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:. T^ make no political statement•regarding the waror Its conducts It will transccndthose jssues. The hope is that the creahon of thejncmorial.wiJJ begin a healing process, a rccon> -ciliation of the gncvoiis divisions wrought by thewar. Through the memorial both supporteis and

-.opponents of the war may find a common groundfor recognizing the sacnficc, hcroisni;and loyalty

.which were also a partof the'Vietnam cxpenence.

•"•^from the design competihon handbook for theVietnam Veterans Memorial :

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.'IVc owe a lot to the Harvard Business School.

-Ifs kind of file untold stoiy.

j—Jan Scruggs, President, Vietnam Veteran^^Memorial Fund

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n November 13 of last year, sevenyears after the close of the Vietnamwar, a memorial to the veterans of

America's longest armed conflict wasdedicated on the Mail in Washington, D.C. Lyingon a two-acre site between the Lincoln Memorialand the Washington Monument, the VietnamVeterans Memorial is an angled wall of polishedblack granite inscribed with the names of thenearly 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam orwho at the war's end werelistedas prisoners ofwar or missing in action.

In form the memorial is a wide "V" set into theearth, its two arms meeting at the base of a shallowamphitheater. Only the face bearing the names isexposed; the back of the wall is set into the surrounding land. The effect is as if the earth hadbeen cutopenandpartly cleared away, revealingone face of a wall erected in some earlier time andnow meticulously restored.

Like the Vietnam war itself, the memorial hasbeen a source ofsometimes bitter controversy.While few Americans have questioned the needfor a memorial, some critics have seen in the design an implicit political statement — an indictment, they argue, of the war itself, and an unwillingness to honor the heroism of those whoserved. The choice of black granite, the decisionto place the memorial below ground level, andthe mute listing of the names of the dead have allbeencited by thememorial's critics as inappropriate.

The memorial's defenders, on the other hand,have found in these same elementsqualities ofgreatness. In its spareness and simplicity, theysay, the memorial is an eloquent summaryof thefinal fact ofwar —that, rightly orwrongly, peoplegive their lives. To remember the dead, and especially to remember them as individuals, they say,is to honor them. "

Lost in the tide of public reaction — which oftenseems to end in debate not on the merits of thememorial, but on the merits of the war itself — hasbeen the story of how the memorial came to be.Central to this story are four Harvard BusinessSchool graduates, each of whom played a keyrole

•in helping to erect the memorial. Three of thesemen are Vietnam veterans, and the fourth is aVietnam-era veteran. All four attended the U.S.Military Academy at West Point before coming tothe Business School, and all lost close friends inVietnam. Of the numerous ties that bind them,their shared Business School experience is onlyone. Nonetheless, each is careful to note that his

Business School training played an important partin helping to meet the various challenges —organizational, financial, and political—encountered in the memorial effort. Indeed, JackWheeler(MBA '69), chairman of the Vietnam VeteransMemorial Fund, recently had this tosay:"Withoutthe Business School training and frame of reference we had, it's an open question whether thiscountry would have ended up in 1982 with amemorial at all."

heeler's involvement with thememorial began in 1979, shortlyafter the effort was launchedbyVietnam veteranJan Scruggs, who

had undertaken the project almost single-handed.Wheeler (who was then, as now, an attorney at

the Securities and Exchange Commission) and hiswife were visiting her parents in South Carolinawhen he came across a newspaper story aboutScruggs and the memorial effort. "Thestory saidthat Jan had held a press conference and announced that he was going to build a milliondollarmemorial in Washington," he remembers, "butaftera monthhe had raised only$144.50."

Wheeler knew from his own experience thekinds ofobstacles Scruggs faced. Several years before, he had initiated an effort of his own to erect aVietnam memorial at West Point, where he had 'graduated in1966. (Wheeler had later spenta yearat the Army's logistics center at Long Binh,Vietnam.) That memorial, a simple arrangementconsisting of a brass plaque together with fivegranite benches, was five years in the making. Inhis effort to organize the West Point classes from1960 to 1969 to serve as donors of the memorial.Wheeler hadencountered a series ofproceduralobstacles together with an unexpected amount ofemoHonal resistance.

"By 19781began to realize that the reason it wastaking us so long toget the memorial builtat WestPoint was that the warand our experience in itwere very hard things tolook at," he says. "It wasandstill ismuch more comfortable for our country,and especially ourgeneration, toact as thoughthere had been no war or anyradically formativeevent during the 1960s. We know intellectuallythat that's not true, but it's still much more comfortable to act that way."

Behind Wheeler's effort at West Point was a recurrent feeling thathe hadnotyet properly acknowledged the loss of his close friend and WestPoint classmate Tommy Hayes, who had beenkilled inVietnam. Whatever Jan Scruggs's reasons

.••3S Buiietin 1933

The Southeast Asia Memorial (shown above) at WestPoint. As leader of the effort to build the West Pointmemorial, Jack Wheeler encountered resistance fromseveral quarters. An unobtrusive design, he learned,was the key to acceptance.

Wheeler (second from left) and West Point-HBScolleagues Art Mosley and Dick Radez at Long Binh,Vietnam, in 1969. At far left is another Business Schoolgraduate. Doctor R. Grants (MBA '72).

for wanting to do something similar on a nationalscale. Wheeler recognized the impulse and believed that he could help.

