Granite Tears

 "In honor of the men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States who served in the Vietnam War. The names of those who gave their lives and of those who remain missing are inscribed in the order they were taken from us."

- preamble of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

It is a wall that has stood the test of time.

In November of this year, 2006, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial -The Wall- will receive recognition from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) with the presentation of the 2007 AIA Twenty-Five Year Award to the memorial. The award is given for architectural design that has stood the test of time for 25 years.

"Maya Lin's design was controversial 25 years ago, but now is the standard by which all new memorials are judged," said Jan C. Scruggs, founder and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, incorporated in 1979 by Scruggs and a group of Vietnam veterans in Washington, D.C., wanted Vietnam veterans to have a tangible symbol of recognition from American society to honor the courage, sacrifice and devotion of all who answered the call to serve during the Vietnam War.

They knew from the outset that whatever design would ultimately be chosen, four basic criteria had to be met:

1) It had to be reflective and contemplative in character;

2) It had to harmonize with its surroundings, especially the neighboring memorials;

3) It would contain the names of all who died or remain missing;

4) It make no political statement about the war.

By separating the issue of those who served in Vietnam from that of U.S. policy in the war, the group hoped to begin a process of national reconciliation.

To find a design, the Memorial Fund hosted the largest design competition in U.S. history, with 1,421 designs submitted. Unanimous approval was given to the entry from 21-year old Yale undergraduate Maya Lin, whose idea was a black granite wall with the names inscribed by date of casualty. Lin conceived her design as creating a park within a park, a quiet, protected place unto itself, yet harmonious with the site, two acres of land on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

To achieve this effect, Lin chose polished black granite for the walls. Its mirror-like surface reflects the surrounding trees, lawns, monuments and the people searching for names.

The memorial's walls point to the Washington Monument to the east, and the Lincoln Memorial to the west.

The more than 58,000 names are inscribed in chronological order of the date of the casualty, which, according to Lin's design submission, would show the war as a series of individual human sacrifices, and give each name a special place in history.

"The names would become the memorial," Lin said.

From Congressional authorization of a site in Constitution Gardens near the Lincoln Memorial in July 1, 1980, to announcement of the design competition in the fall of that year, to selection of Lin's design on May 1, 1981, to the dedication of the installed monument on November 13, 1982, only 28 months passed.

But no one really stops to think how the monument actually came "to be." Jan Scruggs conceived the idea. Maya Lin designed it. But who actually "created" it? The story of the actual carving of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is, literally, an unknown tale of lives changed, and wounds healed.

(The following article, with some modifications, is reprinted by permission of LM Logan, and is the only recounting of the carving of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. This story has appeared in print only one other time, in the November 1992 issue of Memphis Magazine, in honor of The Wall's 10th anniversary.)

Memories Made in Memphis

In 1992 America dedicated the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. In the ensuing years few monuments have had such a profound effect on veterans, their families, and the nation as a whole.

But few people know that "The Wall," as the monument has come to be known, was crafted secretly in Memphis by Glasscraft, Inc., a division of Memphis' Binswanger Glass Company.

"Heading the team was a ‘straight arrow, coat-and-tie' mechanical engineer and an artist who was an active war protester," recalled Bryan Carter, the "coat-and-tie" half of the research and development team that spearheaded the project. "Two intense people coming together, under intense pressure, to create this monument. There were lots of sparks."

A Memphian for more than a decade at that time, Carter was working for Glasscraft in 1982 and still owns and operates Glassical, Inc., a Memphis company specializing in glass etching.

The other half of the team was artist Candy McKee Loescher, a graduate of Memphis College of Art, who soon after moved to Pennsylvania.

In 1982, the nation had still not fully accepted the Vietnam War and its participants, much less a national monument to those veterans, said Carter. So work on the memorial was conducted in secret.

"We worked in a huge old warehouse on Farmville Road, out in the boonies," he said. "The building didn't even have hot water."

The project remained a secret from the Memphis media and the public until the day before completion.

Etching the original 57,939 names in black granite required an incredible combination of engineering precision and artistic inspiration.

Along with their team of 29 craftspeople, Carter and Loescher etched 144 stone panels of various heights, each weighing up to a ton.

