Stars and Stripes 7.2.15

Volume 7, No. 28 ŠSS 2015

FRIDAY, JULY 3, 2015 For information please contact Waverly Williams 803-774-1237 or waverly@theitem.com

OFF BASE?

In wake of Charleston shooting, opinions mixed on renaming US facilities ILLUSTRATION

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C HRISTOPHER SIX /Stars and Stripes

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COVER STORY 10 bases named for Confederates Fort Bragg, N.C. Established 1918 The home of the U.S. Army airborne forces and Special Forces, as well as U.S. Army Forces Command and U.S. Army Reserve Command is named in honor of Gen. Braxton Bragg, a West Point Bragg graduate, planter and slaveholder who was dogged by rumors he’d been born in prison after his mother murdered a black freed man. Bragg, commander of the Army of Tennessee, was known as a meticulous planner and harsh disciplinarian whose military failings, historians say, included reliance on outmoded tactics. After defeat at the Battle of Chattanooga, he was relieved of command and transferred to Richmond as a military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He died in 1876, at age 59, in Galveston, Texas.

Fort Gordon, Ga. Established 1917 Home of the Army’s Signal Corps and Signal Center, and former base for the Army’s military police school, Fort Gordon was named after Lt. Gen. John Brown Gordon, who after the Civil War served Gordon in the U.S. Senate and as Georgia governor. Gordon was a slave owner who trained as a lawyer and became a trusted subordinate of Gen. Robert E. Lee. He had no military experience before the war, but historians consider him one of the most effective Confederate corps commanders. After the war he opposed Reconstruction and became a leading proponent of the “Lost Cause” theory of the Civil War that downplayed slavery and romanticized the Old South.

Gordon died in 1904, at age 71, in Miami.

GRAY AREAS Opinions mixed on changing names of U.S. Army bases that honor Confederates

BY NANCY MONTGOMERY Stars and Stripes

Some of the most important U.S. Army bases in the country — including forts Hood, Bragg, Benning, Gordon and Polk — are named for Confederate officers, nearly all slaveholders and one generally acknowledged to have been a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Few soldiers, let alone civilians, are aware of the origins of the names of the bases where they live and work.

Some who do, particularly African-Americans, feel insulted.

The propiety of paying homage to men who fought under the rebel flag is coming under renewed scrutiny after the racially motivated killing of nine black worshippers in a historic Charleston, S.C., church. Calls to banish the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Capitol grounds have turned into a national movement to strip symbols of the Confederacy from public parks and buildings, license plates, stores and more.

To many, the names of 10 Army bases should be reviewed as well.

Clarence Sasser, who was awarded the Medal of Honor as a medic in Vietnam, went through basic training at Fort Polk, La., named for Confederate Gen. Leonidas Polk, who was an Episcopal bishop and wealthy slave owner. To Sasser, the name was a slap in the face. It represented, he said, “that I’m not as good as you.”

“When you’re looking back, it’s hard to see where it really matters,” Sasser said in a 2012 phone interview from his home in Houston. “Except for a little bit of the soul.”

Some of the bases were named for men who not only fought against the U.S. Army but also espoused strong views in support of slavery and white supremacy.

Henry Benning, for whom Fort Benning, Ga., is named, warned that the end of slavery would lead to black governors, juries, legislatures and more.

“Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand for that?”

Benning wrote before the war.

“We will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth, and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination.”

An online questionnaire by Stars and Stripes found that about 88 percent of more than 21,000 respondents opposed changing the names.

Fort Gordon, Ga., home of the Army Signal Corps and Signal Center, honors John Brown Gordon, who rallied fellow Southerners to secede from the Union. In an 1860 speech he proclaimed: “African slavery is the mightiest engine in the universe for the civilization, elevation and refinement of mankind — the surest guarantee of the continuance of liberty among ourselves.”

“Then let us do our duty, protect our liberties, and leave the consequences with God …

Do this, and the day is not far distant when the southern Flag shall be omnipotent from the Gulf of Panama to the coast of Delaware; when Cuba shall be ours; when the western breeze shall kiss our flag, as it floats in triumph from the gilded turrets of Mexico’s capital; when the well-clad, well-fed,

southern, Christian slave shall nightly beat his tambourine and banjo.”