"I called Jan up after I read the story and toldhim who I was," he continues. "We talked aboutsome of the problems involved and what neededto be done. Jan had taken the one major assethe had, some land in West Virginia, and sold itto create the memorial corporation. He didn'thave much of an organization at that point, but hehad a powerful idea and that's really where it allstarts."

After some more discussion, Wheeler offeredto join Scruggs in the memorial effort — andScruggs, understandably, was quick to accept. Inturn. Wheeler enlisted the aid of two of his WestPoint- and Harvard Business School-trainedfriends, Richard Radez (MBA '69) and ArthurMosley (MBA '68).

Like Wheeler, both Radez and Mosley hadbeen stationed at Long Binh in 1969, Radez as afinance officerand Mosley as a captain in theCorps of Engineers. Also like Wheeler, bothhad subsequently left the Army to pursueother careers. Radez was by then workingfor theOffice of Management and Budget, and Mosleyhad formed a commercial real estate firm in Washington, D.C.

Other people, of course, were also instrumentalin the effort from the earliestdays, most notablyRobert Doubek, another Vietnam veteran, whoserved as the Fund's first executive director andlater as the memorial's project director. In thecourse of an early reorganization, Scruggs wasnamed the Fund's president, while Wheeler assumed the chairmanship.

At the time Wheeler and Scruggs joined forces,the form of the proposed memorial was still undecided. It was in dealing with this question, saysWheeler, that his West Point experience provideda key insight.

"That insight was this: to build a memorial tothose who served — not to the war, but to thosewho served — in America in the 1980s required alandscaped solution," he states, "a solution thatwould be contemplative and retlechve in characterand which would preserve the basic use of theland.

"I knew that we would have to go to the Congress and to people in corporate America for support, and I knew their first question was goingto be 'What are you thinking about in terms of adesign?' This would be especially true if we succeeded in gethng a site on the Mall, as we hoped to

do. Whatever we built, it wouldn't be allowed tocompete with what was already there."

ith this in mind, Wheeler and theothers set about establishing an organizational structure for the Fund,the memorial's governing body.

An important consideration, he notes, was the factthat the organization would have only a limitedlifespan. Their initial plan called for the memorialtobe dedicated on Veterans Day, 1982 —as indeedit was. While planning for the group's ultimatedemise, however, the Fund's leadership also hadto allow room for more immediate growth.

"In addition," says Wheeler, "we had tooperatethingsso that all key people could get a flow ofinformation in what wasalways a veryfluid situation. I found myself thinking, 'This is a relativelycomplex organization in a fluid situation, andthere are models to consider — the ones Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch served up while I was at theBusiness School.' I can remember when ArtMosley and I were discussing possible organizations early on, and during that process we wereexplicitly aware of what had been called 'Hobo'problems at the Business School — human behavior in organizations."

The taskofleading the fund-raising effort fell toRadez, who would later leave OMB for the NewYorkoffice of Barclays Bank International, wherehe now serves as a vice president. It was Radezwho first realized that far more than one milliondollarswas needed. A more realistic figure, he calculated, would be seven million dollars. Convincing the others toaccept this new figure was, herecalls, one of his biggest challenges —and foran obvious reason: "It made our job that muchharder."

Radez, who eventuallyaccepteda positiononthe corporation's board, recalls that when he firstarrived the fund raising was being done in awell-meaningbut haphazard fashion —a situationhe determined to remedy, though he himself hadno prior fund-raising experience. What wasneeded, he saw, was a master plan and amechanism to implement it. Aftercarrying outwhat he terms "market research" — a review ofthe literature devoted to fund raising by nonprofitcorporations —he prepared an overall plan, whichcalled for the hiring of a professional fundraiser,an outside fund-raising consultant to lendadditional expertise, and a direct mail consultant.

"It wasclearthat directmail wouldhaveto playa big roleat the outset," he recalls. "Major donors

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Dick Radez; "My feeling was, Let the names be thememorial, not some big building with white columns.Just let il be the names."

want to see a drawing and plans, and atthat pointu'e didn't have either, I realized, then, that wewere going to have to rely on smaller donors at theoutset.

The problem with that, as I kne\\' from my research, is that the typical direct maileffort is run asa loss leader to generate a membership base forfuture appeals. In our case, though, it was clearthat there would be no future appeals, since wewere not going to be an ongoing organization.This effort had to make a profit from the word go."

Radez e\'entually found a direct mail firm thatcould appreciate the Fund's special situation, andas it happened it was run bya Vietnam veteran,Ray Grace. Grace's company had handled the direct mail campaign for the Winter Olympics atLake Placid, and thus had experience workingwith anorganization designed to complete its taskand then disband.

Even to engage Grace's firm, hov% ever, required the Fund to have a certain amount ofmoney already in hand. In this regard, they werefortunate to receive several important contributions early in the campaign, among them abenefit breakfast hosted by Virginia Senator John

arner, who had served as Secretary of the Navyduring part of the Vietnam War. Funds raisedat this breakfast, together with other early gifts,enabled them to launch a major national campaign shortly thereafter.

