Our Partner Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund’s Leader Jan Scruggs to Retire:
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The regal slab of polished granite that reflects the Washington Monument and brings battle-hardened men to tears was once as controversial as the war it memorializes.
In 1981, the design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was met with howls of protest, a campaign to undermine it, racist comments and even a spurious Red Scare.
At the center of the politicized melee, which aggravated a still-raw national wound just six years after the end of the war, was an unassuming Labor Department investigator named Jan Scruggs. No one had heard of him until he took a week off to start planning what would become one of the most recognizable monuments in the country.
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Article By Heath Druzin, Stars and Stripes
Published: June 29, 2015