Does anyone here remember the storm of controversy that surrounded the Vietnam War Memorial?

[Collimator]

The design project had been awarded to a young woman. I think that she was of Asian descent. That may have been one of the reasons why her design concept was met with such derision. A compromise of sorts was reached when the government approved the inclusion of a more standard-style monument in the form of a statue of three young soldiers.

One memory that stands out for me was a speech given by a man-- I can only assume that he was a veteran-- solemnly but impassionately decrying the original wall design as The Worst Thing Ever. I don't think that he used the word, "abomination", but I'm pretty sure that I recall the words, "dark" and "insulting".

Well, as certain as that fellow was in his convictions, he was monumentally wrong,( if you will excuse the pun.) In the decades since the wall was erected, there have been countless stories in print and video mediums detailing the powerful, healing impact of the Wall. I can't recall anyone going out of their way to discuss the emotional resonance of the conventional images of the soldiers.

Why am I mentioning this now? I'm not sure. It may be that in this digital age we are bombarded with so much content. So many people at different ends of the political spectrum are making impassioned pronouncements about one thing or another being The Worse Thing Ever. So, perhaps I am using the story of the rocky beginnings of the Vietnam War Memorial as a reminder that you can feel strongly about something and still be very much off the mark.

People like making and listening to predictions and everyone wants to believe that they are "in the know" and really seeing things clearly even if others do not. But life, people and situations will continue to surprise us. The healing aspects of the Wall were an amazing example of something touching the public in way that no one quite anticipated.

(My apologies if any information that I have presented as factual is also, "off the mark".)

[ms liberty]

1. I remember it. Her name is Maya Lin.

All the critics were wrong, and once it was opened, everyone knew it.

[leftieNanner]

2. My first visit to the memorial was shattering

Incredibly powerful. It's a record of dead boys (mostly). I sat on the ground and wept. I knew some of them.

[GP6971]

3. A required stop

whenever I'm in the DC area. It becomes more powerful and moving as time goes on.

[Jim__]

4. A little bit of it - notice the reflections.

?1507142692

[Wounded Bear]

23. The reflections are the point...

you can't look at that wall without seeing your own reflection in the stone. I never served in Nam, but for people of my generation, seeing your reflection there superimposed on the names of the fallen gives you a powerful "it could have been me" feeling that can't be duplicated otherwise.

[John1956PA]

5. There was a TV movie made about the controversy.

In my opinion, the movie is excellent.

[keithbvadu2]

6. One of my high school classmates is on that wall.

It is not insulting.

[usaf-vet]

28. Six of my school friends are on the wall. Three close friends. One a medic. I have been to the wall twice.

All these years later. And I cannot watch war movies.

The medic was attached to a Marine unit.

He was listed as KIA on my birthday in 1967.

If you haven't seen the movie Shock and Awe watch it.
The Knight Ridder news agency got it right. The Bush Administration WAS LYING. Watch the stats at the end of the movie.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

7. I visited the Wall in October of 1984.

A humbling and somber place.

It is not the memorial itself that grabs you, but the names. The mementos let behind that reminds one that human beings once lived, loved, and had dreams. I was humbled beyond words.

[Irish_Dem]

38. The names on the exquisite black granite are given dignity and grab you yes.

I know, we could feel the names as human beings, not just a name on a piece of paper.

[Kennah]

8. I do

I grew up in neighboring Prince George's County, Maryland. I visited a number of times over the years. One could go there darned near any day of the week, any time of day, any time of year, and there will likely be visitors there.

The first time one goes, as you descend, street noise disappears, and there's a quiet, somber feeling that one enters. It is the quiet that one experiences at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

There is a book with the names of everyone on the wall listed alphabetically. I wondered if there was anyone with my last name, so I looked. It was stunning to see my first, middle, and last name. I did not know him, and there is no known relationship. But it was powerful and overwhelming.

[Tomconroy]

9. The original concept was for simply a blank wall

At some point in the process it was proposed that the names of those who died be inscribed on the wall. I think that is where the emotional resonance of the monument comes from.
The original design of a blank wall really wasn't that great.

[dalton99a]

12. The original design contained carved names.

[Tanuki]

13. No, the competition Lin won stipulated that all the names had to be included.

https://www.thehistoryreader.com/military-history/maya-lin-vietnam-veterans-memorial/

"It was miserable,” Lin said when I first asked her about her year in Washington. “It was beyond miserable.” There is still indignation in her voice when she gets on the subject of the building of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She hates Washington, and has rarely been back since her work was finished. “I think it is actually a miracle that the piece ever got built,” Lin wrote about the memorial in Boundaries. When art and politics collide, it is usually the art that gets totaled; that time, against all the odds, it didn’t.