Later in the course of the fund raising, substantial corporate donations were received as well. Ofthese, man}' of the most significant came from theoil industry, which Radez had targeted earlv asapotential source of major funding. The biggestsingle contribution, howe\'er, >vas a one milliondollar gift from the American Legion, followed bya 5230,000 contribution from the Veterans ofForeign Wars. Each of these, Radez notes, can beconsidered to represent thousands of individualcontributions, since both the Legion and the VFWeffectively served as a means of channeling individual conh-ibutions to the Fund. At the sametime, many of the corporate contributions came inthe form of matching gifts, which again build uponthe contributions ofindividuals. The result, he believes, has been a memorial tru!\' financed by theAmerican people.

"1 think themost incredible thing about this hasbeen the emotional response it has evoked frompeopleacross the country," he observes. "That, asmuch as anything else, explains why I've been involved." Compelling evidence of this response liesin the thousands ofletters received by the Fund inconcert with the individual contributions. Briefand simple for the most part, they rareiv fail tomove even the casual reader. "Donated in memory of Marine Corps Pfc. Gary M. Dominique,killed in Vietnam May 14, 1970, near Da N'ang,"says one, and nothing more. "1 realize that mycontribution is very small,"saysanother. "It's all Icould afford to give. Iwanted to send somethingin honor of my childhood friend. ..."

"Goodluck with your project," reads still another, signed simply 'An ex-soldier'. "Try to keepit simple."And try they did. Perhaps inevitably,

though, the Fund's leaders found theirproject characterized more by complexity than by simplicity. In particu

lar, they encountered the complexity of feelingthat still surrounds Vietnam.

I remember one of our board meetings," recallsWheeler, "whereI told the otherdirectors, 'Whatever design we come up with is going to be onethousand degrees hot.' Iguess that's a cutephrase, but in fact i don't think I vs'as ready forhow true it was."

At theurging ofMosley, whohad beenasked toprepare a recommendation concerning the designof the memorial, the board resolved to hold a design competition rather than simply hire a designer. Not only would a competition serve to

Art Mosley: "We were faced with the real prospectof losing this whole thing unless we arrived at acompromise." Below: Mosley as a West Point cadetin 1963.

emphasize the broadly participatory character ofthe memorial, Mosley had argued, but it wouldalso likeiy yield a superior design. The boardagreed, stipulating only that the memorial be required to bear the names of all those who died inVietnam.

Mosley, in turn, further argued that the compe-

• matter what its vir-

tues. Here, too, the

boardwas inclinedto agree. Several

among the board, however, including Wheeler,were strongly of the opinion that the jury shouldinclude at least one Vietnam veteran. Mosley disagreed.

"It was my feeling that unless we could find aVietnam veteran who was also a design professional of the same caliber as the other jury members, we would be makinga mistake," he explains."First, I felt the jury had to be beyond professionalchallenge. Second, I felt that if there were aVietnam vet on the jury, the other jurv membersmight defer to him unduly out of consideration forhis position. Ididn't think we wanted that to happen."

Wheeler remembers that he was still reluctant to

go along."I was insisting that there be a Vietnam veteran

on the jury," he recalls. "It was very important tome. In the end, though. Art persuaded us that ifwe wanted to attract world-class competitors weneeded a world-class jury."

Predictably, one of the arguments later broughtagainst the design selection process was that thejury had included no Vietnam veterans.

"If you dislike the design/' observes Wheeler,"you'll use whatever arguments you can to discredit it, and so, of course, that particular argument was leveled against us. But thanks to Art, wehad done our homework. At his suggestion, wehad interviewed the prospective jurors beforenaming them to the jury and satisfied ourselvesthat we were in a fairly strong position."

Having decided to sponsor a design competition, the Fund next moved to obtain a site for the

memorial. Ideally, they felt, the memorial shouldbe on the Mall rather than at some less frequentedlocation. Most observers were doubtful that theFund would be able to obtain a site on the capital'scentral promenade, but Wheeler and the otherswere undeterred. And indeed, several monthslater, following sustained legwork on Capitol Hill,they vvere rewarded with a two-acre site near thewestern end of the Mall in the area knov\ n as

Constitution Gardens.

At that point, the design competition wasturned over to architect Paul Spreiregen, who hadexperience in the management of design competitions. Believing his own involvement to be at anend, VIosley proceeded with a long-delaved moveto Key West, where he planned to continue hiswork in commercial real estate. Laterdevelopments, however, were to bring him back to Washington under far more demanding conditions.

y October 1980, the Fund was ready toproceed with the design competition,which was opened to all Americancitizens eighteen years ofageor older.

While it had been recognized atthe outset that anywinning design would inevitably draw a certain 'amount ofcriticism —strong feelings were, afterall, in the nature ofthe Vietnam experience —it

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APPROVED

The Joint Congressional Resolution authorizing thesiteon the Mall.

was also true that, with the possible exception ofArt Mosley, no one connected with the project anticipated the extentof the political firestorm thatfollowed.

