Introduction to the Project

 On Nov. 13, 1982, the Maya Lin-designed Vietnam Veterans Memorial was unveiled in Washington, D.C.

The design - Lin was an architectural student when her design was selected - had been the subject of controversy for months, the sort of controversy that had engulfed the war itself during the decade leading to the fall of Saigon in 1975.

When open to the public on Veterans Day 25 years ago, however, the memorial brought a catharsis of raw emotion that continues to this day, as is understood by anybody who has visited the traveling replica of what is known as "The Wall" can attest.

The Feb. 27, 2007 arrival of "The Wall That Heals" in Beacon Hill was the jumping off point for The Star/Times special section, Reflections on the Wall.

The experience of watching the solemn procession of folks standing, looking up for familiar names, weeping and clutching closely their fellow human beings was a spark for this tribute.

What follows is a tribute to the men and women from Northwest Florida, from small, rural towns, who ignored the politics and the protests evoked by what became an unpopular war that roiled America because their country called.

They were some of the best and brightest of their generation and proved the axiom that freedom is not free.

That "healing" wall and those 50,000-plus names provide the necessary evidence.

Of men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice so that even those who spit on their brothers in arms, heckled and degraded them upon their return from war, had the freedom to dismiss the sacrifice and engagement in which they defended this country's ideals.

"The Wall" was the long-overdue homecoming so many deserved; the embrace from country so many needed.

This special section is a humble attempt to capture that sense of time and just who these men and women were, who left behind mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, to enter the pitch of war.

In a broader sense, though, this section serves as a tribute to all those who don the uniform, who go to war and never come back, who go to war and return never to be the same again.

It is a humble attempt in the sense Abraham Lincoln outlined in a few brief sentences more than 140 years ago while standing on a soggy field at Gettysburg:

"We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract."

We salute those who consecrated ground half a world away, those from Northwest Florida who answered a call.

No retreat, no surrender.