Gordon would become one of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s most trusted generals, and after the war, he served as a U.S. senator and governor of Georgia.

He is also widely believed to have been a founder of the Ku Klux Klan in his home state.

Over the years, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has decried the base names.

“It is offensive, to say the least, to those African-American troops putting their lives on the line now for the security of our great nation to be trained and housed in facilities named for those who believed that they should not be viewed as citizens, as those who are treated as less than human beings,” Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington, D.C., bureau said in 2012.

Retired Sgt. Maj. D.W. Allen said he was “appalled” to find that Fort Lee, Va., was named for Confederate commander Gen. Robert E. Lee when he served there early in his 25year career.

“That we would celebrate, in essence, the hideousness that they did and what they stood for. It’s not the American way,” he said. “To think that in this day and age that we are still recognizing these slave-owning generals is appalling to me as a black American. We need to re-evaluate what we stand for.”

Apart from the residual pain of slavery, Jamie Malanowski, a journalist who has written on the Civil War, wrote that it was inappropriate to name military bases for men who led troops who killed U.S. Army soldiers.

“We simply should not name U.S. Army bases after people who fought the U.S. Army in battle,” Malanowski wrote in a widely published 2013 op-ed.

SEE PAGE 3

Camp Beauregard, La. Established 1917 A former U.S. Army training base now administered by the Louisiana Army National Guard, it was named for Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard.

He was born on a Louisiana sugar cane plantation and comBeauregard manded the Confederate troops who fired the first shots of the war at Fort Sumter, S.C. Beauregard was a West Point graduate who served in the Mexican War and was briefly superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy. He won the First Battle of Bull Run and later commanded armies in the West, including at the Battle of Shiloh. His career, however, was encumbered because he didn’t get along with President Jefferson Davis. After the war, he became a railroad executive and got rich promoting the Louisiana state lottery. He died in 1893 in New Orleans at age 74.

Fort Lee, Va. Established 1917 Fort Lee, home of the Combined Arms Support Command and an Army logistics hub, is named for Gen. Robert E. Lee, the aristocratic, career U.S. Army officer, a hero of the Mexican War, and top West Lee Point graduate who turned down an offer to command Union forces because, he said, his highest loyalties belonged to Virginia.

He became commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the symbol of a brave, fair commander willing to share his men’s hardships. A revered Southern icon, Lee’s generalship was characterized by bold tactics and inspired leadership although some modern historians have questioned his strategic judgment, including paying too little attention to the Union threat in the Western Theater. After the war, he became president of what’s now Washington and Lee University but resisted social change including equal rights for freed slaves. Lee died in 1870, at age 63, in Lexington, Va.

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COVER STORY FROM PAGE 2

Fort Rucker, Ala. Established 1942 The Army’s center for aviation, as well as the home of the Warrant Officer Candidate School and Warrant Officer Career College, honors Col. Edmund Rucker, a self-taught engineer from Tennessee, Rucker who enlisted as a private and became a brigade commander under Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Rucker, who was promoted to general at the end of the war, possibly as an honorary title, lost an arm in the Battle of Nashville. After the war, he became a leading industrialist in Birmingham, a city created after the Civil War to become a manufacturing hub. Rucker died in 1924, aged 88, in Birmingham.

Fort Hood, Texas Established 1942 Home of III Corps and the only post in the U.S. large enough to station and train two armored divisions, Fort Hood honors Gen. John Bell Hood, who came from a slaveholding Kentucky family. The Fort Hood Hood website describes Hood as “an outstanding leader who gained recognition during the Civil War as the commander of Hood’s Texas Brigade.” Many historians give him mixed reviews, considering him a fine brigade commander who was promoted above his competence. He lost a leg at Gettysburg but was later given command of the Army of Tennessee at age 33. His army was destroyed in 1864 in the Battle of Nashville due in large part to his tactical mistakes. His army was routed by fellow Southerner Maj. Gen. George Thomas, a Virginian who stayed loyal to the Union. After the war, he blamed the South’s defeat on desertions, plantation owners who wouldn’t fight and the decision not to arm slaves to defend the Confederacy. Hood died in 1879 in New Orleans of yellow fever at age 48.

