I wanted to honestly present that time and reflect upon our relationship to war and to loss,” she wrote on her website of the design. “I wanted to say something about making this memorial personal, human, and focused on the individual experience. Her design of two black walls rising from the depths of the earth with the names of those who died during the war aimed to create a “personal” connection. ![]() The committee chose the design of 21 year old Maya Lin, then an undergraduate at Yale, for the project. With 1,421 entries, Doubek says “it turned out to be the largest open design competition ever held in the United States or Europe.” The VVMF had to use an aircraft hangar at Andrews Air Force base to display the designs for the judges to view the entries. “We that the fair way to do it, we’d have national competition.” “Since there were so many people inquiring, there's so many people out there who are already wanting to offer their services to design it,” said Doubek. On July 1, 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed the legislation that provided the two acres on the National Mall where the memorial currently sits.īut the work was far from over then they had to design the memorial. Americans sent over $8 million dollars to build the memorial. John Warner helped the VVMF raise the original seed money, but the rest of the funding for the project was raised by American contributions through a direct mail campaign. And then of course, we had to begin to raise funds.” ![]() “So we had an act, a bill introduced in the U.S. And fortunately, Senator Mathias of Maryland was willing to introduce that act of Congress because he said that while he opposed the war, he had always supported the veterans,” recalled Doubek. “To build a memorial on the mall, we found out we needed an act of Congress. The idea to build a monument was originally proposed by combat veteran Jan Scruggs, who partnered with lawyer and fellow veteran Robert Doubek to start the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF). While the wall has become a staple to visitors from across the country and around the world, the memorial was only erected 40 years ago, marking its anniversary this Veterans Day.
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