Fall 1980. Maya Lin was a senior at Yale, taking a funereal architecture seminar. The class decided to enter a national design competition for a memorial that would honor those who died in the Vietnam War. When her class visited the proposed memorial site in Washington, D.C. during Thanksgiving break, Lin walked through Constitution Gardens alone. She stood there, looking at the ground, imagining. Back at Yale, she modeled the design out of mashed potatoes. Her actual submission was a pastel drawing with an essay explaining how people would respond to the work. She mailed it just before the deadline-March 31, 1981. Entry number 1026. Her professor gave her a B. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund had launched the competition in October 1980. They wanted a memorial that would be reflective and contemplative, that would harmonize with its surroundings, that would contain the names of all who died or remained missing, and that would make no political statement about the war. By the deadline, 1,421 designs had been submitted-the largest design competition in American history. The entries were displayed at an Air Force hangar at Andrews Air Force Base, covering more than 35,000 square feet of floor space. Each entry was identified only by number. The eight-member jury didn't know the designers' names. They examined every submission. Finally, they selected entry number 1026. May 6, 1981. Competition officials came to Maya Lin's dormitory room at Yale. The 21-year-old undergraduate —with no professional architectural experience, no bachelor's degree yet—had won. First prize: $20,000. Her design was radical. Two walls of polished black granite, set below ground level. V-shaped, with one side pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial and the other toward the Washington Monument. The walls would meet at an angle of 125 degrees. Sinking into the earth, not rising from it. And etched into the black granite: the names of every American who died or remained missing in Vietnam. Nearly 58,000 names, listed not alphabetically but chronologically—in the order they were lost. The moment her identity was revealed, the controversy exploded. Veterans groups were outraged. Where were the heroic sculptures? The flags? The marble columns? Businessman Ross Perot, who'd pledged $160,000 to help run the competition, called it a trench and withdrew his support. Others claimed the V-shape was a subliminal anti-war peace sign. She was 21 years old. A student. A woman. Asian-American. Designing a memorial for one of America's most divisive wars. The attacks were vicious and personal. Secretary of the Interior James Watt sided with the critics and blocked the project until changes were made. Some 275,000 Americans-as well as businesses and veterans' groups—donated $8.4 million to build the memorial. They believed in her vision. Lin's wall would be built. But a traditional sculpture—Frederick Hart's "Three Soldiers"-would be added nearby. A flagpole, too. When the memorial was dedicated on November 13, 1982, her name wasn't even mentioned at the ceremony. She coped by returning to Yale as a graduate student, earning her Master of Architecture in 1986. People came. Families came. Veterans came. They touched the names. They left flowers, letters, photographs, combat boots, dog tags. They made rubbings of the names. They wept. The reflective black granite became a mirror—visitors saw their own faces reflected alongside the names of the dead. The living and the dead, merged in black stone. As you walk along the wall, you descend into the earth. The names grow taller and taller as the walls rise. At the deepest point-the center, where the two walls meet-you're surrounded by names. Over 58,000 of them. Then you walk back up, emerging into the light. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial became the most-visited memorial in Washington, D.C.—drawing approximately three million visitors each year. Lin was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2009 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. - @fabrisgassmoney