“The gesture honors one man, while it denigrates the struggle and the sacrifice of every U.S. soldier who faced him. It mocks them. It mocks the Union they preserved.”

The Army’s chief of public affairs spokesman on June 24 said there were no plans to review the base names.

“Every Army installation is named for a soldier who holds a place in our military history,” Brig. Gen. Malcolm Frost said in an emailed statement.

“Accordingly, these historic names represent individuals, not causes or ideologies. It should be noted that the naming occurred in the spirit of reconciliation, not division.”

The notion of honoring Confederates as well as those who fought to save the Union arose decades after the war as a step toward national reconciliation.

In his book “Cities of the Dead: Contesting the Memory of the Civil War in the South 1865-1914,” historian William Blair wrote that “reconciliation between Northern and Southern whites came about after the late 19-century rehabilitation of the Confederate veteran, who began to become hailed as a hero motivated by a love of liberty, and distanced from association with slavery.”

That corresponded with the rise of Jim Crow rule and African-American disenfranchisement in an emboldened, white-dominated South.

Any move to rename the bases is likely to draw strong opposition, especially among Southern whites.

Even an effort in 2002 to rename a stretch of highway at the Washington-Canadian border named for Confederate President Jefferson Davis was unsuccessful.

An online questionnaire by Stars and Stripes found that about 88 percent of more than 18,000 respondents opposed changing the names. Many of them considered changing the names a needless bow to political correctness or an insult to those they consider national heroes.

“Why rewrite history?

Historically good leadership doesn’t change just because the Confederate flag is no longer in vogue and offensive to some. I am sure that these posts were named for these

C OTTON PURYEAR /Courtesy of the Virginia National Guard Public Affairs

The Virginia National Guard’s flag carries streamers from such Civil War battles as Manassas and Appomattox. generals as a token of reuniting the country after the great civil war ... Why change that?”

Walter Buck, a professor at the Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Parker, Colo., wrote to Stars and Stripes.

The bases were established and named by the War Department — in the early 1900s and early 1940s — to train huge numbers of soldiers before the country’s entry into both world wars. At the time, the armed services were segregated, and African-Americans were given the most menial duties.

The War Department sought installations in the South, where land was cheap and where the mild climate meant training could proceed during most months of the year.

Racial segregation was also the law of the land there. Those charged with choosing names looked for “distinguished military veterans,” according to the Army’s Center for Military History. Sometimes they consulted local officials, all of them white, asking whom they’d like honored.

“Back in 1940, people in the South had a very favorable view of Southern lore,” said Fred Adolphus, director of the Fort Polk Museum. “The U.S. Army at the time, they felt the same way. Everyone loved the Civil War and Confederate heroes.”

Adolphus declined to weigh in on the issue of whether the Confederate names were still appropriate.

“That’s for the Army to decide,” he told Stars and Stripes last week. He said that in the

era when the names were chosen, “it was not done maliciously or with any rancor.”

Ironically, some of the Confederate generals with bases named after them are considered by military historians to have been less than competent commanders. Two Confederate commanders whom history has judged among the best — Gen. James Longstreet and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston — have no bases named after them.

After the war, Longstreet, whom Lee called “my old war horse,” joined the Republican Party, endorsed Ulysses S. Grant for president and, in 1874, fought for the Reconstruction government against thousands of “White League” insurrectionists in a battle in New Orleans that was not put down until federal troops were called in.

Johnston, whose military prowess was criticized by Confederate officials but praised by his Union opponents, died of pneumonia contracted after serving as a pallbearer at the funeral of the Union general to whom he surrendered, William Tecumseh Sherman.

One of the Confederacy’s most skillful generals, Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, had a base named after him but it has since been closed.

The former slave traderturned-raider known as “The Wizard of the Saddle,” Forrest was also accused of massacring captured black Union soldiers. He was an early member — some say founder — of the Ku Klux Klan. Camp Forrest, Tenn., was established in 1941 and became one of the Army’s largest training bases before it was closed in 1946.

