VETERANS DAY An unpopular war produces a popular Vietnam memorial

The monument receives more visitors every year than the Lincoln Memorial or the White House.
By CRAIG LINDER
STATES NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- The ground is wounded here, its smooth contours jarred, a deep gash torn into it. Covered with scabs of polished black granite, it will never fully heal.
For 20 years it has stood in the nation's capital as a place to ponder, reflect, contemplate and honor the Americans who gave their lives in one of the nation's bloodiest conflicts.
This granite-lined wound is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the nation's tribute to the more than 58,000 members of the armed forces who lost their lives fighting in Southeast Asia.
The memorial will turn 20 this year, marking two decades since the first visitor walked along the narrow stone path that lines its trademark black wall and considered the vastness of the Vietnam War's human toll.
It's a memorial unlike any other in Washington.
Where the Washington Monument towers over the city, The Wall recedes into the earth. Where the Lincoln Memorial is built on a massive scale, The Wall exists on a human level. Where the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial grabs visitors with its waterfalls and pools, The Wall is compelling in its simplicity.
It's also the memorial that brings out the greatest emotion.
Even the children are quiet here, the shouts and laughs common at other Washington tourist sites muffled, conversations hushed. Without being told, visitors realize that this memorial is different from the others.
As they file past the 140 granite panels, they often stop, staring at a name that has significance to them or one that has simply caught their eye. Many cry, some sniffle, all are somber.
It's clear as they pass that for many Americans, The Wall is a difficult place to visit. Many still have strong feelings about their nation's involvement in Vietnam; others are drawn by memories of friends or family lost in battle.
For others, it is the architecture of The Wall that makes the visit haunting. As the path that lines the memorial descends farther and farther into the earth, the black panels lined with names grow taller, eventually looming 10 feet at their highest point.
At the apex of the structure, the point where its two wings meet, visitors are submerged, overwhelmed in a sea of the dead. Then, as they turn to face The Wall and read the list of names, the polished granite reflects their images back at them.
There, reflected on the dead, is an image of life.
It's a haunting experience, even for those who have visited the memorial dozens of time before.
But still they come, more than a million every year, more than the number who visit the Lincoln Memorial or the White House. The nation's least popular war has spawned its capital's most popular monument.
Leaving something behind
Part of that popularity comes from the way people interact with The Wall. Many visitors come looking to learn, to grieve, to pray. Others come with something to leave behind.
Since the moment a Purple Heart was placed into the wet cement that would become part of the memorial's foundation, The Wall has become a place for people to leave mementos, reminders of the people who they have lost and whose names line the wall.
They leave remembrances: flowers and flags, teddy bears and photographs, medals and dog tags, letters and cards. They also leave other items: musical instruments, varsity letters, shoes, tennis rackets, records, each part of the paraphernalia of daily life.
With its names chiseled in half-inch high lettering and neatly arranged by date of death, The Wall imposes a uniformity of sorts on the men and women represented on its slabs. It equalizes them all, regardless of their rank or race or class or age.
The items left behind take away some of that uniformity. Which name was it on panel 19E that led someone to leave a photograph of a classic car? Was it his first car? One that he dreamed of buying once he returned home? Which name on panel 5E was the sealed Hallmark card left for? What does it say? Who is it from?
The only ones who know are the donors and the dead.
Twice a day, the rangers and volunteers assigned to this National Park Service site gather the items left at the foot of The Wall, wrap them in plastic and mark them with the panel at which they were left.
Every memento is taken to a massive park service warehouse just outside Washington where they become part of a collection.
The collection isn't open to the public, but when the Smithsonian Institution displayed some of the items to mark The Wall's 10th anniversary in 1991, its National Museum of American History was overwhelmed with visitors.
Taking something away
Some visitors to The Wall come with no remembrances to leave behind but leave with new remembrances.
Visitors search The Wall's 140 panels, seeking out the name of a friend, a relative, a person from their hometown or an otherwise anonymous serviceman chiseled into The Wall.
With a pencil in hand, they lean up against The Wall and rub the name they sought onto a slip of paper, marking a life in graphite.
That The Wall would mark its anniversary this year is improbable. Though Washington is a city that lines its streets with monuments, its myriad planning bodies and councils and stakeholders make the construction of tributes a near impossible task.
The Washington Monument, after all, took a century to complete. The Lincoln Memorial did not open for a half-century after Lincoln's death. The Korean War, which started 14 years before Vietnam, did not receive a monument until 1995. There still is no tribute to World War II on the National Mall.
But that record didn't dissuade Jan C. Scruggs. A Labor Department employee who was living in Maryland, Scruggs had served as an Army rifleman in Vietnam and was haunted by memories of friends who had been killed or injured in battle.
One night in early 1979, Scruggs saw "The Deer Hunter," the Oscar-winning film that follows several friends from a Pennsylvania mill town as they fight in Vietnam. The film brought his memories rushing forward, and after a night alone, Scruggs dedicated himself to finding a way to honor Vietnam veterans.
He created an organization to solicit contributions for the memorial and built support on Capitol Hill for a bill that authorized the memorial. Congress assigned the memorial to Constitution Gardens, a wooded, 50-acre portion of the National Mall that sits just a few hundred yards from the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.
It was a prime site for a memorial, but the organizers had no design for one. All Scruggs knew was that it should include the name of every American killed or missing in Vietnam.
He and other organizers turned to the nation's artists, launching a competition to find the right design for the memorial site. More than 1,400 designs were submitted, including some from the nation's best-known artists.
In the end, though, it was Maya Lin, an unknown 21-year-old Yale architecture student who developed the winning design.
Her design was as controversial as it was striking. A group led by Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot sought to scuttle Lin's plan. They derided her design with names. The Black Gash of Shame, they called it. The Black Hole of Calcutta. An open urinal. A tombstone. A flagless pit.
Work on the monument couldn't begin until the conflict was settled, and neither side was willing to compromise. After months of wrangling, an agreement emerged: Lin's wall would be built, as would a statue of three servicemen and a flagpole.
Now, 20 years after it was built, it seems hard to believe that the striking twin walls of black granite almost never were. They stand there today on the National Mall, a credit to Scruggs' dedication, an honor to Lin's vision, but most of all, a tribute to the American men and women who lost their lives in a far-off place called Vietnam.