Information courtsey: Jim Rapp
Jim is a life member of Post PA-52 in Meadville, PA
Fly your flag today! Special tribute to our veterans!
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The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was selected in 1981 from a nationwide competition conducted by The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund from a total of 1,421 entries.
There was a panel of 8 judges (internationaly recognized)in fields of architecture, sculpture, and landscape architecture who judged the entries. Five days of deliberation a unanimous vote was made.
Maya Lin, a 21 year old architecture student from Yale University, was given a design problem in one of her classes along with her classmates. They went to the site to where the memorial was to be placed to see what design would be appropriate.
"I thought about what death is, what a loss is," she said. "A sharp pain that lessens with time, but never quite heals over. The idea occurred to me there on the site. Take a knife and cut open the earth, and with time, the grass will heal it."
Her design of the black granite wall is 493 feet long, rising from the ground to 10 feet in height. It's apex at the center is at 125.12 degree angle. On the highly polished black granite panels would be the names of over 58,000 men and women in the U.S. armed forces who were killed or missing in action.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is one of the most visited monuments in our nations capital. In the words of the judges who selected the design, it is "a place of quiet reflection, and a tribute to those who served their nation in difficult times. All who come here can find it a place of healing."
We thank you God, for the care
that did not come to try us,
The burden that we did not bear,
The trouble that passed by us,
The task we did not cherish,
The friend who did not prove untrue,
The joy that did not perish.
We thank you for the blinding storm
That did not lose its swelling,
And for the sudden blight of harm
That came not nigh our dwelling.
We thank you for the dart unsped,
The bitter word unspoken,
The grave unmade, the tear unshed,
The heart-tie still unbroken.
--Author Unknown--
Gettysburg Address
Delivered on the 19th Day of November, 1863
Cemetery Hill, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this
continent a new Nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now, we are engaged in a
great Civil War, testing whether that Nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that
field as a final resting-place for those who 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 power to add or
detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
living, rather to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us;
that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that this
Nation, under GOd, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that
government of the People by the People and for the People shall not
perish from the earth."
- Abraham Lincoln -