Congress authorized the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to be constructed in the Constitution Gardens of Washington, D.C., on July 1, 1980.
That fall a contest, open to United States citizens over eighteen, was announced to find a design for the memorial. A jury of eight anonymous artists voted on the 1,421 entries submitted. The winner was, then twenty-one year old college student, Maya Ying Lin of Ohio.
Ground was formally broken on March 26, 1982, with the life-sized sculpture of the servicemen, designed by Frederick Hart, being installed in the fall of 1984. Once it had been completed, President Ronald Regan formally accepted the memorial on behalf of the nation on November 11, 1984.
In 1979, when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Inc. decided to petition for a memorial, they set out four criteria: the monument had to be reflective and contemplative, it had to blend with its surrounding, it had to contain the names of all those who died or were missing, and finally it could make no political statement about the war.
The design Maya Ying Lin came up with did all those things. On the polished black granite of the monument are the 58,209 names of those who died during the war, listed in order from the first casualty to the last. Included in this number are the names of the 1,150 people who were not confirmed dead and were listed as missing and unaccounted for at the end of the war.
Those confirmed dead have a diamond placed by their name on the wall. Those who were reported missing bear a cross next to their name. If they return alive, a circle is placed around the cross to symbolize life. If their remains are returned or their death is confirmed, a diamond is placed around the cross.
Visitors leave thousands of mementos and flowers at the memorial each year as a remembrance to those who are gone or missing. Every night members of the National Park Service collect the mementos left and deliver them to the Smithsonian Museum who displays them on a rotating basis in the National History Museum.
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