Still, beating the odds is not the same as a miracle. For a miracle, there is no explanation, and, except for one element, the Vietnam Memorial is explicable. There was a need to honor the soldiers who had gone to Vietnam; and there was a flourishing contemporary art movement, known as land art, that supplied the formal language for the piece that Lin designed. The people who planned the memorial—the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and the arts professionals it hired to run the design competition—had specified in advance many of the features for which Lin’s work is admired. They envisioned a mostly horizontal, contemplative work that did not disrupt the landscape of Constitution Gardens, the area in the Mall designated as the site. The competition guidelines stipulated that the monument “make no political statement regarding war and its conduct,” and that it include the names of all 57,661 Americans who died in the war. (More names have been added since.) Lin’s design was the unanimous choice of the competition jurors in part because it seemed so uncannily to fit the criteria the planners had in mind. What did seem to come out of the blue was the person behind Entry #1026 in the design competition, Maya Lin herself. Nobody had quite envisioned her.
....
The fiercest of the protesters was a veteran named Tom Carhart, who had been awarded two Purple Hearts. Carhart, too, had entered the design competition. He had no artistic training to speak of—he had gone to the library and checked out a book called Anyone Can Sculpt—but he believed that only a veteran could know what would constitute a proper memorial for veterans. He referred to Lin’s wall as an “open urinal,” and he is supposed to have suggested, for an inscription, the words “Designed by a gook.” In an oped piece in the Times, he described Lin’s memorial as “a black gash of shame.” He rallied a number of supporters. The National Review referred to Lin’s design as “Orwellian glop.” Tom Wolfe and Phyllis Schlafly called it “a monument to Jane Fonda.” Ross Perot said that it was “something for New York intellectuals.”...(more)

[dalton99a]

19. +1. A must read

[dalton99a]

10. Kick

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Lin

In 1981, at 21 and still an undergraduate student, Lin won a public design competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, to be built on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Her design, one of 1,422 submissions,[13] specified a black granite wall with the names of 57,939 fallen soldiers carved into its face (hundreds more have been added since the dedication),[14][15] to be v-shaped, with one side pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial and the other toward the Washington Monument.[14] The memorial was completed in late October 1982 and dedicated in November 1982.[16]

According to Lin, her intention was to create an opening or a wound in the earth to symbolize the pain caused by the war and its many casualties. "I imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up, and with the passage of time, that initial violence and pain would heal," she recalled.[17]

Her winning design was initially controversial for several reasons: its minimalist design,[18] her lack of professional experience, and her Asian ethnicity.[6][19][20] According to one writer, "Some viewed her selection as an affront. They could not understand how a woman, a youth, and a Chinese American could design a memorial for men, for soldiers, and for Americans."[21] Some objected to the exclusion of the surviving veterans' names, while others complained about the dark complexion of the granite, claiming that it expressed a negative attitude towards the Vietnam War. Lin defended her design before the US Congress, and a compromise was reached: Three Soldiers, a bronze depiction of a group of soldiers and an American flag were placed to the side of Lin's design.[10]

Notwithstanding the initial controversy, the memorial has become an important pilgrimage site for relatives and friends of the dead soldiers, many of whom leave personal tokens and mementos in memory of their loved ones.[22][23] In 2007, an American Institute of Architects poll ranked the memorial No. 10 on a list of America's Favorite Architecture, and it is now one of the most visited sites on the National Mall.[10] Furthermore, it now serves as a memorial for the veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.[10] There is a collection with items left since 2001 from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which includes handwritten letters and notes of those who lost loved ones during these wars. There is also a pair of combat boots and a note with it dedicated to the veterans of the Vietnam War, that reads "If your generation of Marines had not come home to jeers, insults, and protests, my generation would not come home to thanks, handshakes and hugs."[10]

Lin once said that if the competition had not been held "blind" (with designs submitted by name instead of number), she "never would have won" on account of her ethnicity. Her assertion is supported by the fact that she was harassed after her ethnicity was revealed, as when prominent businessman and later third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot called her an "egg roll."[24]

[Stinky The Clown]

11. Speaking only for myself, it is singularly most affecting monument in city of truly affecting monuments.

I was almost 10 years before i could bring myself to visit. 'I have benn back dozens of times.

To this day people leave mementoes at the base of the panel with a loved one's name. The Park Service has preserved and catalogued them all. To be sure, there are fewer now but what was left tells stories. years ago, visitors would stand on shoulders the make a rubbing high up on a panel.

As to the conventional statue that came later, while respectful, was completely unnecessary. The eloquence of that black scar in the Earth is perfect on its own.

[A HERETIC I AM]

15. I think it is a compliment. See below;

[A HERETIC I AM]

14. I think it is important to note that the statue nearby, of the 3 soldiers, are looking directly at the memorial....

as if they are looking for their lost comrades in arms.



The wall itself is incredibly powerful, but when you step back and look at it as a whole, with this statue included in the piece.....

It is heart wrenching.

[Joinfortmill]

26. The statue is so reflective of the era too. It was all so heartbreaking.

[Grins]

30. That piece of art was a compromise...

…a sop to those who HATED the wall. It was never in the plan. It was a way to appease them. To get them to shut up.

The artist is Frederick Hart. One of the nation’s best sculptors. Some of his work adorns the national cathedral.

[Duppers]

16. I visit the online Wall site

About once a year to pay some symbolic respect to a dear friend, Chester A. Molly, killed in '69.

[LudwigPastorius]

17. Some of the faces to go with the names

https://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/

[mcar]

18. I remember it

I was at the Wall earlier this year (my kids live in DC and we are there often).

