Coordinates | 38°53′31″N77°02′59″W / 38.891861°N 77.049861°W |
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Public transit access | Foggy Bottom – GWU |
Website | www |
The Education Center at The Wall was a collaborative effort between the National Park Service and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF). [1] The Center was approved by Congress, and construction was planned for the National Mall site adjacent to the Vietnam Memorial and on the corner of Constitution Avenue and 23rd Street. [2] The two-story underground learning facility would have been built in keeping with the design, tone, and mood of The Wall and so as not to detract from the historic vistas of the National Mall. VVMF canceled the project in 2018 due to fundraising challenges. [3] [4]
The purpose of the Education Center was to inform future generations of the honor and sacrifices made by those who served their country. The center's core would revolve around seven traits that embody the American service member throughout the generations: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Service, Honor, Integrity, and Courage. A prominent feature of the Education Center was to be the larger-than-life pictures of service members whose names adorn the polished black panels of The Wall. The pictures would be displayed on the service members' birthdays and add faces to the more than 58,000 names on The Wall and tell the stories of those who served. Volunteers sought to find photos of each of the veterans, along with service background information on computers at the Education Center and online for non-local visitors. [5] The Education Center would have also featured displays of the more than 400,000 personal articles, letters, and gifts that have been left at the foot of the memorial since its dedication in 1982.
Like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Education Center at The Wall was completely funded through private donations. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund embarked on a multi-year campaign to secure the nearly $115 million needed. The campaign leadership included Gen. Colin Powell USA (Ret.) and Gen. Barry A. McCaffrey USA (Ret.). Actor Tom Selleck served as the National Spokesman. [6] In September 2018 the Fund announced it would scrap its plans for construction of the center and instead focus on digital education and outreach. [7]
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, commonly called the Vietnam Memorial, is a U.S. national memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring service members of the U.S. armed forces who served in the Vietnam War. The two-acre (8,100 m2) site is dominated by two black granite walls engraved with the names of those service members who died or remain missing as a result of their service in Vietnam and South East Asia during the war. The Memorial Wall was designed by American architect Maya Lin and is an example of minimalist architecture. The Wall, completed in 1982, has since been supplemented with the statue Three Soldiers in 1984 and the Vietnam Women's Memorial in 1993.
Anthony Charles Zinni is a retired United States Marine Corps general and a former Commander in Chief of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM). From 2001 to 2003, he served as a special envoy for the United States to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. From 2017 to 2019, he served as a special envoy to help resolve the Qatar diplomatic crisis.
Thomas William Selleck is an American actor. His breakout role was playing private investigator Thomas Magnum in the television series Magnum, P.I. (1980–1988), for which he received five Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, winning in 1985. Since 2010, Selleck has co-starred as New York City Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in the series Blue Bloods. From 2005–2015, he portrayed troubled small-town police chief Jesse Stone in nine television films based on the Robert B. Parker novels.
Constitution Gardens is a park area in Washington, D.C., United States, located within the boundaries of the National Mall. The 50-acre (200,000 m2) park is bounded on the west by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, on the east by 17th St NW, on the north by Constitution Avenue, and on the south by the Reflecting Pool.
Three Soldiers is a bronze statue by Frederick Hart. Unveiled on Veterans Day, November 11, 1984, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., it is part of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial commemorating the Vietnam War. It was the first representation of an African American on the National Mall.
Rolling Thunder is a United States advocacy group that seeks to bring full accountability for prisoners of war (POWs) and missing in action (MIA) service members of all U.S. wars. The group's first demonstration was in 1988. It was incorporated in 1995, and has more than 90 chapters throughout the US, as well as overseas.
The Vietnam Women's Memorial is a memorial dedicated to the nurses and women of the United States who served in the Vietnam War. It depicts three uniformed women with a wounded male soldier to symbolize the support and caregiving roles that women played in the war as nurses and other specialists. It is part of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., a short distance south of the Wall and north of the Reflecting Pool. The statues are bronze and the base is made of granite. The United States Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission selected Glenna Goodacre to sculpt the memorial after previously rejecting the idea for a memorial to women.
Stolen Honor is a 45-minute anti-John Kerry video documentary that was released during the September 2004 election season. It features interviews with a number of American men who contend they were prisoners of war in North Vietnam and suffered increased maltreatment while prisoners as a direct result of Kerry's Fulbright Hearing testimony in April 1971. The subtitle of the film is Wounds That Never Heal; on the production company's website the complete title is given instead as Stolen Honor: John Kerry's Record of Betrayal. Its name was based on the book Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History by B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley.