Nevertheless, the nationwide backlash to Confederate symbols after the Charleston massacre may lead to a review of the base names.

In Charleston, the board of visitors of the Citadel, South Carolina’s 173-year-old military academy that sent alumni to the Confederate army, voted to ask the state legislature to remove the Confederate Naval Jack from the campus chapel.

A statement on the college website said a Citadel graduate and relatives of six college employees were killed in the church attack. montgomery.nancy@stripes.com

Fort Benning, Ga. Established 1918 Fort Benning is home to the Army’s armor and infantry schools, a major basic training base and the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which trains Latin American police and troops. It Benning is named for Brig. Gen. Henry Benning, a lawyer, judge, politician and fervent secessionist who spent most of the war as a brigade commander. He was a key figure in defending “Burnside’s Bridge” in the Battle of Antietam, was wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness and had two horses shot out from under him in the Battle of Chickamauga, grabbing a third horse from an artillery battery and riding into battle bareback. Transferred back to Virginia, he surrendered at Appomattox with the rest of Lee’s army on April 9, 1865.

Benning was a strong proponent of slavery, believing that abolition would plunge the South into anarchy. He died in 1867 of a stroke at 61 in Columbia, Ga., where Fort Benning is located.

Fort A.P. Hill, Va. Established in 1941 The training base is named for one of Lee’s most plucky but sickly subordinates, Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill, who had to repeat a year at West Point after contracting gonorrhea.

A colorful figure who wore a Hill red flannel “battle shirt,” Hill fought in the Mexican War and the Seminole Wars in Florida but resigned his commission in the U.S. Army shortly before the war, entering Confederate service as a colonel. He was promoted to general the following year and fought well in a number of major battles, including Antietam, where he prevented Union forces from destroying the Confederate right flank. He became a corps commander after the death of Gen. Stonewall Jackson at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863 and fought at Gettysburg. He was killed in action at Third Battle of Petersburg in 1865 one week before Lee surrendered.

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COVER STORY Fort Pickett, Va. Established 1942 Now a Virginia Army National Guard installation, the fort is named for George Edward Pickett, a swashbuckling West Point graduate from a prominent Virginia slave-owning family best known for the Pickett disastrous “Pickett’s Charge” at Gettysburg. Pickett graduated last in his class at West Point in 1846 but won national prominence for heroism at the Battle of Chapultepec in the Mexican War. Although a personal critic of slavery, he enlisted in the Confederate Army after the war began and was promoted to general in 1862. He was haunted for the rest of his life by the disaster of Gettysburg.

Pickett was alleged to have committed war crimes by hanging Union prisoners in 1864 — mostly North Carolinians who had defected. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the Union commander, blocked Pickett’s prosecution. Pickett died in Norfolk, Va., on July 30, 1875, at age 50, dispirited. His reputation was rehabilitated in writings of his third wife, who was 23 years his junior, who transformed him into a hero of the “Lost Cause.”

Stars and Stripes

Majority oppose renaming bases named for Confederate leaders Stars and Stripes

The campaign to purge references to the Confederacy from public facilities may end at the front gate of American military facilities.

An overwhelming majority of people who took part in a Stars and Stripes online survey do not want to see the U.S. Army rename posts named after Confederate generals.

The issue of paying homage to men who fought under the rebel flag has come under recent scrutiny after the racially motivated killing of nine black worshippers in a historic Charleston, S.C., church on June 17. Calls to banish the Confederacy’s rebel flag from the South Carolina capitol grounds have turned into a national movement to strip symbols of the Confederacy from public parks and buildings, license plates, stores and more.

Included in that symbolism are 10 U.S. Army posts in southern states, including some of the largest facilities, such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Benning in Georgia.

Stars and Stripes asked its readers: Should U.S. military facilities named after Confederate generals be renamed?

Of the 21,504 responses collected, 88 percent (18,882) voted in favor of keeping the names.

More than 1,300 comments were posted to the poll. Here are some of the comments: “As a U.S. Army veteran, I believe that these military

bases have been in operation for decades and are wellknown to active and veteran military personnel. Since we are such a small portion of the population, we should make the call. I also believe that the men, for whom these bases have been named, served with honor and many served both the U.S. during earlier wars and then the Confederate states during the civil war.

