The New Jersey Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, honors those from that state who served in the Vietnam War, especially the 1,561 men and one woman who were killed or missing in action. The design for the memorial was created by Hien Nguyen in 1988, and construction was officially completed on May 7, 1995, when it was dedicated. The Memorial is located on the grounds of the Garden State Arts Center (now known as the PNC Bank Arts Center). It is open 24 hours a day, all days of the year, free of charge. Guided tours by volunteer New Jersey veterans are available for groups.
The memorial is an open-air circular pavilion, 200 feet in diameter. Around the entire outside are 366 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) black granite panels, each one representing a day the year. The casualties are listed according to what day they were killed. In the middle of the circular pavilion is a red oak, the state tree of New Jersey. This tree provides shade for three statues, one of a dying soldier, one of a nurse tending to his wounds, and one soldier standing at their sides. They represent those who died, the women in the war, and those who came back safely, respectively.
The stone panels are arranged so they are about 12 feet higher than the inner courtyard. The ten stairways and two ramps leading up to them intersect, as the designer did not want the pathways for the handicapped separate. These ramps are arranged in a double helix, each one ascending to the top in half of the circle. The two entrances to the memorial are tunnels, symbolizing the trip the soldiers took to Vietnam. Also, the designer made the memorial oriented so that the May Seventh panel, the day the war ended, points towards Vietnam.
The Vietnam Era Educational Center is adjacent to the memorial, and is the first of its kind in the country. According to one of the officials here, the state asked the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. what she would do over again given the chance to redesign the memorial. She said that, without an educational center explaining the war and turmoil in the country at that time, a memorial could be meaningless to passerby. This is the rationale for the existence of the facility. In 2010, the Vietnam Era Educational Center was changed to the Vietnam Era Museum & Educational Center.
No one is buried on the memorial site, except for the original owners of the land. The property was given to the state to build on, and the owners only asked that they continue to be able to be buried here.
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“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from Mars.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1984)
“Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America.”
—Myra MacPherson, U.S. author. Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation, epilogue (1984)
“To the cry of “follow Mormons and prairie dogs and find good land,” Civil War veterans flocked into Nebraska, joining a vast stampede of unemployed workers, tenant farmers, and European immigrants.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)