In considering the events that came later, itis useful to understand the conditions whichgoverned the competition. In addition to theguidelines concerning size, access, cost, maintenance, andsimilar factors, the design programsent to each entrant contained the following twoinjunctions:

"V\'t' ivish to repeat that the memorial is not to beapolitical statement, and that its purpose is to honor theseroice and memory of the war's dead, its missing, andits veterans —not the war itself. The memorial shouldbe conciliatory, transcending the tragedy of the war."

"Design illustrations should be simple, direct, andexpressive. Elaborately rendered illustrations are notdesired. Weseeksubstantive ideas."

Within several months ofthe competition announcement, the American design communitv responded with a flood ofentries, surprising eventhe most hopeful among the Fund's leaders. Ultimately, more than 1,400submissions were received, making the competition the largest of its

kind ever held. Caught off guard by the unexpected volume of the response, the Fund initiallyhad no space large enough todisplay the drawings. The Air Force soon came forward with anoffer ofa hangar at theAndrews Air Force Base,however, and it was there that the entries weredisplayed for the jury. It was there, too, that adecision was made which —depending on one'spoint of view — was either an abomination or atriumph of vision.

After weighing the entries for the better part of aweek, the jurors unanimously chose number 1026(the designs had been submitted "blind" to disguise the names of theindividual entrants) as thewinner. When names were reassigned to thedrawings, entry 1026 turned out to be the workofa 21-year-old Yale undergraduate named MayaYing Lin. In their citation, the jury had this to sayof Lin's design:

"Of all the proposalssubmitted, this mostclearly meets the spirit and formal requirements ofthe program. . . . This memorial with its wall ofnames becomes a place ofquiet reflection and atribute to thosewhoservedtheirnation in difficulttimes. All who come here can find ita place ofhealing.

"This is very much a memorial of our owntimes, one that could not have been achieved inanother time and place. The designer has createdan eloquent place where the simple meeting ofearth, sky and remembered names contains messages for all who will know this place."

hat you hope for in a competitionlike that," said ArtMosley recently, echoing the design program, "is that it will generate that

one great idea. And I think Maya's design is justthat. What she gave us is something verv contemplative and understated. In a way, it's a veryMinimalist work ofart. What you get from it, I 'think, depends toa large extent on what vou brineto it.

"I remember when we first saw it — we wereecstatic. We realized the jury had found somethinggreat. The wall, the arrangement of the names,and the black granite were exactly right. And Ithink it says alot for the jury that they recognizedit, because in fact there was nothing very specialabout Maya's drawings. They were very simple,especially when you compared themto the drawings submitted by the professionals and the designteams, which were done with a lot ofpolish. WhatMaya had, though, was a great idea."

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A unique feature of Lin's design, to whichMosle\' refers, was the stipulation that the namesbe arranged not in alphabetical order but in theorder in which the casualties occurred — a conceptthat wouid \-ividly demonstrate the \var's somberprogress. The names, said Lin, should begin at thewall's apex, high on the right-hand (or eastern)side, with the date 19?9 marking the first casualty.From there the names would fill the eastern wingin order to the farthest panel, where the wall disappears into the earth. Resuming at the farthestextremity of the western wing, the names wouldbuild in number as they approached the point oforigin at the wall's apex. There, in the lou'erright-hand corner of the final panel, would appearthe final name together with the date 1975. Thewar would be brought full circle and, by implication, to a close.

Having accepted the recommendation of thejurv, the board mo\'ed next to obtain the necessarydesign approvals. The terms of the congressionalresolution required the Fund to secure the formalblessing of the Secretar\' of the Interior, the cit\''sCommission of Fine Arts, and the National CapitalPlanning Comniission before going ahead. Thestorm of controversy that would later break overthe memorial was only a distant rumbling at thatpoint, and the necessarv approvals were obtainedwith a minimum of difficulty.

Shortly thereafter, however, resistance to Lin'sdesign became more vocal and substantially moreorganized. Among the design's opponents wereVietnam veteran and Pentagon consultant TomCarhart, who had been a classmate of Mosley's atWest Point, and Texas businessman H. Ross Perot.

Perot, a World War II veteran and a friend of President Ronald Reagan, had in fact been a prominentearh' contributor to the Fund, but had turnedagainst the effort after seeing Lin's design.

Ironically, Mosley and Carhart had been goodfriends at West Point (Mosley still recalls the time,for example, when he and Carhart stole the Navvgoat on the eve of an Army-Navy football game)and there remained between them a bond of

mutual respect. This helps explain, says Moslev,wh\- Carhart went out of his way to call him onenight and tell him there would be trouble.

"He called me and said: 'I just can't live withthis. There are a lot of us who've been lookingforamemorial to celebrate and glorify the service of theVietnam veteran, and this just isn't it. I want youto know that I'm going to do everything I can tofight this.'

Memorial designer Maya Ying Lin, whose winningdrawings are shown at left. Lin is now a student atHar\'ard's Graduate School of Design.

"I told him he had a perfect right to do that,"says Mosley, "and that 1could understand his feelings. Unfortunately, though, what he was lookingfor in the memorial wasn't what we'd asked the

designers to give us."Explanations availed little, however, and the

controversy grew. Exactly how many indi\'idualswere opposed to the design is difficult to determine, although sources connected with the Fundsuspect that the actual number has ahvavs beenrelatively small. All agree, hou'ever, that the opponents were politically ^^•ell connected, which inWashington can often count for more than merenumerical strength. Aware by nou' of the mounting trouble, the Fund's directors asked Moslev toreturn to Washington to serve as a mediator be-t\veen the tv\^o sides.

