In The News: Past and Present

 

Newsweek    
"Where Memory Endures"
by Cathleen McGuigan		   February 12, 2007
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is so iconic, you tend to forget the political tempest that surrounded it more than 25 years ago. After the design—by a then-unknown Yale undergrad named Maya Lin—beat out 1,420 contenders in a blind competition, big shots such as Ross Perot, as well as 27 Republican congressmen, tried to block the starkly elegant plan. Critics claimed the gentle V where its two long walls met was a coded peace sign; what Lin called "a rift in the earth" one brigadier general termed "a scar of shame." Some vets hated it, too, so a conventional bronze statue of three soldiers and an American flag were installed nearby. But even from the start, the public seemed to embrace the memorial. Today it's the most-visited monument in Washington.  Read More

 
SPEECH: President Ronald Reagan    
Remarks at the Veterans Day Ceremony
at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial		  

November 11, 1988
President Reagan spoke at 11:45 a.m. He was introduced by John Wheeler, chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Wheeler gave the president a bronze replica of the memorial's "Three Fighting Men" statue.  Read Speech

 
TIME    
"‘Hush, Timmy--This Is Like a Church’"
By Kurt Andersen		  

April 15, 1985
The veteran and his wife had already stared hard at four particular names. Now the couple walked slowly down the incline in front of the wall, looking at rows of hundreds, thousands more, amazed at the roster of the dead. "All the names," she said quietly, sniffling in the early-spring chill. "It's unreal, how many names." He said nothing. "You have to see it to believe it," she said.  Read More

 
TIME    
"Healing Viet Nam's Wounds"
by Alessandra Stanley		  

November 26, 1984
The posture of the three figures is slack, the battle dress disheveled. The faces are young and tired. The eyes are wary. There is nothing heroic about the bronze men, but together they suggest the wordless fellowship that is forged only in combat. And there can be no mistaking where they fought: Viet Nam.  Read More

 
SPEECH: President Ronald Reagan    
Remarks at Dedication Ceremonies
for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Statue		  

November 11, 1984
President Reagan spoke at 4:30 p.m. at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. The "Three Fighting Men" statue by sculptor Frederick Hart was dedicated at the ceremony. Following his remarks, the president signed documents transferring the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to the federal government.  Read Speech

 
TIME    
"A Homecoming at Last"
By Kurt Andersen		  

November 22, 1982
One man knelt, cried for a minute and left behind his campaign medals: Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit. Another, like many of the veterans in olive drab, added his name to an ad hoc battalion sheet someone had staked in the ground; he stood back, saluted, saw his reflection in the polished black stone, then let out a kind of agonized whimper before two buddies led him away. An Illinois mother ran her fingers once, twice across the name JERRY DANAY, who was killed by a rocket. "It makes me feel closer," Helen Danay said as she remembered her son.  Read More

 
TIME    
"Tribute to Sacrifice"
By Hugh Sidey		  

February 22, 1982
Lovely irony. Like life. An infantry corporal with nine pieces of shrapnel in his back carried on the fight for three years, pressing, retreating, always recovering and trudging wearily ahead, overcoming protesting generals (Air Force Ace Robinson Risner) and multimillionaires (Ross Perot) and politicians (Congressman Phil Crane) and pundits (Columnist Pat Buchanan) and bureaucrats (Secretary of the Interior James Watt).  Read More

 
TIME    
"Creating Good-Looking Objects That Work"
by Wolf Von Eckardt		  

January 4, 1982
Most 1981 design was not bad. It was awful. But the few new urban places, buildings, industrial products and graphics that were good, were very, very good. The awfulness was not just a matter of bad taste. A little kitsch in dull surroundings can be as endearing as a whiff of horse manure in the city. The dismaying pollution of the cityscape, like that of the language, stems from illiterate and, worse, semiliterate pretentiousness.  Read More

 
TIME    
"Storm over a Viet Nam Memorial"
by Wolf Von Eckardt		  

November 9, 1981
Though Viet Nam veterans never got big parades, by next year they should at least be able to dedicate a memorial to their fallen comrades. But as with so much else touched by that tragic war, the memorial's eloquently understated design is stirring controversy.  Read More

 
TIME    
"Honored At Last"  

July 14, 1980

The ceremony in the sunny Rose Garden was brief and subdued, but it was one of the most moving—and symbolic—that President Carter has conducted during his term in office. The event reflected the slowly evolving trend toward coming to terms with the Viet Nam War and recognizing the sacrifice of those who served in that corrosive conflict. Carter spoke before signing a bill providing land for a memorial to the Americans who had died in Southeast Asia. Said he: "A long and painful process has brought us to this moment. Our nation was divided by this war. For too long, we tried to put that division behind us by forgetting the Viet Nam War. In the process, we ignored those who bravely answered their nation's call. We are ready at last to acknowledge more deeply the debt which we can never fully pay to those who served."  Read More
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