Vietnam Wall Memorial

The official name of the Memorial is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It is sometimes referred to as "the Wall". The figures are called "The Three Servicemen". This is not a war memorial but a memorial to those who served in the war, both living and dead.
	Each of the walls is 246.75 feet long, composed of 70 separate inscribed granite panels, plus 4 at the end without names; the panels themselves are 40 inches in width; the largest panels have 137 lines of names, while the shortest have one; there are five names on each line, although with new additions of names, some lines now have six; the walls are supported by 140 concrete pilings driven approximately 35 feet (some are at 20 feet) to bedrock; at the vertex the walls are 10.1 feet in height.
The Memorial (wall) was designed by an undergraduate at Yale University, Maya Ying Lin, born in Athens, Ohio in 1959. Her parents fled from China in 1949 when Mao-Tse-tung took control of China, and she is a native-born American citizen. She acted as a consultant with the architectural firm of Cooper- Lecky Partnership on the construction of the Memorial.
	She wanted to create a park within a park - a quiet protected place onto itself, yet harmonious with the overall plan of Constitution Gardens. The walls have a mirror-like surface (polished black granite) reflecting the images of the surrounding trees, lawns, monuments, and visitors. The walls seem to stretch into the distance, directing us towards the Washington Monument, in the east, and the Lincoln Memorial, to the west, thus bring the Vietnam Veterans Memorial into a historical context.