By fortunate coincidence, the Fund also had anally in the White House at this time, a recentlyappointed VN'hite House Fellow named Tom Shull.Like Wheeler, Mosley, and Radez, Shull had attended both West Point and HBS. (A graduate ofthe V^ est Point class of 1973, he had not been sentto Vietnam.) After receiving his MBA from Harvard in 1981, he had gone on to the White Houseas a White House Fellow. The only Fellow assigned to the White House itself (according to custom, other Fellows are assigned to the variousCabinet members), Shull joined the staff of JamesBaker, White House Chief of Staff, and in thatcapacity reported to presidential assistant Richard

Darman (MBA '67). During iiis year in the WhiteHouse he had responsibility for, among otherthings, the managementinformation systemsserving the Executive Office.

Follou-ing his year in Washington, he returnedto West Point, where he now teaches leadershipand organizational behavior. As relatively brief ashis stint in the White House was, it proved to be akey factor, according to VN'heeler, in the Fund'sabiiit)- to finally move ahead with the memorialafter reaching a near impasse.

"I can tell you this," said Wheeler recently."There would have been no memorial withoutTom Shull, period."

Shull, though, declines to take much credit. According to the young Army captain, he servedmerely as an intermediary between the differentgroups involved in the dispute, while at the sametime trying to keep the White House informed ofthe efforts being made toward a compromise.

"I had been asked to track the progress of thememorial," he explains. "As everyone knows,there were a number ot interested parties whowere not totally satisfied with the design. My rolewasbasically that ofa mediator. I had been toldbyJim Baker to do what I could to help reconcile thedifferences between the Fund and the people opposed to the design.

"As for the White House itself, I think it wasmostly a matter ofconvincing the people there thatthere were no downside risks associated with thememorial — which, in fact, I believed. 1 think wemanaged to convince them that there were competent, dedicated public servants managing the project and that it would be well done."

Shull's assistance came at a time when the Fundbadly needed a voice in the White House, for theopposition had begun to exert pressure both thereand on Capitol Hill, hoping to force a change inthe design.

At the same time, the critics had also taken theirobjections to the press, where the proposedmemorial was being denounced by oppositionleaders as, variously, "a black ditch," "Lin's inanecreation," "a trench," and "the black gash." In aletter to President Reagan, 27 Republican congressmen termed the memorial "a political statement of shame and dishonor." Reagan — whoduring his campaign had called the Vietnam War"a noble cause" — declined to comment on thedesign. Meanwhile, the dispute grew stili morebitter.

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Tom Shull at West Point: a question of smoothing theways politically.

While those closest to theVlemorial Fund have always insisted on the sincerity and good intentions of their opponents, other

observers havesuggested that the real dispute hasstemmed not from the design at all but from thewar itself. If the passions aroused by the designseem familiar, they argue, there's a good reason:they are the same onesaroused by the war. Thosewho oppose the design, they point out, are moreoften than not the people who believed moststrongly in the correctness of America's involvement in Vietnam — and who likewise remain most

bitter over the country's defeat."It's been a microcosm of the war," says one ob

server who has followed the contlict from the start.

"The same people are saying the same things."Another individual, also close to the process and

familiar with the objections raised against the design, adds this observation: "Philosophically, I'mnot sure that those who served in the war reluc

tantly shouldn't also be represented [by thememorial]. There were obviously many whoserved in Vietnam out of a sense of their duty ascitizens, but who weren't necessarily committed tothe war. Their views, I think, should also be takeninto consideration."

Still others have pointed out that the Fund, having obtained the necessar}- design approvals, wasne\'er stricth- obliged to sit down and negotiatewith the opposition, but did so anyway, consciousthat not to do so would have been in some sense todefeat the purpose of the memorial — which was,after all, to help bring about a reconciliation.

Considerahons of good faith aside, however,there were also compelling political reasons tonegotiate. With each day, it seemed, new pressures were brought to bear to stop the memorial.

As the conflict grew, it became clear that a forumwas needed where the two sides could come together to express their feelings. Again SenatorWarner stepped forward, this time with an offer tohold a series of open meetings. Grateful for achance to respond to the criticisms raised by theopposition, and anxious to have their own caseheard, the Fund was quick to accept.

In the meantime, however, those opposed to thedesign had begun to insist that both a statue and aflag be added to the memorial site — a suggestionthe Fund's leaders were reluctant to accept, arguing that the additions would violate the integrityofthe original design. However, the strength displayed by the opposition at the first Warner meeting made it clear that the concept of a statue wouldnot go away, no matter how impressive the credentials of the design jury.

In rapid order, the opponents were also able topersuade the Reagan administration to see in thestatue-and-tlag concept a \ '̂ay out of a growingpolitical dilemma. Although he had given his approval to the original design. Secretary of the Interior james Watt now announced that he wouldwithhold a necessary groundbreaking permit unless the Fund agreed to add a statue and a flag tothe memorial site.

