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- Anyone who has been to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
in Washington knows that many visitors leave tribute items
behind, but what you may not know is that most of those
items are collected each day and preserved.
That's being done so that one day they can be returned to
a new facility near the wall, exhibited for all to see.
- Washington D.C.'s Vietnam Veterans Memorial has become
one of the most heavily visited monuments in our
nation's capital.
But it might not be here at all if it were not
for the efforts of this man, Army veteran Jan Scruggs.
- When I got out of high school, I went into the Army,
volunteered for the draft for two years in the Vietnam War.
[Explosions and gunfire]
It was pretty obvious that being a Vietnam veteran was
not something to advertise, sort of, on your
resume of life.
- End the war! End the war! End the war! End the war!
- So that sort of resonated with me, that this is the way
we're viewed.
I decided to build a national Vietnam Veterans Memorial,
and I didn't really know what I was doing.
But a lot of great people got involved.
- It was his concept, and he started everything with his
own seed money, just put the money in, and he began--and
this was 30 years ago, so things were done
differently--he began pounding the halls of Congress.
Because it's on the National Mall, we had to get approval,
Congressional support.
- The initial design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was
the Maya Lin design.
She had the most brilliant design because we--we said
in the competition that we wanted this to be reflective
and contemplative and horizontal,
and she met all that.
We got it built in record time.
We started in 1979, and it was completed in 1982.
How you gonna beat that?
Our sort of credo was, "Look.
We will separate the war from the warrior."
People can debate the wisdom of our foreign policy
decisions, but they can't really debate whether their
neighbor's kid, who volunteered for 4 years
in the Marine Corps, did the right thing for his country.
He did the right thing for his country.
So let's honor the people who served.
- People leave the most incredible mementos, tokens,
at the Wall.
People left them for a reason.
It meant something to them.
- I remember just after we put the panels up, and somebody
snuck over the fence and placed a pair of cowboy boots,
like, about halfway down the east panel.
It was, like, a spooky sort of thing to see, but within
a week, there were hundreds and hundreds of items that had
been left there.
- We here have Baby Huey.
"...never met you.
"Your niece and nephew are coming
to the Wall to kind of pay tribute to you."
- Nothing unusual about finding an article like this?
- No. No. This is from--you know, between family members.
Here is the wreckage of a B-52 from a mid-air collision
in Vietnam.
The number here that they wrote on is representative
of the highest amount of casualties of any Catholic
school in the United States.
Here we have a baseball that was left at the Wall.
- There are approximately 400,000 objects that have been
left at the Wall thus far.
In my view, it initially started out as very cathartic.
People would sort of have an emotional something while they
were there, and they would leave a spontaneous object.
But over time, people started to create things to be left
at the Wall.
- This is a model of a prisoner of war camp...
- Many of the things that are left at the Wall are folk art.
They're created by the hands of the people that leave it.
It's not just like you're buying this stuff off
the shelf.
People create things to leave them at the Wall.
Everything that's left there has a meaning to someone.
- Sitting in this box face-up was this wallet-sized image
of a North Vietnamese soldier and a little girl.
There's also a letter that accompanies it, and the donor
describes how he confronted this North Vietnamese soldier.
They paused for a moment, but the American ended up taking
his life, and for years he had carried this photograph.
One of the major newspapers in Vietnam, they ran a copy
of the photograph.
That's the only photograph of the father they have.
- So here is where we store all of the objects
in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection, and we've
been collecting since the Wall opened, pretty much, since it
was dedicated, so you can imagine the collection.
- Is it organized by material or date or...
- We have everything organized by date because we have such
a variety of materials and objects that are left that it
would be really difficult to sort them all by object type.
This is a letter left to a gentleman on the Wall called
William Stocks, aka Spanky, and Spanky's mom has been
coming to the Wall and leaving things since our very first
exception that we ever collected.
And here we have a six-pack of Schlitz left by Jeff, and I
just love the idea of libations.
This is something that people have been doing since people
were people.
It's a way to honor their dead and commemorate with them
and celebrate those who have gone from this life.
North Vietnamese regulars popped out of hiding
and ambushed the whole formation, and one
of the helicopters was shot down.
This rotor blade is from that helicopter that was shot down.
The crew chief came under such heavy fire that he immediately
got back in their copter and ordered everyone to lift off,
leaving Jerry behind.
They sent several helicopters over the next few days looking
for Jerry, but no trace of him was ever found again.
It's a reel-to-reel player and a box of reel-to-reel tapes
that was left in 2012, so fairly recently.
These are songs of the Vietnam War recorded while serving
in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
[Rock music playing]
- About 20 years ago, this group of veterans brought this
bike down to the Wall, and it really speaks to all of us
about the nature of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
and the conflict itself.
The Vietnam conflict, the Wall is providing them a conduit to
release whatever needed emotions they have to help
with their healing processes.
- 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Here we go.
This gentleman right here--Calvin Terrell.
- Some people didn't like it.
They thought it was--you know, black is the color of shame.
All the other monuments are white, and so there was this
big argument.
So we said, "OK, we will have a traditional element
with this unconventional memorial," which was the Three
Servicemen Statue, 1984.
Once that was built, the women who served in Vietnam were
very upset and said, "Well, we can't believe this.
You don't have a Vietnam women's statue," and they
pushed and got through Congress legislation to
authorize that.
It was built in 1993, and there's an Agent
Orange In Memory plaque.
It's at the site.
So these are the elements.
The site is filled, so now the Education Center can start
appealing to these different groups.
- The Education Center at the Wall, or on our National Mall,
is intended to be a capstone experience for your time
on our National Mall.
- Visitors will enter a place of civic reflection.
- The basic mission will be to honor America's legacy
of service from 1775, actually, which is when
the U.S. Army formed itself to fight the British,
all the way through to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The primary focus of the exhibits will be a Wall
of Faces and how we remember the fallen.
- And give a face to the faceless.
- Once every hour, for 5 minutes, we're going to show
the photographs of the fallen so that, working with
the other exhibits, this will become a place of reunion,
and this is a place that all the veterans will go to.
- We have a responsibility, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Fund, to capture all of those tokens, mementos, that are
left at the Wall.
When we have the Education Center built, a collection
of those will be on static display for all
of the world to see.
- Objects related to soldiers and the things they carried.
- Our current situation-- we are a 501c3.
All of the programs and ceremonies, all
of the maintenance, all of the--anything else that we're
doing and the Education Center has to be from private funds.
- Well, I like hanging around there when I get the chance.
"Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his
life for his friends."
But the people who are, like, in one battle or something...
I've met a lot of relatives and friends and neighbors who
went there to do an etching.
That's always the great sort of way to meet someone.
When they're rubbing a name, I ask, you know, "Whose name are
you rubbing?"
And then they sort of tell you the story.
And I've met some of the great soldiers from the Vietnam War,
some of the great soldiers in today's military as well.
Once a year, we put new names on it, and also in the country
of Vietnam, we have U.S. military personnel who
actually try to find the remains of our soldiers.
[Bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace"]
For most veterans, it is a very cathartic experience.
I'm not sure it closes their pain, ends their struggles,
but cathartic experiences are important parts of our lives.
So the emotion associated with seeing the names, getting some
closure by honoring somebody, maybe even leaving an item
there--it's a very important and amazing part
of the experience.
[Bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace"]