The team members all volunteered for the job, vowing to tell no one, not even their families, about the project. Among the members were a Vietnam veteran, and several family members of veterans.

Some of the challenges the team worked out were whether the names on each stone could be read from any angle, at any time of day, under any weather conditions.

And the stone itself had to be perfect; any unevenness in the surface would render the names illegible.

The stone chosen by Maya Lin for the monument was black granite from Bangalore, India, one of only three places in the world where enough stone could be quarried.

The stone was shipped from India to Barre, Vermont, for cutting and fabrication, then to Memphis.

To compound matters, each stone was shipped from Vermont, in random order. Upon arrival in Memphis Carter and his team had to determine which stone they had, where it fit in the monument schematic, and then match the proper list of names to be etched on the stone.

Carter had only enough stone for the monument, plus two small test stones about three feet by four feet to use for experimentation with the etching process. He knew there could be no mistakes because no stone could be replaced.

All the panels, some weighing several tons, were moved by hand, one at a time, using special metal pallets that Carter designed. A stone was trundled from the rear of the warehouse, around a corner, into a tiny darkroom. There each stone was moved from the pallets to a work table, spread with a specially developed photo emulsion, covered with a negative of the names for each block, and exposed to ultraviolet light, transposing the photographic image onto the stone.

The granite was then sandblasted, the emulsion washed off, the stone loaded back onto the pallet, carted back into the warehouse, where another block was loaded.

"It could take thirty minutes or three days to level each stone for the etching process," said Carter. "We didn't make any mistakes. That's why we took so many pains to be absolutely correct before any actual etching was done. There was no stone to spare for any corrections. We had just enough to finish the project."

The job was completed in just 90 days, with one shift working 14 to 16 hours a day. When Carter and his team had finished etching the final names, they broke the story to the Memphis media the day before the stones were to be transported to their final resting site.

One of the truckers hired to transport the finished monument to Washington, D.C., was a Vietnam veteran himself. When he began loading the blocks, he recognized names of friends who had died beside him in combat.

"He broke down and cried for two and a half hours, and then he asked us to call, regardless of where he was in the U.S., when the next load was ready to haul," said Carter.

"You know how, when you reach a point in time where you have to do a certain thing, even if it means losing everything else? Well, I was at that point with this project," recalled Carter. "It was a period of intense emotion, intense concentration and pressure for me, and for the others involved. It was one of the most trying times of my life, yet one of the most passionate, too."

Our nation honors the courage, sacrifice and devotion to duty and country of its Vietnam veterans. This memorial was built with private contributions from the American people. November 11, 1982.

- final statement on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

To pay for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the VVMF raised nearly $9,000,000 entirely through private contributions from corporations, foundations, unions, veterans and civic organizations, and from more than 275,000 individual Americans. This remains the only American monument of its kind paid for entirely by private donations. No federal funds were used.

The Memorial was designed by American-born Maya Ying Lin, whose parents fled China when Mao-Tse-tung took control in 1940. Lin's name appears on a panel at the apex of the curb along the top of the Memorial, along with the names of the officers of the VVMF, architects, etc.

After choosing Lin's design in 1981, Congress, bowing to considerable public outcry over the design selection and Lin's Chinese heritage, determined in January 1982 that a flagstaff and figurative sculpture depicting fighting men in Vietnam would be added to the memorial site. Washington sculptor Frederick Hart was selected to design the sculptor of the servicemen.

On Oct. 113, 1982, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts approved the addition of a flag staff and recommended it be grouped with the sculpture to enhance the entrance to the memorial site.

The American flag flies from a 60 foot pole around the clock in honor of the men and women listed on The Wall. The VVMF paid for the flagpole from contributions it received from the American Legion.

At the base of the staff are the seals of the five military services (Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy). On Memorial Day, Veteran's Day and POW/MIA Recognition Day, the POW/MIA flag is flown on the same staff underneath the United State flag.

The life-size sculpture was installed in the fall of 1984, and on Nov. 11, 1984, all three units (the wall, the statue, and the flag) were combined. The VVMF officially transferred control of the Memorial to the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, and it became a national monument.