They deserve to be honored and these bases should remain as they are.” — Harry Bolton “This shouldn’t even be a question. PC pundits have completely lost their minds, much less their knowledge of history and the fact that trying to erase it won’t change it. As the Army itself has said these posts weren’t named for them because they happened to be Confederate at one point but because they were brilliant leaders and soldiers.”

— TimsArmyWifey “I tend to be very liberal myself, but on this one, I agree, the liberals have gone crazy. If we’re setting a standard that’s about being racist, then we’ll also need to remove FDR from our collective history for he unjustly imprisoned thousands of Japanese Americans for 3 years. If that was not a racist move, I don’t know what is.

I’m good with taking down the Southern Cross. It was not the flag of the CSA, but a battle flag that’s subsequent use was for the continuation of the battle, not for honoring

the fallen. Honor your fallen with the Stars and Bars, not some battle flag.” — Gene Christensen “It is fitting for the Yankees to have a fort named to honor Braxton Bragg; after all, Bragg was unquestionably the worst general in the Confederacy. Bragg was a master of retreat and could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. He was a political general appointed because of friendship with President Jefferson Davis.”

— Dean Allen “As a noncommissioned officer (30 years) who happens to be black, if any of these men would have captured me in battle, (I certainly would have fought them) they would have put me to death for servile insurrection and they would have put any white officer who commanded me to death for inciting servile insurrection.

They fought for a totalitarian regime that was destroyed by the United States military in four years. Why not name our bases Fort Adolf Hitler or Fort Saddam Hussein? When will the Confederacy die and be consigned to the ash heap where it belongs?” — John Burwell “History is always good.

It is evil only when we do not learn from it. Taking stuff down requires much deliberation. ISIS is destroying stuff out of cowardly fear.

Let’s not get all that “religious” about these things.”

— JBSPuddintane news@stripes.com

Fort Polk, La. Established 1941 Home of the Joint Readiness Training Command and the Non-Commissioned Officer Academy, Fort Polk was named for the right Rev. Leonidas Polk, also known as the “Fighting Bishop.”

Born into a wealthy Polk North Carolina family, Polk — a cousin of President James K. Polk — was a West Point graduate who resigned his commission to join the Episcopal priesthood and the life of a sugar planter.

He moved to Tennessee and in 1840 held the most slaves in the county and was among the largest slave owners in the South. Polk, unlike many plantation owners, sought to make his slaves Christian and gave them Sundays off. He had no combat experience when he became a general but was a friend of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Polk is generally considered to have been an inept commander who was described by his boss, Gen. Bragg, as “worthless.”

His decision to send troops into Kentucky prompted the state government to request Union help, ending talk of secession there. Polk was killed in action in 1864 near Atlanta when a Union artillery shell nearly cut him in half.

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MILITARY

VA will extend benefits to all same-sex couples

BY TRAVIS J. TRITTEN Stars and Stripes

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs said Monday that following the Supreme Court’s landmark marriage equality decision, same-sex couples in states across the country will now have access to a raft of denied benefits.

The couples will no longer be denied VA disability pay, home loan guarantees, death pensions and burial rights based on the laws of the states where they have lived and worked, the department announced.

A spokeswoman said the VA will send out new guidance to all staff and will temporarily halt any benefit applications that would have been denied under previous guidelines.

The VA had been issuing benefits only to same-sex partners who lived in states that permitted gay marriage at the time of their union or who lived in one of those states during their service. But the Supreme Court effectively struck down state bans on same-sex marriage — though some have vowed challenges — and removed the basis for the department’s rules.

“VA will work quickly to ensure that all offices and employees are provided guidance on implementing this impor-

‘ VA will work quickly to ensure that

all offices and employees are provided guidance on implementing this important decision with respect to all programs, statutes, and regulations administered by VA.

’

Department of Veterans Affairs statement tant decision with respect to all programs, statutes, and regulations administered by VA,” according to a statement.

The denial of benefits based on where same-veterans lived sparked outcry and lawsuits from advocates including Lambda Legal, a New York group focused on the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.