"At that point," observes Mosley, "they basically had the project stopped cold."Realizing that the Fund lacked the politi

cal strength to contest Watt's ultimatum, Wheeler and the others acceded to the statue-and-flag concept,

reserving only the right to choose the sculptor.The actual siting of the statue would be theresponsibility of the Fine Arts Commission,chaired by National Gallery director J. CarterBrown (MBA '58).

V\'orking quicklv, Shull and others rewrote theoriginal applications for the design approvals toincorporate the new elements. The applicationswere then resubmitted to Interior, the Fine Arts

Fine Arts Commission chairman j. Carter Brown:aesthetics is not a separable item.

Commission, and the Capital Planning Commission, who in turn gave their approval once more.As a result, says Shull, the Fund went into thesecond Warner meeting in a much stronger position, able to demonstrate that the project now hadthe administration's blessing.

More important still, in the eyes of some, wasthe fact that the focal point of the dialogue hadbeen subtly shifted.

"The issue had now become where to place theflag and the statue," notes Shull, who attendedboth Warner meetings as an observer, "as opposed to whether or not the original design wouldbe built. In effect, the approval of the compromisedesign legitimized the original design."

One of the first lessons he learned from Dar-

man, he adds, was that in politics it is important tobe able to control the process of decision making,because one thereby controls, in some measure,the decision itself. In retrospect, the secondWarner meeting illustrates a successful effort tocontrol the decision-making process — not to orchestrate a meeting, but rather to determine in advance the general form of its outcome.

At that second meeting, the Fund agreed to establish a sculpture panel made up of two representatives from each side of the dispute. The panel, in

turn, would make recommendations to the FineArts Commission concerning the placement of thestatue and the flag. One member of that panel isArt Mosley.

"The one thing I've always kept in mind as wewent through this {siting of the sculpture) was thatno matter what we came up with, it would have tobe approved by Carter Brown," he says. "I knewhe wouldn't approve anything that was inappropriate. He's a professional — he's trained to do this— and I know he'll see that it's done with taste."

As it happened, the panel's first recommendation, made largely at the insistence of the statueproponents, was to place the sculpture prominently in the bowl of the memorial — a recommendation the Commission rejected.

The statue (for which only a model now exists)will be the work of sculptor Frederick Hart, thehighest-placing sculptor in the original designcompetition. Inevitably, the statue has drawn itsown share of criticism, but the debate this timeseems more academic than impassioned, perhapsin part because the presence of a statue on the siteis now a foregone conclusion. Hart's work, asshown by the model, will depict three soldiers,one of them black, caught in a moment of suddenattention to something seen or heard in the middledistance.

Wheeler praises Hart for choosing to make thefigures life-size{and not larger than life), for including a black man in the composition, and forgrouping the three figures so they are touchingone another, signifying what he calls the specialbond that exists among all Vietnam veterans.

Other proponents of the original design, whilecareful to express an appreciation of the difficulties

Sculptor Frederick Hart's model of the proposed sUtue.

Hart faces in trving to please everyone, have beenmore reserved in their praise of the model itself.

In an interview broadcast on National Public

Radio last winter, Carter Brown was askedwhether the decision of the Fine Arts Commission

to grant the revised design approval had been, ineffect, a choice between politics and aesthetics.

"It might have been," he replied, "if the onlychoice had been between mucking up the existingdesign —cluttering it up with something that wasgoing to interrupt the artistic idea —and [adheringto the original concept]. If you're in a concert andsomeone is singing 'The Star Spangled Banner',you can't insert a bit of country and western musicsimply because certain people in the audiencehappen to prefer that kind of music. However,you can have two pieces at a concert, and you canplay one all the way through and then play theother. The way things appear to be working out inthis case, I think the essentials of what everyonewants will be there."

Had he always been confident that a resolutionwas possible?

"I was worried before," admitted Brown, "because obviously you can't sacrifice artistic integrity. And there's been such misunderstanding onthis point. People think that aesthetics is somehowa separable item, and it's not — it's integral. Thedesign 15" the experience."

In the course of their deliberations, he was

asked, had he and the rest of the commissionfound themselves having to come to terms oncemore with the war?

"Very much so," he answered. "I think this isone of the very moving things about the memorial,and now that it's built 1think that anyone whowalksout into that glade and sees the gentle rollofthe earth going down to the black marble wall,which reflects the sky and which allows one's consciousness to open and expand — anyone whoexperiences that is going to go away a changedperson."A month after the dedication of the

memorial brought more than 150,000people to Constitution Gardens,nearly a thousand visitors a day were

still appearing at the site. Some vvere comingmerely to see the wall they'd heard so much about,others to find the name of ti friend or loved one,still others to leave some small souvenir or simplyto meditate on a war sdll vivid in the minds ofmany.

On an afternoon in late November of last vear.

-

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Jack Wheeler on War and Peace

"Going to Harvard was a disorienting experience. When I got there, I found there was a taboo:we didn't talk about the war, or the fact that I wasgoing in. Tlien myfriend Tommy Hayes was killedin action in April, 1968. When I went down to hisfuneral at West Point, I didn'tteU anyone where Iwasgoing. When I gotback, nobodyasked."

