A living memorial to Vietnam vets in Portland - Sunset's Travel Guide

Sunset, Nov, 1995 by Christine Colasurdo

It has been 20 years since the United States left Vietnam, and 25 years since I left it. I haven't spent much time thinking about it since, but the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Living Memorial brings it all back in a good way - good for those who were there, and good for those who were not.

I took my family to the memorial recently, entering beneath shade trees that lined the way to a peaceful grass amphitheater. My family dropped back as I continued alone up a spiral walk that passed several crescent-shaped granite walls, each listing Oregon's war dead. I found one wall marked 1970 and searched it for the names of friends who didn't make it home. None were listed, but my search certainly made me remember. I remembered those who were lost and those who made it out: American, Vietnamese, and montagnard; old people and orphans; pilots and nurses; friends and fools. The war changed us all.

Jim McCausland (U.S. Army, 108th Artillery Group, Republic of Vietnam, 1970)

Although nearly 800 names are inscribed in the black granite of the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Living Memorial, it takes only one to stop a visitor in her tracks. Portland designer Elizabeth Anderson discovered this sobering fact in 1986 while she was creating the monument's typeface. After reading pages of names, Anderson paused: there was a friend from her ninth-grade class - another casualty of Vietnam.

For this friend and some 57,000 Oregonians who served in the war, Anderson created a special typeface based on a fourth-century model. She called the type "Hoyt," after the Hoyt Arboretum, of which the memorial is a part, and she slanted the capital letters slightly "to give them life."

"The memorial is a place of life and healing," she explains. "I wanted the letters to reflect that." Constructing the 7-acre memorial took a little more than a year and was itself a healing process. "It brought a lot of people together."

Today volunteers keep the granite walls polished like mirrors. The monument will mark its eighth year this month on Veterans Day. The memorial is next to the World Forestry Center. Take the Zoo exit off U.S. Highway 26. For more information, call (503) 823-3655.