Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Located on a gently rolling stretch of the National Mall in Washington, an imperial city filled with extraordinary sights, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is as essential a place to visit as the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial, between which it gracefully unfolds. Few Americans would dispute that today; 11 years after it was erected, this gravely beautiful work of art ranks as the single greatest monument to have been designed in our time. Its two walls of highly polished black granite reach out into the earth in a wide V shape, about 450 feet long, creating a sense of gentle enclosure for private contemplation within a communal public space.

WASHINGTON -- President Obama opened the Memorial Day holiday with a weekly address that reflected on the meaning of the holiday. “Memorial Day is more than a three-day weekend,” Obama said in the address, which is posted online every Saturday. “In town squares and national cemeteries, in public services and moments of quiet reflection, we will honor those who loved their country enough to sacrifice their own lives for it.” Obama and his wife Michelle will spend the holiday with Gold Star families and veterans and their family members at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

A 300-foot-long replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial will make a stop in Ventura County next month, courtesy of the Vietnam Veterans of Ventura County. "It's equal to the experience of going back to Washington, D.C., and seeing the real wall," said Gary Parker, first vice president of the Ventura veterans group. "People come and spend hours at the wall, remembering and trying to bring about some healing. It can be a very good experience. It can be very traumatic, very moving."

Ernie Barbosa, a sergeant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, sat in the moonlight before a replica of the Vietnam Veteran Memorial -- 58,256 names etched in white that from a distance looked like serrated piano keys against a black expanse. Sitting in Temple City Park, with Memorial Day approaching, Barbosa recalled taking his dad, a World War II and Korean War veteran, to Dodger Stadium after he had retired and buying him a hot dog, a drink and some fries.

Stone specialists inspecting vandalism to the black granite Vietnam Veterans Memorial said Friday that the damage should be easy to repair. "It does not look like a serious problem," said Gene Simmons, a stone and construction specialist brought in to inspect the wall where someone scrawled a swastika-like symbol and other lines. Simmons called the scratches superficial and said they can likely be fixed with "a small amount of polishing and buffing."

Marsha Sternberg, with tears streaming down her cheeks, and with her husband, Ken, beside her, stared at the names of her brother and cousin etched in the granite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. In her hand she held rubbings of both names done for her by volunteer guide John Bender. It was Bender who approached the couple from Jasper, Ind., and explained that the 58,156 names are organized by day and year of death on the long black wall.

In a sun-lit ceremony that mixed tears, smiles and speeches, the Vietnam Women's Memorial was unveiled Thursday as the United States symbolically welcomed home its female veterans. "The journey for most of us still isn't over," said Diane Carlson Evans, a former army nurse and Vietnam veteran who led a 10-year campaign to create the monument. "Many are just beginning their healing. But this is our place to start."

It's about half the size of the original, made of metal instead of granite, and can be taken apart like a giant Lego set. But to the hundreds of people who flocked Friday to the traveling replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the feelings it evoked were genuine.

"Hi. You're early," says Ma ya Lin hurriedly, as she appears out of the throng in Penn Station. With that, the famed creator of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial leaves a waiting visitor and climbs on a hydraulic lift to the scaffolding around her newest public art project, some 15 feet above the crowd. Like a White Rabbit in Commuterland, Lin has no time to talk, on this day in late July, to anyone but the crew: The earthbound visitor may be early, but the project is running late. Early, late.

Under cloudy skies, hundreds of people gathered Saturday to remember the men who died for their country decades before, in a distant war many denounced as pointless. Mothers who lost sons, sisters who lost brothers, and men who lost comrades walked slowly down the walkway in front of the Moving Wall--a traveling memorial to the 58,219 Americans who died in the Vietnam War.

MAYA LIN has always had a deep feeling for the land. As a child, she roamed the leafy woods of the Appalachian foothills in southern Ohio, listening to the mating calls of the songbirds that filled the forest. Now Lin perceives a growing stillness, as the number of songbirds across America are decimated by habitat destruction.

Family and friends of service members who died in the Vietnam War no longer have to travel to Washington to pay their respects at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. An interactive version has debuted online at go.footnote .com/thewall, a project of historical document archive site Footnote.com in conjunction with the National Archives and Records Administration. The virtual version of the memorial -- whose black granite walls are inscribed with the names of more than 58,000 Americans who died in the war -- is searchable.

For Tony Cordero, lost luggage and thousands of miles were small obstacles to come see a man he hardly knew. Over the last 25 years, the Los Angeles resident has made the trip more than 50 times to pay his respects to his father, Air Force Maj. William Cordero, whose plane was shot down in the mountains of Laos 42 years ago.

A design panel gave its blessing Thursday to an underground visitor center and exhibit space to accompany the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on a grassy patch of the National Mall. The 35,000-square-foot Vietnam Veterans Memorial Center is to be built between the Lincoln Memorial and the long, sloped wall of the Vietnam memorial.

Reflection and introspection are the twin luxuries of the old. So it was no surprise to Nancy Schneider that many of the people who trooped past the Dignity Memorial Vietnam Wall traveling exhibit Sunday were gray-headed and snow-bearded. The surprise to her was that she herself, a onetime college rebel who marched on Washington in 1969, was among them. "Now we're the elder generation. Isn't that a shock?"

The name of Army Sgt. Richard M. Pruett is now etched into the glossy black granite of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial -- nearly four decades after he was wounded during a combat mission in South Vietnam. His wife, Ann, wiped away tears as Pruett's name was added to the memorial Thursday. "He would be so honored. It is the ultimate honor, I think, to be on the wall," she said.

It had been 20 years, almost to the day, since Teddi Alves' husband was killed in a plane crash on a combat mission in Vietnam. And here she was Sunday afternoon, facing his name, engraved in neat white letters on a long black wall. Dressed in a black dress and carrying a red rose for her husband, Air Force navigator Moses L.

The chairman of the volunteer group that built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial said Wednesday that his organization will fix hairline cracks in eight of the 140 granite panels.

Alternating portions of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial will be closed off to visitors by a plywood fence through October as part of a $1-million light-replacement project, officials said. The eastern half of the black granite memorial is closed until mid-August, when the fence will be moved to the western end. The new lighting system is intended to more evenly illuminate the wall.

Memorial Day ceremonies in the drizzly national capital on Monday honored troops who have died on two current fronts -- Iraq and Afghanistan -- and in two past wars, World War II and Vietnam. President Bush followed the traditional wreath-laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns with a speech noting that "the war on terror we're fighting today has brought great costs of its own."