Susan L. Sommer, the group’s director of constitutional litigation and senior counsel, said the VA had taken a number of steps to expand spouse benefits to same-sex couples. It created new guidelines after an Obama administration decision in 2011 to no longer fight challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, which barred the government from recognizing the unions.

“But the VA had taken the position that its hands were tied with respect to some benefits that remain very

important, including some survivor’s benefits and home loan guarantees,” Sommer said.

She said the VA change in policy announced Monday could affect thousands of veterans.

Lambda legal sued the VA in a Washington, D.C., federal circuit court over the denial of benefits based on state laws. The case was put on hold while the Supreme Court deliberated.

Now, the VA and the legal group have 30 days discuss the ruling and then return to the federal court with a plan on how to proceed. Sommer said Lambda Legal will also be looking closely at what the VA tells its staff about approving the benefits.

“We certainly want to see what the guidance is,” she said. tritten.travis@stripes.com Twitter: @Travis_Tritten

M ATTHEW RIGGS /Courtesy of the U.S. Navy

Seaman Cody Climer sorts through mail last week in the post office of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington.

40K pounds of mail await USS George Washington

BY ERIK SLAVIN Stars and Stripes

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — Just about everything is large scale aboard an aircraft carrier, including the mail backlogs.

The USS George Washington recently arrived in Australia to find 40,000 pounds of mail — about 10 times its average load — waiting for pickup, officials aboard the ship said Monday.

For perspective, the 1,092foot-long ship’s structural steel totals about 120,000 pounds, though the ship is capable of supporting far more weight than that.

Mail and parcels couldn’t travel directly to the ship earlier this month, as it normally would, because of the carrier’s operations.

Instead, all the mail was re-

routed to Brisbane, Australia, where the carrier had stopped for a port visit.

Sailors from throughout the sprawling ship sorted through the mail bags, labeled the parcels and helped deliver them to departmental piles.

Many of the 5,000 or so personnel aboard the ship receive family care packages stuffed with food and gifts normally not found in the ship’s supplies and stores. Others purchase items online from stores that ship to military post office addresses.

The USS George Washington is currently transiting the Coral Sea as part of its western Pacific patrol. Later this summer, it will arrive in San Diego, where its sailors will swap ships with the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan. slavin.erik@stripes.com

Carter taps rear admiral to lead 5th Fleet in Bahrain Stars and Stripes

Rear Adm. Kevin M. Donegan

MANAMA, Bahrain — Rear Adm. Kevin M. Donegan has been nominated as the commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Central Command and 5th Fleet in Bahrain, the Defense Department said in statement.

If confirmed, Donegan will take over for Vice Adm. John W. Miller, who has been the

commander of 5th Fleet since 2012.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the nomination last week. Donegan would be elevated to the rank of vice admiral.

Donegan is familiar with the region, having previously served as the director of operations for U.S. Central Command.

He is currently acting deputy chief of naval operations for operations, plans and strategy.

Miller will replace Donegan at the Pentagon, according to a DOD release.

The 5th Fleet’s area of responsibility covers 2.5 million square miles, including the Persian Gulf.

Naval operations in 5th

Fleet aim to ensure the free movement of ships throughout the region, which includes the Strait of Hormuz, where about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply flows.

The area also serves as the central hub for aircraft carriers conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State group as part of Operation Inherent Resolve.

Friday, July 3, 2015

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VETERANS

Jan Scruggs, who started campaign for Vietnam Veterans Memorial, steps down

BY H EATH DRUZIN

Jan Scruggs at The Wall on May 26, 2013.

Stars and Stripes

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The regal slab of polished granite that reflects the Washington Monument and brings battle-hardened men to tears was once as controversial as the war it memorializes.

In 1981, the design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was met with howls of protest, a campaign to undermine it, racist comments and even a spurious Red Scare.

At the center of the politicized melee, which aggravated a still-raw national wound just six years after the end of the war, was an unassuming Labor Department investigator named Jan Scruggs. No one had heard of him until he took a week off to start planning what would become one of the most recognizable monuments in the country.

