How We Remember

By Teri Bachman

Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Photo: Neil Michel/Axiom

The way we commemorate people and events has evolved from the practical to the personal.

In a speech exactly three months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush noted that for those of us who lived through the tragedy the only remembrance we will ever need is “the tick of a clock at the 46th minute of the eighth hour of the 11th day.” But to help later generations understand the event, he added, “in time, perhaps, we will mark the memory of September the 11th in stone and metal.”

Indeed, only days after the event, discussions had already begun about what sort of memorial might be erected. Suggestions ranged from resurrection of the last-standing fragment of the World Trade Center facade to a recreation of the towers in laser light.

“In New York you have thousands of arts people talking about this, all of whom have very inventive and spectacularly creative ideas about how to do it. But the tragedy poses all kinds of commemoration problems,” says Carole Blair, professor of American studies and an expert on U.S. commemorative monuments. Blair and photographer Neil Michel ’91, M.A. ’93, have spent the past 10 years studying memorials throughout the country to better understand their impact and their evolution.

What they have found is that the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was very much a turning point in the way people or events are memorialized. In the decades between and following the World Wars, commemoration was predominantly functional—in line with the modernistic emphasis on the practical and the new. People built swimming pools, memorial unions, auditoriums and freeways and named them for people or events. “The problem with that is that nobody today pays any attention to them,” says Blair, who has yet to find a UC Davis student who knows that the campus’s Memorial Union is dedicated to UC Davis students and alumni who lost their lives in World War II.

During the 40 years that preceded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Blair says, the nation was so focused on the present and the future that events of the past were repressed. “And that was a mistake that is finally beginning to be recognized.” The result has been an “explosion” of commemoration and a movement backward in time to recover what wasn’t commemorated during that earlier period—hence the Korean War Veterans Memorial dedicated in 1995 and the National World War II Memorial now under construction.

A portion of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall. Photo: Neil Michel/Axiom.

But the Vietnam memorial did more than just spur construction of other memorials; it represented a new style and an expansion of the public memory to encompass events marked by pain as well as pride. The Vietnam memorial and many of its successors acknowledged conflicts in the American experience—represented symbolically in its two dark granite wings that point to their antithesis, the tall, white, statesmanly Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. And it initiated a shift toward the personal with its listing of names. Almost every memorial built in the next 15 years incorporated similar lists of casualties, says Blair.

And memorial design continues to evolve. Today the need to name seems to be lessening. Monuments are incorporating more statuary. And designs are often more eclectic— “lots and lots of things combined into one entity,” like the Oklahoma City National Memorial with its twin gates, 168 empty chairs, survivor tree, reflecting pool, rescuer’s orchard and children’s area.

“It’s hard to tell if we have a new style emerging,” says Blair, “or if this is just a moment when people don’t know quite what to do.” The combination of elements may be a misplaced good intention, she adds: an attempt to appeal to lots of people. “The problem with that is that it makes a memorial really hard to interpret.”

The Oklahoma City memorial demonstrates another misplaced good intention: the use of memorials “to heal people,” says Blair. Such a goal often leads to a rush to judgement and can introduce more conflict and trauma if interested parties don’t agree on a design.

Blair hopes that doesn’t happen with a Sept. 11 memorial. Her greatest desire is for “a long, thoughtful process” to take place before a design is selected—a process that’s necessary to resolve many complicating factors: The event took place in three locations. Those sites are and will remain grave sites. The value of the New York property dictates that at least part of it return to commercial use. Many tend to view the disaster as a New York event, when it was truly a national event and even—given the loss of many foreign nationals—an international one.

A well-considered process would also better ensure that a Sept. 11 memorial is not just a means of healing today’s wounds but is a meaningful remembrance for those, as President Bush indicated, who come later—the true purpose of commemoration.

Of her many visits to many memorial sites, Blair remembers most vividly one to the Lincoln Memorial. “As I walked up the steps there was a woman climbing near me. She was crying so hard that a National Parks Service person approached her and asked if she was OK. And she said, ‘Yes, I’m just so happy to be here. Lincoln is my idol. This is like Mecca for me.’

“That is an interesting testimony to why commemoration is important,” says Blair. “Events aren’t important just because we lived through them. They are important because they have a profound influence on all of us, even those who don’t have a personal memory of them.”