The Women In Military Service For America Memorial, also known as Military Women's Memorial, is a memorial established by the U.S. federal government which honors women who have served in the United States Armed Forces. The memorial is located at the western end of Memorial Avenue at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc. (VVMF), is the non-profit organization established on April 27, 1979, by Jan Scruggs, a former Army Infantry in Vietnam. Others veterans joined including, Jack Wheeler, and several other graduates of West Point to finance the construction of a memorial to those Americans who served or died during the Vietnam War. The memorial was not designed to make a political statement about the war itself. From this fund came the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated on Veterans Day, 1982, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Jan Craig Scruggs is a United States Army veteran who served in the Vietnam War, and later founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, which built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Scruggs was the President of the foundation until 2015, when he retired.
The United States Navy Memorial is a memorial in Washington, D.C. honoring those who have served or are currently serving in the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marine.
The National World War I Memorial is a national memorial commemorating the service rendered by members of the United States Armed Forces in World War I. The 2015 National Defense Authorization Act authorized the World War I Centennial Commission to build the memorial in Pershing Park, located at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. The park, which has existed since 1981, also contains the John J. Pershing General of the Armies commemorative work. In January 2016, the design commission selected the submission "The Weight of Sacrifice", by a team consisting of Joseph Weishaar, Sabin Howard, Phoebe Lickwar, and GWWO Architects, as the winning design, which is expected to be completed by 2024.
The National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for approving and siting memorials within Washington, D.C., and the D.C. metropolitan area. Previously known as the National Capital Memorial Advisory Committee, the agency was established by the Commemorative Works Act of 1986 and its name was changed to the National Capital Memorial Commission. The agency's name was changed again in 2003 to the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission.
The Virginia War Memorial is a 1955 memorial in Richmond, Virginia, originally dedicated to Virginians killed in World War II and the Korean War. In 1980, the Shrine was enlarged to honor those Virginians killed in action in the Vietnam War. In 1996, the names of Virginians killed in action during Desert Storm/Desert Shield were added. Today, there are nearly 12,000 Virginians whose names are engraved on the Shrine of Memory's glass and stone walls. Reflecting the different character of war today, Virginia has created a special Memorial Shrine to honor the over 250 Virginians killed in the Global War on Terrorism.
James Wright was an American writer and academic administrator who was the President of Dartmouth College and the Eleazar Wheelock Professor of History at Dartmouth. The 16th President in the Wheelock Succession, he served as Dartmouth president from 1998 until 2009. He joined the Dartmouth History Department in 1969 and served as dean of faculty from 1989 to 1997 and as provost from 1997 to 1998. Wright received a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin–Platteville and a masters and doctoral degree in history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He died at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on October 10, 2022.
The American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial is a memorial in Washington, D.C., which honors veterans of the armed forces of the United States who were permanently disabled during the course of their national service. Congress adopted legislation establishing the memorial on October 23, 2000, authorizing the Disabled Veterans for Life Memorial Foundation to design, raise funds for, and construct the memorial. The fundraising goal was reached in mid-2010 and ground for the memorial broken on November 10, 2010. The memorial was dedicated by President Barack Obama on October 5, 2014.
The Commemorative Works Act of 1986 (CWA) is a United States federal law which bars the construction of commemorative works near the National Mall and on federal land in the National Capital Area unless they are approved by the National Capital Memorial Advisory Commission (NCMAC). The law also establishes criteria a memorial must meet in order to be approved the NCMAC, and establishes a seven-year deadline by which construction must begin or the memorial loses its congressional authorization. As of April 2014, the law has been amended five times, most notably by the Commemorative Works Clarification and Revision Act of 2003.
The Augusta-Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) Vietnam War Veterans Memorial is a granite and bronze monument placed in Augusta, Georgia, March 29, 2019, to honor the CSRA's 169 Vietnam War dead, three Ex-Prisoners of War (Vietnam), and one former Missing in Action (MIA) as well as the region's 15,000 surviving Vietnam War Veterans. The memorial is located in the "Olde Town" section of Augusta, Georgia, on the Broad Street median between Third and Fourth Streets. The monument was designed, purchased, and placed by the Augusta Chapter of the Military Order of the World Wars (MOWW) and the chapter's 17 community partners who made up the Augusta-CSRA Vietnam War Memorial Initiative (VWMI) Steering Committee.
The Minnesota State Capitol Mall includes eighteen acres of green space. Over the years, monuments, and memorials, have been added to the mall. The mall has been called Minnesota's Front lawn and is a place where the public has gathered for celebrations, to party, to demonstrate and protest, and to grieve.