'U' lecturer studies veteran memorial

With Veterans' Day upon us, the recent publication of Kristin Ann Hass' new book, "Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial," is timely.

Hass, a lecturer in the department of American culture, explores the offerings left at the historic wall and tries to explain the impulses behind this gift-giving phenomenon.

"The (Vietnam) war shattered what it meant to be a patriotic American," Hass said. So the wall, completed in 1982, was supposed to be a memorial for the veterans "to create a community of grief that they hadn't had."

Although the original impulse to leave gifts at the wall came from the people who fought in the war, the memorial soon turned into an "uninvited chorus of people speaking in a national forum," Hass said.

She found the gifts "suggest that ordinary Americans deeply crave a memory.

"A lot of it comes from people ... who really felt touched by the way the war affected the culture," Hass said.

The Vietnam War was the first American war fought by the working classes, and it included many Mexican, black, Irish and Italian Americans, Hass said. The wall "pulled those communities into a national conversation," Hass said. "A conversation about how to be patriotic."

The offerings express the American "desire to reclaim their patriotism and their desire to be able to be part of a national community," Hass said.

"The restive memory of the war changed American public commemoration because the memory of the war could not be expressed or contained" by the memorial alone, she said.

In a similar effort to change public commemoration of wars, the United States changed Armistice Day to Veterans' Day in 1954.

Prior to the change, the holiday was devoted only to the soldiers of World War I. "Armistice Day wasn't a veterans' day," history Prof. Jonathan Marwil said. "It was a day to remember the war and the end of the war."

By renaming and re-orienting the holiday, "Americans changed the meaning and emphasis of the day. (It became) a way to celebrate the soldier," he said. So, Veterans' Day remains a day for the living.

Today, the University's ROTC units will help students do this at a Veterans' Day ceremony, which begins at 8 a.m. with flag raising and music at North Hall.

Following this a panel will speak at Rackham Auditorium, including Rep. Lynn Rivers (D-Ann Arbor), Ann Arbor Mayor Ingrid Sheldon, Vice Provost for Academic and Multicultural Affairs Lester Monts, as well as veterans of the Korean, Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars.

"The whole point of this day is passing on a tradition," said ROTC member Josh Hammond, an LSA senior. "We want to know what these guys did, what they learned."

The gifts left at the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial "demonstrate a new impulse in the making of American public memory," Hass said. Veterans' Day holds the same role.

11-11-98