"Honor and Respect" -- the occasion is the 25th Anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, celebrated with an anniversary parade in Washington, DC on November 10, 2007. Mark your calendar.
To learn more about this event, sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans of America, click this link. To learn more about the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, click here for the extended description on Wikipedia, or here to go the official site, part of the U.S. National Parks Service.
It's important to note that the Wall, or the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, as it alternately called, is not "just" something for Vietnam veterans -- it's for the public, for veterans of other wars, and for current veterans as well. It's apparently (as it should be) a profoundly moving experience for visitors, almost 4 million of whom visit annually. Many, especially veterans, go at night -- potentially a dangerous move in Washington, DC ;-) -- but apparently an experience that only adds to the profundity, without experiencing the claustrophobia of a daytime visit, and the throngs of people that implies. It's probably quite heavy, hard, and healing to experience -- a touchstone for many who survived that conflict, and others who can go to appreciate their sacrifice and give it more than lip service.
Since women seem to rarely get the credit they deserve for societal contributions, it's cheering to this woman that the architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was in fact a woman, Maya Lin. As the National Parks Service material describes,
"Deliberately setting aside the controversies of the war, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial honors the men and women who served when their Nation called upon them. The designer, Maya Lin, felt that “the politics had eclipsed the veterans, their service and their lives.” She kept the design elegantly simple to “allow everyone to respond and remember."
