Veterans Memorial Fund Accomplished Its Mission ... and Pressed On

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

VVMF had quite an aggressive time frame for building the memorial — it hoped to break ground on Veterans Day, 1982, just 36 months from the time the idea was officially hatched.

As with all things Vietnam-related, controversies around the memorial cropped up all over the place, Arbogast says. At the time, just four years after the official end of the war, there still wasn't overwhelming support for returning vets. Vets themselves wanted the monies raised to go toward services for them and their families rather than to a memorial. Even among those who thought the memorial was a good idea, there was battle after battle over what it should look like, etc.