{"id":269,"date":"2017-09-26T15:54:05","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T15:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/?p=269"},"modified":"2017-09-27T16:45:33","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T16:45:33","slug":"vietnam-veterans-memorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/vietnam-veterans-memorial\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnam Veterans Memorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Documents that Changed the World: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982<\/h1>\n
\n

Peter Kelley<\/a><\/p>\n

UW News<\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\"Visitors<\/a><\/p>\n

Visitors touch names and leave gifts at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 2006.Wikimedia commons <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As people walk down toward it, the dark structure bearing 58,272 names prompts memories, prayers and quiet tears. Visitors take photos, leave flowers and gifts \u2014 a surprise to the planners \u2014 and even make rubbings of names to take home.<\/p>\n

The Vietnam Veteran\u2019s Memorial<\/a> in Washington, D.C., designed by then-architect student Maya Lin<\/a> and installed in 1982, is many things to many people.<\/p>\n

To Joe Janes<\/a> of the Information School, the son of a World War II veteran and creator of the Documents that Changed the World podcast series, the memorial, the discussions it sparked and the hearts it helps heal \u2014 \u201cthe totality of the wall\u201d he says \u2013 together comprise an important document.<\/p>\n

The \u201csimple, stark, elegant and ultimately beautiful\u201d memorial, he says, \u201cshowed us more about ourselves and how we remember than anyone would have imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Documents that Changed the World:
\nThe Vietnam War Memorial, 1982<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n

In the podcasts, Janes explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents both famous and less known. UW Today presents these occasionally, and all of the podcasts are available online at the Information School website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He said he got the idea for this installment while watching a PBS documentary about the National Mall, which mentioned the famous memorial.<\/p>\n

\u201cIntrigued, I began to dig into it,\u201d he says, and wound up wondering, \u201cHow in the world did they ever get this thing built? So many difficulties, so much opposition, the fundraising and Maya Lin\u2019s design, not to mention her [Chinese] heritage \u2014 and the contentiousness of the war itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Veterans Appreciation Week
\nNov. 1-12, 2015<\/strong>
\nEvents across campus.
\nLearn more online.<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n

Lin\u2019s design was chosen from among 1,421 anonymous entries in a unanimous vote by an \u201cexpert\u201d jury that, Janes notes, included not a single veteran. Her submission, number 1026, described the proposed memorial as \u201ca rift in the earth.\u201d Later, Janes notes, the memorial was also called \u201ca black gash of shame.\u201d Lin did the work for a class project for which, though it seems incredible in hindsight, she got a B. The 58-272 names are carved in granite from India \u2014 offers of stone from Canada and Sweden were not accepted as those nations had shielded American draft evaders during the conflict.<\/p>\n

Janes was touched by the stories of what people did when the memorial opened: \u201cSeeing themselves, as intended, in the highly polished surface, reaching out to touch names, making rubbings of them (less expected) and of course leaving objects behind (not at all expected).\u201d<\/p>\n

The first of those offerings, Janes says, was said to have been added by a naval officer who threw his brother\u2019s Purple Heart medal into the trench where concrete was being poured for the memorial\u2019s foundation. Many thousands of gifts have been left, Janes says in the podcast, and most end up at the Museum and Archaeological Regional Storage Facility in Maryland.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany come without explanation or names attached, so we are left to wonder. They all mean something to somebody, though without context or purpose, they\u2019re adrift in our collective consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

But above all, there are the names, \u201ceach one documenting a life gone or missing,\u201d Janes says.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps, just perhaps,\u201d he adds, \u201cthe Wall achieved its purposes, of reconciliation about a war that divided this country so deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Documents that Changed the World: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982 Peter Kelley UW News Visitors touch names and leave gifts at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 2006.Wikimedia commons As people walk down toward it, the dark structure bearing 58,272 names prompts memories, prayers and quiet tears. Visitors take photos, leave flowers and…<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/vetlife\/appreciation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}