When Jan Scruggs, armed with his graduate school research into the psychosocial effect of the Vietnam War on military veterans, started his campaign to build a national monument to them, he envisioned it to be a therapeutic place.
It was 1977. The wounds of the country, and of the veterans of the controversial war, were still raw.
“The idea was that this could be a symbol of healing for a nation that was very bitterly divided by the Vietnam War,” said Scruggs, a Vietnam veteran himself. “This is just something I had to do. I knew that it was the right thing, and I would do anything in order to get it done.”
Scruggs did it in record time. He wrote an editorial for The Washington Post, testified in front of Congress and started a memorial fund in 1979 with $2,800 from his own bank account.
By 1980, legislation to provide land for the monument on the National Mall had won the approval of Congress and President Jimmy Carter’s signature, and the memorial fund had attracted more than $8 million in donations.
The monument’s design proved more contentious. Yale architecture student Maya Lin had won a public competition with her design of an angular, black, stone wall that seemed to descend into the earth from either end, with the names of the troops who had died in service etched into its panels.
It was dramatic, it was different, and it was very unpopular with some congressmen and veterans groups, who rallied for a more traditional tribute. They were awarded one — the “Three Servicemen” statue that stands at the wall’s western ramp — and the project moved forward.
The wall, now the most visited monument in Washington, will turn 25 years old next week.
Together, veterans and their friends and relatives have left more than 100,000 items in front of it over the years.
“It’s a living memorial — it’s a living collection,” said Duery Felton Jr., a curator for the Landover warehouse where those items are stored. “No one foresaw that there would one day be things being left by the children and grandchildren of Vietnam veterans.”
Felton has seen diplomas, death telegrams and prom shoes, as well as the kinds of things he sometimes refers to as “dreams deferred” — champagne goblets, or baby pictures with “this should have been our child” scribbled on them.
“People look at this as being gloom and doom, but it’s really a celebration of life,” Felton said. “We have plaques that say ‘Sarge, because of you I’m alive,’ and then we have notes from medical corpsmen questioning whether or not they did enough to save people’s lives.”
Terry Wendt, a veteran from Virginia Beach, visited the wall Friday to look for the names of his old Naval Academy classmates. He sat next to two friends — one the son of a veteran, one a former war protester — who, along with Wendt, became part of an informal Vietnam veterans support group that met weekly for 15 years.
“This is one of the most powerful places I’ve ever been,” said Wendt, gazing at the panel that bears his classmate Kenneth Norton’s name. “It’s a very emotional place. It just is.”
For Scruggs, who is busy planning a new, underground memorial center across the street from the wall, the time before the monument feels like ancient history.
“After 25 years, it’s almost like it’s always been there,” he said. “It’s really just an accepted part of the nation’s landscape.”
