the right place,” May said recently. “I never should have said what I said.”

May is right on both counts. And his efforts toward memorializing the Vietnam veterans of Oxford County should balance the ledger for his lying.

Where May really erred was not by lying, but by thinking he needed to be a Vietnam veteran in order to honor them. There’s no prerequisite for patriotism in Rumford, Oxford County, Maine or the United States as a whole; it’s one of the great things about living in our free society.

If May wanted to honor his friends, and neighbors, who fought in Vietnam, that’s all he had to do. Just because he didn’t serve alongside them in places like “Hamburger Hill,” his zeal shouldn’t have been discounted one penny.

And perhaps the reason nobody questioned his status until now was because it really didn’t matter. May was part of a group, and likely would have stayed that way whether a Vietnam veteran, or not.

Rumford is the other loser in this scenario. The town was ready for a real community event until May’s lies were uncovered. For a town with blackened eyes from savage politics, it could have used some good news.

The memorial was that chance. Instead, another scandal.

But not one that needs to continue. The community has a chance to forget this interruption when the memorial is unveiled, fittingly, during Memorial Day observations this weekend.

Since in this case, May’s actions speak louder than his mistruths.

Regardless of who he said he was, he’s still a man who devoted his time to bring a Vietnam memorial to Rumford.