Maya Lin's Sense of Wonder

I’ve been charmed by Maya Lin (10/5/59, Athens, Ohio) ever since 1982 when I got in line to scrutinize her Vietnam Memorial, designed as an “open wound” to express her sense of the gravity of the experience of honoring 58,159 victims of the second worse war we've ever undertaken. I loved the reflective black marble (from Bangalore I discover) cut in Barre, Vermont, shipped to Memphis to have the death dates carved by Glassical, Inc. in the order they were suffered. I was only vaguely aware of the controversy that preceded my visit.

But I flinched to learn that Ross Perot running for president sneered at her as an “egg roll”! She believes she never would have won that commission in a competition of 421 designs if they had been entered as names rather than numbers. James Watt, Reagan’s Secretary of Interior at first refused to give her a building permit—until she faced a Congressional Committee defending her idiosyncratic design.

James Webb, “an original defender,” admitted in rejecting her concept: “I never in my wildest dreams imagined such a nihilistic slab of stone.” Maya points out that she grew up “white” in Athens where her father Henry Huan Lin was dean of the Art School at Ohio University and her mother Julia Ming Lin a professor of Lit there as well. Maya didn’t begin to think of her Chinese heritage until she was in her 30’s.

Frederick Hart who ran third in the blind competition consoled the rattled multitudes with his more traditional trio of “Three Soldiers”. And women (8 are inscribed) elbowed to their own icon—at first, an American nurse with a Vietnamese baby was rejected as too political—and ended up with a woman cradling an empty helmet. Ultimate judgment of Scruggs: “It has become something of a shrine.”

Indeed John Dewitt of Stockton, CA contrived “The Moving Wall” ultimately in three versions that clocked tens of millions transcontinental visitors in urban venues of from 5,000 to 50,000. I also piously took a long, long Greyhound ride to see next celebration—of Dr. King—in Montgomery, AL. But I come not to praise her brilliant beginnings.

It’s what she’s up to now that beguiles me: an international multimedia strategy to end species destruction and counter global warming. But a multimedia strategy deserves, even requires, a multi media tout. I turn you over to Christiane Amanpour on CNN.

Amanpour is CNN’s newly certified egghead commentator, a 51 year old Iranian that can elicit credible commentary on crucial subjects as diverse as Robert Mugabe and that loving, lovable media pair, Harold Evans and Tina Brown. Maya has gone global and her gentle certainties have become a needed international counselor. Christiane is on every weekday evening. But Maya is accessible with her on-line.