There were several Honor Flight attendees there, along with other visitors. I hadn't been to the Vietnam Memorial for many years but the effect was the same.

It is an incredibly moving monument. Many of the Honor Flight attendees were in wheelchairs. There were many volunteers present to help them. There were photos, flowers, etc at different sections of the wall. People were taking etchings of names of those fallen.

It is an amazing piece of architecture - it's large, but you have to really look for it on the Mall. No conflict now on its existence.

[mopinko]

20. she broke the mold. til then such monuments minimized the toll.

the wall made the toll plain. no big phallus to stand in for multitudes.
every 1 accounted for.

dont remember where she was studying, but monument design was her field.
she’s done other amazing stuff since.

[Brother Buzz]

21. This dumb draftee visited it a week after they opened it to the public

My uncle dropped me off across the field from it. I had to trudge through a sea of mud created by all the people mucking it up the previous week and thinking it was perfect. It was dedicated in November, and I understood they would plant the permanent sod in the spring.

Lousy weather, and I had the place mostly to myself and my thoughts, which was way cool with me.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

22. I remember it very well.

I can't quite recall when I visited the wall, but I found myself in tears looking at it. Plus, the many, many mementos left in front of it every day. I believe the Park Service picks them up each day and puts them into some kind of warehouse.

[Sal_NV]

24. I've never visited the Wall, I just can't bring myself to do so,

too many names of fallen comrades.

[SCantiGOP]

25. My son is named after one of those on the wall

My best friend from 1st Grade. Got home from my Freshman year of college in 1970 and was met by my Mother crying at the door with news that he was dead.
He and I were like twins. Only difference was that I had the grades and the money to go to college and thus had a student deferment.
I didn’t like the design either when I read about it, but standing there in front of it is an emotional experience I can’t explain.

[Irish_Dem]

34. I just wrote a post below saying the same kind of thing.

It is hard to explain what it feels like being at the VN Memorial.
It is a unique experience.

I found the memorial utterly beautiful but filled with tragedy at the same.

Very sorry about best friend.
That was a very hard time for Americans.

[Paladin]

27. I certainly remember it.

Yet another pointless controversy, caused by that disgusting war. Thanks for nothing, Henry Kissinger.

[Chainfire]

29. The wall, like any piece of art or architecture, will always be loved by some and damned by others.

I look at some "modern" homes that are highly praised and think that the places look like a rich dentist's office, with none of the features that I consider to be warm and inviting as I think a home should be.

At the time that the wall was built, many veterans of that war were just glad to finally see that someone cared about the men who served, the men who were missing, the men who died and the men who lived broken.

I am a Vietnam war era vet, although not a war vet. I thought the design of the wall was very nice. I don't think that it required the addition of the more traditional statuary, but it didn't bother me. I never did get the "issue" of the woman who designed it being of Asian descent. But, then again, I think back of the hate for all things Asian, that my WWII Pacific combat vet uncles had when they returned from the war, so I realize how that may have been an issue to some; no matter how bigoted.

(The two uncles were both seriously wounded, one on Iwo Jima, the other on Okinawa. Both of them carried Japanese shrapnel and a hate of the Japanese people, and surprisingly the American Red Cross, to their graves. )

C'est la guerre

[Grins]

31. Conservatives HATED IT because it memorialized a war we lost!

And lacked the sweeping “GLORY!!!!” of war.

For which the nation got nothing but death. And the bill. And moral doubts about ourselves.

One of those was Ross Perot. Went out of his way to stop it.

I’m desperately waiting for the last book of Robert Caro’s masterpiece series on LBJ. The final book concentrates on Vietnam.

[Mysterian]

32. The Vietnam Memorial is incredibly moving, which is what art is supposed to do

I felt like I was walking into a grave and seeing all the names on the Wall made me feel very angry and sad. Brought this grown-ass man to tears.

[Irish_Dem]

33. I visited the Viet Nam memorial in DC and was astounded.

The pictures do not do it justice. And don't capture the feelings of everyone there.

I was prepared for a routine memorial in Wash DC, but the VN Memorial was the most emotional part
of my trip.

The perfectly shiny black wall, exquisite in design and appearance.
With rows and rows and rows of names, that go on forever.
It hits you in the gut.

All the visitors are silent, maybe a rare hushed tone. The emotionality was palpable from
the moment you enter the area, until the time you leave.

Families copying the name of a loved one by placing a piece of paper on the name, then
taking a pencil over the paper.

It was hard to take. But beautiful at the same time.

[SCantiGOP]

35. If I had to pick the one element that was most surprising

All of the noise and activity going on in the Mall in the center of the DC seems to disappear when you walk down into the memorial. It does seem to be hushed and quiet.

[Irish_Dem]

36. Yes exactly.

The quiet hits you too.

You are walking in from hustle bustle noise, normal activity and then you are
suddenly in another world. Transported.

The wall was beautiful but tragic.
The emotion all around was so strong.
Deep sadness and grieving feelings. Quiet.

Everyone felt it. When I was there it was very hushed and quiet.

[dalton99a]

37. +1. I don't know anyone who wasn't moved by it.