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Scruggs acknowledges that Lin’s heritage certainly stirred controversy, but he thinks what really drew people’s ire was that the memorial did not seem patriotic enough or evoke emotions like

that of Iwo Jima and other war memorials. “The ancestry of Maya Lin, to some veterans, felt improper,” he said. “I talked to people all the time about the memorial [and told them] she’s

from Athens, Ohio. Her parents were both English professors. And she said when I met her, ‘I’m as Chinese as apple pie.’” Others who were resistant to the memorial’s design called it the

“black gash of shame and sorrow,” in contrast to the other monuments on the mall, which were all white. However, Scruggs said he thought Lin’s plans were “excitingly different. It’s got

this shimmering granite. You can look in there and see your face. And the brilliance of this thing is that the names were placed in chronological order. So, the guys who were killed on the

day when I was in a battle in Vietnam, their names are right next to each other, in perpetuity.” Lin’s selection of black granite had an added advantage. At older monuments and cemeteries

that used traditional stone, he said, names can often become difficult to read over time as the stone becomes weathered. But the granite used at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial should look the

same hundreds of years from now as it did when it was first constructed. AN UNCONVENTIONAL CURE FOR PTSD Scruggs said that as soon as the monument was unveiled in 1982, he no longer had

any interest in smoking marijuana to relieve his PTSD. The new memorial is what centered him. For the servicemembers of today who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan struggling with

PTSD, he recommends finding what personally centers them. “The average person can accomplish a lot in this country. I see it all the time — people volunteer at dog shelters, churches,

everything else. People do a lot of good things, and we want to encourage that kind of behavior,” he said. Eventually, after raising millions of dollars in private donations, Scruggs was

able to secure $3 million from Congress to provide for ongoing maintenance of the grounds, which he said has kept the memorial in incredible shape as he continues to visit it every week.

“Many times, people bring in teddy bears to the Vietnam wall, they’ll have someone’s story attached to it — a letter, a photograph, a pair of Army boots,” he said. “And for me, it’s just

such a wonderful feeling to know that my buddies and everyone else who was killed on the American side got what they deserved, a national monument. That was certainly all I could do for

them.”