More than three decades later, Scruggs is retiring from his post as president of the Vietnam Veterans

C.J. LIN Stars and Stripes

Memorial, which many refer to simply as The Wall.

“I’m tired,” Scruggs said in an interview with Stars and Stripes.

Before rehashing the defining battle of his life, though, Scruggs wants to talk antiques. He takes a reporter into his home office and

picks up a long, curved saber.

“It’s from the Civil War, and I found it in a yard sale for $100,” he said. He shows off a turn-of-the20th century shotgun and an 1838 pepperbox percussion pistol from his small, eclectic collection. He’s much more interested in talking about old weapons than the photos on one wall of him with every president since Jimmy Carter.

“My real hero, of course, is Jimmy Buffet,” the devoted Parrothead said, picking up a picture of him with his favorite musician.

It’s not that he has anything bad to say about the presidents he’s met: “They’ve all been pretty good to me.” In fact, he doesn’t have anything bad to say about even his most ardent foes, including conservative provocateur Pat Buchanan, who tried to sink the memorial campaign by claiming one of the design competition judges was a communist.

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VETERANS

Courtesy of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund

Jan Scruggs stands at the podium during a ceremony for the unveiling of the first panel of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on July 22, 1982.

FROM PAGE 11

money in the process.

“I was a little worried about his mental health,” she said.

Scruggs had volunteered to go to Vietnam, was wounded as an infantryman and witnessed the aftermath of a mortar accident that left 12 people dead, an event that deeply affected him. His experience led him to study the effects of war on the psyche and, eventually, to his memorial, which he hoped would be a place of healing.

In 1979, he asked his boss at the Department of Labor for a week off to hatch his project.

He recalled his boss giving him permission, saying, “Everyone needs a mental health day.”

Soon, Scruggs quit his job to A continuing series chronicling focus full time on the memothe war and its impact on America rial, and he and his wife lived on her salary from an administrative job with Paralyzed Veterans of America. It had only been four years since the last troops left Vietnam, and the na‘Black gash of shame’ tion was in no mood to discuss a war that had torn it apart.

When Jan Scruggs first told his “The country was going to forget wife, Becky, that he was going to the Vietnam War, there’s no doubt build a memorial to Vietnam veterabout that,” Scruggs said. “It was a ans, she wondered whether he was losing his mind. She also wondered bad memory for the nation in many whether he would lose all their ways.”

But the 65-year-old Scruggs abhors the wheeling and dealing of Washington and says he avoids a city that those who know him say he expertly navigates.

“No, I don’t like it,” the soft-spoken former infantryman said while sitting on the deck of his dockside home in Annapolis on a recent warm June day. “I have a PhD in DC-nomics, but I’ve completed that course.”

stripes.com/vietnam50

After two months, Scruggs had raised $144.50, a fact used by a CBS reporter to file a less than flattering story about Scruggs’ effort. But that put him on the radar of some much more connected people, and his fundraising took off.

Backing Scruggs in the early days was a young deputy administrator of the VA, a Vietnam veteran named Chuck Hagel. Scruggs lacks a commanding presence — he’s soft-spoken and tends to look at his hands when he talks. On the surface, he’s not the obvious choice to stand up against the rich and powerful to push through a controversial project.

But Hagel, who would later serve two terms in the Senate and two years as secretary of defense, said Scruggs was “relentless” without being abrasive, which helped him navigate a politically fraught effort.

“He’s unaffected by criticism and second-guessing and never takes anything personally,” Hagel said in a phone interview with Stars and Stripes. “If most people in this town would follow the Jan Scruggs approach, we would not have the dysfunction we have today.”

Comparing him to Francis Scott Key, who wrote “The Star-Spangled

Banner,” Hagel said Scruggs has assured his legacy.

“His name and who he is and what he has done will be etched forever in history.”

That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of people upset with Scruggs.

As the campaign became more successful, donors ponied up $8.4 million for the project. But attacks leveled against Scruggs became increasingly personal.

To find a design for the memorial, in 1981 he launched what he says was the largest architectural competition in history. More than 1,400 submissions poured in to the anonymous panel of judges. When time came to display the entries, Scruggs had to rent a hangar at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. The winning submission was from 21-yearold Yale undergrad Maya Ying Lin. Her design was simple and unconventional — a black wall engraved with the names of more than 58,000 Americans killed in the war.