"I neverforgot Tommy. When you thinkaboutaclose friend that way, you're also indirectly thinking about yourself. It wasn't so obvious to methen, butit'sobvious now. I was honestly remembering Tommy, but, without understanding it, Iwas also remembering myself and how I felt."

"When you told someone in 1976, or 1979, or1981 thatyou served inVietnam andthatyou wereworking toremember your friends, especiallythose who didn't come back alive, that tended toput a barrierbetween you and that person."

"I keep asking myself, 'Why amI doing thesethings or.Vietnam?' I obviously want tobea securities lawyer, but at the same time 1keep workingin this otherarea. I keep feeling this tug.

"I believe ithas todowith something I learnedat West Point, and thatis that the most importantpart ofwar isbuilding the peace. The better youbuild the peace, the less imminent is the next war.This was neveran explicit lesson at West Point,but it was built into the warp and woofof theplace. Youdon't see it until you stand backa littleand look."

Jack Wheeler left his desk at the Securities andExchange Commission to join the queue ofvisitorsand again pay his respects at the memorial, thistime accompanied by a visitor from out of town.

Wheeler, who earneda law degree at Yale afterleaving theArmy, now serves as special counsel tothe S.E.C. chairman, former E. F. Hutton Groupvice chairman John Shad (MBA '49). He has heldthe position sinceAugust, 1982, when he turnedover the reins of the Vietnam Veterans LeadershipProgram —a federal volunteer program he hadorganized the year before — to another Vietnamveteran, Ed Timperlake. (The V.V.L.P. providesmaterial and administrative support for Vietnamveterans seeking to assist Vietnam vets still suffering from the effects of the war.) Prior to his involvement with the leadership program. Wheelerhad sparked yet another Vietnam-related project.At his suggestion, the Wasliingfon Post had broughttogether a number of Vietnam veterans and antiwar activists for a panel discussion onthemeaningand after-effects of the war. The transcript of thisdiscussion was published first in the Post and laterserved as the centerpiece of a Vietnam anthologyentitled The Wounded Generation. At Wheeler'ssuggestion, all royalties from the sales of The\\oundcd Generation have gone to organizationsserving Vietnam veterans.

During the ride to the memorial. Wheeler notesthat the dedication ceremony was one of threemajor eventssponsored or initiated bythe Fundinconnection with the week-long .Vational Salute toVietnam Veterans. Also held that week were aVietnam veterans parade down Constitution Avenue and a vigil at Washington's National Cathedral, u'hich had culminated in a memorial service.During the vigiJ, volunteer readers had takenturns speaking aloud the names of all Americanswho had died in Vietnam. E\'en in the small hoursof the morning, he said, there had been dozens ofpeoplein the cathedral, waiting to hear the nameof a loved one read.

The names themselves, he added, had been thesource of one of the biggest technical challenges oftheentire memorial effort. Long hours ofcarefulcross-checking at different military-records centershad turned up a number of casualties not contained on the original list from the Defense Department. Efforts had to be made, too, to uncoverpossible misspellings and other mistakes. It wasnot unknown, for example, for a serviceman fromthe South v>ith the given name ofBobby to havehis name 'corrected" to Robert bv some well-

W-' ''^'WSmm

WTieeler, Radez, and Mosley at the memorial: on time,under budget.

meaning company clerk — and for that reasoneach such possibility was checked wherever therewas a reasonable cause for v>'orry. With a list ofnearly 58,000 names, the challenge to get each onecorrect was enormous.

Nor was that all. Once the master list had been

compiled, there remained the further problem ofhaving the names engraved on the granite panels.Given the sheer volume of the work to be done,

hand engraving was out of the question. Researchbv the Fund, however, had uncovered a small firmin Tennessee working to develop an automatedengraving process called photo stencil sandblasting. With the Fund's encouragement the processwas perfected, and the Tennessee firm wasawarded the engraving contract.

In appearance. Jack Wheeler is the very model ofa Washington lawver, his suit on this Novemberdav conservative but not somber, with now and

then a flash of suspenders beneath the jacket. At38 he is balding and, as befits his West Point training, conspicuously fit. Before making the decisionto attend law^ school, he lived for a year at theVirginia Theological Seminary, where he studiedthe New Testament in his free time (he was thenworking for Amtrak) and debated whether or notto enter the ministry. In the end, he chose the lawinstead. (Ironically, it is his wife, Elisa, u'ho hasnow become an Episcopal priest.) Nonetheless,there remains something slightly evangelical aboutJack Wheeler, as though the missionary impulse\\'ill ne\'er quite let him rest.

By now, of course, he is among those most familiar with the memorial. For the first-time visitor,howes'er, the approach to the site can be unsettling. If approached from Constitution Avenue, thememorial is literally invisible until one is standingat its verv edge. Finding oneself so suddenly at thebrink produces a startling effect.

More powerful still, of course, is the impact ofthe thousands and thousands of names etched in

the black granite. One of the two National ParkService volunteers at the memorial keeps a box oftissues at her side, handing them out as needed.On most days the}' go quickly.

