Metro:
Located between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., the dramatic and somber Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in November 1982. The privately financed monument was officially accepted by Pres. Ronald Reagan on Nov. 11, 1984, when he signed a document transferring the memorial to the U.S. Park Service. The V-shaped memorial consists of two 250-ft walls of polished black granite sloping to the ground from an apex of 10 feet. The walls are inscribed with the names of the more than 58,000 U.S. men and women who were killed or missing in the Vietnam War. Privately funded through the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund headed by Jan Scruggs, the memorial was designed by Maya Ying Lin, a Yale architecture student whose design was chosen over 1,421 others submitted in the public competition. To ease a controversy aroused by the nontraditional appearance of the memorial, a sculpture of three servicemen and a flag were placed off to the side.
There is a directory (the names on the wall are in chronological order of death) and from 8am to midnight there is always someone there to talk to and help locate a particular name. Flashlights are provided in the pm.
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