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We’re in complete agreement. And thank you for your activities in ‘72 and whatever year(s) you campaigned against JFK! I lost track, after the Wall was completed, of who was vying for what in the way of sculptures, but I’d bet that the feminist statue was the price for Hart’s (after all, the Left was still smarting from the defeat of the ERA). What was really, really ironic about the wall, however, is that it wasn’t even an original design. Hank Holzer, while he was writing Aid and Comfort, learned (I think he received a photo that his wife later verified in person) that the inspiration existed in a WWI memorial in southern France, albeit on a far smaller scale (approx. 4 x 6 ft.). Wish I could remember where I saw the designs that lost to Maya Lin’s because nearly every one of them ran circles around hers.

But, yes indeed, when it’s the only national memorial to Vietnam vets, it’s the only game in town. Thus mourners and patriots have given it the dignity and respect the design meant to suppress.

While I was on my second session of active duty - around 1982 or so - I was staying with a fellow Major buddy of mine in DC and we went running late one afternnoon from his place to the Wall. We stopped there and went down to the area for 1967 and looked up some guys we knew while we were in country. He and I swapped stories about some of those characters, which included a cannoneer we knew as "Wimpy" who was so skinny that his favorite trick was to suck in his breath which would cause his pants to fall down.. We were both laughing about the stuff he and others used to do as 19-year-olds living together on the top of that hill, when some indignant lady showed up. She stormed into our faces and said "how dare you laugh at a place like this?".

I glared at her and said "Lady, those were friends of ours and if we want to remember them with laughter, that's our privilege" and she stormed off.

Despite the attempts by the pro-enemy Left to denigrate us and shame us, we came out of everything just fine. I am very proud of the young men I served with and nobody could have been finer Americans. Their memories shine through whatever insult the monument makers intended.

P.S., If that atrocious and fallacious "Women's Statue" happens to melt into a puddle some night, you have no idea who might have done it...