Other evidence of the response evoked by thememorial is not hard to seek. Where the granitepanels meet and form a seam, for example, visitorsha\'e inserted small flowers opposite the namesthey have come to find, enlivening the wall up anddown its length with small bursts of color. Othershave placed bouquets beneath the panels, or smallnotes, flags, photographs, or other mementos —a

The dedication of the memorial (shown onthe overleap attracted a crowd of 150,000 •.to Constitj<tion Gardens on a chilly day inNovember. As he stood on the speakers'platfonn, says Wheeler, and saw the :•people reflected in the polished marble, he V-recalled the words ofSt. Paul: "For now 'y^we see througha glass, darkly; but then, ' 'S-face to face."

box of medals in one case, a pair of jungle boots inanother.

The Park Service volunteers each carry a largebook, the memorial's Directory of Names, whichprovides the location, by panel and row, of eachname on the wall. Easily distinguished by theirPark Service badges, these volunteers movequieth' among the stream of visitors, stopping repeatedly to help people find names on the wall orto answer other questions.

"One thing we didn't anticipate," says Wheeler,"is ho\^• important it would be to people to actuallytouch the names, to reach out and trace the nameson the wall." As if in confirmation, in either direction from the apex, where Wheeler now stands,people can be seen reaching out reflexivelv totouch the wall. Man\' are cr\ing unashamedly.

"I think what's happening," he continues, "isthat people are keeping what they need to keep,and saving goodbye to the things they need to saygoodbye to."

Asked about Tommy Hayes, the friend whosedeath had started him down the long road to thismemorial, \^'heeler leads his visitor to panel 50.There on line 29 is the name Thomas J. Hayes, oneindividual among thousands of others, his memory kept alive in the impartial democracy of thewall.

As he often does, Wheeler has brought his owncopy of the directory with him this dav, and he issoon approached by two men seeking assistance.They are looking for the name of Lerov Gee, saysthe older one.

"Was he relative of yours?" asks Wheeler, looking for the name in his book.

"No," the man replies, "I taught him in school."Wheeler finds the name and offers to lead the

men to the panel where it can be found.A moment later he is back at the apex. How does

all this make him feel, he is asked? How does he

feel nou' that it's done?

"Very privileged," he replies after a moment,"Very privileged and very grateful." •

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continued from page53

addition to an engineering curriculum.) After his graduation, Reichhad been commissioned as an officerin the U.S. Public Health Service inBaltimore. "I was the head of theircomputer center for the better partof two years," he recalls. "It was abrand-new center, and I was involved in writing the bid specifications for would-be computer vendors. I also helped write the systemsand applications programs needed tooperate the center."

During this same period, Reichbegan reading in the history and philosophy of science. He remembersbeing particularly struck by ThomasKuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. "But my formal introduction to the history of science was aresult of happenstance," he says today. "The Baltimore Public HealthService Hospital happens to be rightacross the street from Johns Hopkins, and I used to use theirbookstore and eat in their cafeteria.One day I discovered that Hopkinshad something called a 'History ofScience' department. 1 went andtalked with one of the faculty members, and a year later, in 1972,1 enrolled as a graduate student."

While in the Hopkins Ph.D. program, Reich became increasingly interested in the history of technology, and eventually decided to writehis dissertation on the developmentof industrial research in the Bell system and the early years of BellLaboratories. "I was asking," Reichsays, "how and why the companyestablished the laboratory, how thelaboratory was run, what impact thecompany environment had on thescientists and engineers whoworked there, and how the laboratory — and its results — influencedthe business policies of the company."

In July of 1976, Reich began athree-year appointment as assistantprofessor of history at RensselaerPolytechnic Institute in Troy, NewYork, where he taught courses onthe history of American science,technology, and business, on engineering ethics and values, and onenergy policy. He also served as in

stitute archivist for a year, organizing several of RPI's major collections, including the Roebling-Brooklyn Bridge papers. It was fromthis position that he was called toRutgers and the Edison Papers in1979.

"Reese Jenkins and I have half-time faculty appointments at Rutgers, and half-time jobs with theEdison papers," Reich says. "Inpractice, of course, that means thatwe teach half time, and work on theproject full time."

This schedule left little time forReich's own writing, and it was theurge to write that led to his application for the NewcomenFellowship."I've wanted to work on this bookfor quite a while," he says. "I reallyneeded a year to get away from theEdison Papers and to work on it fulltime."

The book is a comparison of theestablishment of the laboratories atGeneral Electric and Bell. In somerespects, says Reich, it is an extension of his dissertation, but the dissertation will constitute only 25 to30 percent of the new work.

"I am an historian," he says, "andthe book is therefore historical atheart. I plan to begin in thenineteenth century and try to understand the social and technological landscape in the United States,explaining the factors that led thesecompanies to make the investmentin major research laboratoriesaround the turn of the century. ThenI'll look in detail at the companiesthemselves, their early histories,their previous R&D efforts, and therelationships between the companies' strategies and the creation ofthe laboratories.

"I'll then consider the establishment of the labs and compare theiroperations in depth. You can look atthese two laboratories and see verymajor differences, and my thesis isthat they reflect basic differences inthe companies that created them.Finally, I'll try to understand howthe companies used the results thatcame out of their laboratories, andstudy the impact that thelaboratories —and the many others