Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection
Visitors to the memorial began leaving sentimental items at the memorial at its opening. One story claims that this practice began during construction, when a Vietnam veteran threw the Purple Heart his brother received posthumously into the concrete of the memorial's foundation. Several thousand items are left at the memorial each year.
Items left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial are collected by National Park Service employees and transferred to the NPS Museum and Resource Center, which catalogs and stores all items except perishable organic matter (such as live flowers) and unaltered US flags. The flags are redistributed through various channels.
The largest item left at the memorial was a sliding glass storm door with a full-size replica "tiger cage". The door was painted with a scene in Vietnam and the names of US POWs and MIAs from the conflict.
Other items in collection include a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with the license plate HERO, a plain brown teddy bear which was dressed by other unconnected visitors, a 6' abstract sculpture titled "After the Holocaust", and an experimental W. R. Case "jungle survival knife" of which only 144 were made. It also contains the Medal of Honor of Angelo Liteky, who renounced it in 1986 by placing the medal at the memorial in an envelope addressed to then-President Ronald Reagan.
From 1992 to 2003, selected items from the collection were placed on exhibit, at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History as "Personal Legacy: The Healing of a Nation".
Read more about this topic: Vietnam Veterans Memorial
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—Myra MacPherson, U.S. author. Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation, epilogue (1984)
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