Vietnam Veterans Memorial. First proposed in 1979 by the
Vietnam War veteran Jan Scruggs, this memorial, despite initial controversy, emerged soon after its completion in 1982 as one of the most visited and culturally influential public monuments of the late twentieth century. In 1980, Congress authorized the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, headed by Scruggs, to raise the necessary funds and oversee the construction on the Mall in
Washington, D.C., of a memorial that incorporated the name of every U.S. serviceperson killed during the war. The fund soon raised the ten million dollars needed for a monument but encountered opposition over its choice of design. Maya Lin, a Yale architectural student who won an open competition, proposed a memorial consisting of two stark black marble walls that touched at a 125‐degree angle and sloped into the ground. Many political conservatives denounced the proposal as an antimonument and demanded a “traditional” statue and flagpole. James Watt, secretary of the interior in the Ronald
Reagan administration, initially refused to authorize construction of the memorial but eventually compromised, accepting Lin's monument after the fund agreed to add a flagpole and a statue. Frederick Hart's more traditional statue of three soldiers was unveiled in 1984. In 1989, responding to demands by female veterans and women's organizations, Congress mandated that a sculptural figure be added to the memorial site to commemorate the contribution of servicewomen.
Many Vietnam veterans attended ceremonies dedicating the memorial in 1982 and embraced the memorial as a site for emotional catharsis. In the 1980s and 1990s, many visitors left letters and objects mourning the dead named on the walls. Hailed as an aesthetic triumph, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial influenced scores of local and state war memorials erected in the 1980s and 1990s.
Bibliography
Jan C. Scruggs and and Joel L. Swerdlow , To Heal a Nation: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1985.
G. Kurt Piehler , Remembering War the American Way, 1995.
G. Kurt Piehler