Introduction

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is in Washington DC, and although it is in the same vicinity as other national monuments, it bears no resemblance to any of them.  It cannot be seen from a distance like the graceful Washington Monument because it barely rises out of the ground, and it is not marble, or even white.  It is black.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is different in appearance, but just as beautiful as any memorial ever built.  It is constructed of black granite panels in the form of two walls that form a “V” that are below grade level at the apex.

This is the first national monument that can claim to be different and yet still respectable, and unlike any other memorial of its magnitude, it contains the names of every man and woman who was either killed or missing in action during the war.  That amounts to fifty eight thousand names, etched into seventy granite panels. 

The architect of this design was a 21 year old Yale student named Maya Lin who entered it in a competition along with another 1,420 designs submitted.  The competition was arranged by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, a non profit organization that set the criteria that the designs had to meet, and also independently raised the $8,000,000 to fund the memorial’s construction.  Lin was an architectural student who had a background of studying memorials, and had spent time Britain, France and Greece pursuing her passion studying examples of architecture.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was completed in 1982, and was dedicated on Veterans Day the same year.  It has become the most visited memorial in the United States with almost two and a half million visitors per year.  For those unable to visit the monument, a 3/5 replica wall travels the country on a tractor trailer that converts into a museum.