Vietnam veteran Tom Carhart, one of the leading opponents of the design, called it a “black gash of shame.” Critics saw it as anti-war, disrespectful to troops and simply ugly.

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MILITARY FROM PAGE 12

They wondered aloud why the Vietnam Memorial should be black while other monuments were white. There were racist allusions to Lin’s heritage and false rumors that she was Vietnamese. (She is American, born in Ohio to Chinese immigrants.)

“It was a roller-coaster ride from the beginning,” Becky Scruggs said. “After a while you get a really thick skin.”

After months of negotiations, Scruggs agreed to a compromise. There would be a statue of troops and a flag across the memorial as an ode to the fighting men in Vietnam.

Not everyone loved it, but it blunted the harshest criticisms.

The design and plans received final approval in March 1982. Groundbreaking at the site, near the Lincoln Memorial, took place before the end of the month.

‘The Wall guy’ Today, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is widely celebrated, with about 4.5 million people visiting every year. Scruggs is proud to be known as ‘‘The Wall Guy.’’ But that legacy has gone beyond the Vietnam Memorial, serving as the catalyst for others. It wasn’t until after The Wall that memorials for World War II and the Korean War were built. Plans are under way — after a fight over

the location — for a World War I memorial in Pershing Park.

“I think if we keep it up, we’re going to create a national Spanish-American War memorial,” Scruggs said with a laugh.

Even former foes speak highly of Scruggs.

“I don’t have anything bad to say about Jan Scruggs,” said Carhart, once one of his most vocal critics. “He was able to realize his dream of building a Vietnam veterans’ memorial, and it’s one that’s proven to be the most popular memorial in Washington.”

Despite his “retirement,” he’s hasn’t quit pushing for controversial projects. His latest one is an underground education center he wants to see built near The Wall. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has raised about $27 million for the center — a tidy sum but, in his estimation, about $75 million short of what he needs.

His hopes the center, which would be a repository for the many items left at the Vietnam wall and a place where visitors could learn about America’s wars and those who died

fighting them, “elevates the idea of service.” Visitors would be able to take home replica dog tags, but only if they agree to a set amount of community service. Scruggs hopes that will make museums to ask more of visitors.

“Once this is built, we’re going to change the way that museums interact with people,” he said. “More museums will require something of visitors.”

He says he won’t be involved day to day in that effort, but his plans for retirement sound suspiciously like work.

He rattled off work with several charities, including No One Left Behind, which helps Afghanis and Iraqis who worked as interpreters for the U.S. military immigrate to America.

Pushed on what he might do with his spare time, Scruggs pointed to the water from his deck and said he’ll spend more time on his 28-foot boat, maybe hike the Appalachian Trail, shoot some skeet.

After 35 years of fighting, he seemed relaxed.

“I have no stress in my life for the first time,” he said. druzin.heath@stripes.com Twitter: @Druzin_Stripes

‘

It was a roller-coaster ride from the beginning. After a while, you get a really thick skin.

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’

Becky Scruggs wife of Jan Scruggs

This publication is a compilation of stories from Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper authorized by the Department of Defense for members of the military community. The contents of Stars and Stripes are unofficial, and are not to be considered as the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government, including the Defense Department or the military services. The U.S. Edition of Stars and Stripes is published jointly by Stars and Stripes and this newspaper.

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© Stars and Stripes, 2015

PHOTOS

BY

M ARK EL-R AYES/Courtesy of the U.S. Navy

Cmdr. Michelle Arnold performs an evaluation at a surgical screening Sunday during Pacific Partnership 2015 in Arawa, Papua New Guinea.

USNS Mercy takes humanitarian mission to Papua New Guinea Stars and Stripes

The hospital ship USNS Mercy arrived Saturday in Arawa, Papua New Guinea, for the second leg of its mission for Pacific Partnership, a humanitarian and civic-assistance deployment that also aims to strengthen relationships in the region.

During its seven days in Arawa, the Mercy’s crew will provide medical and dental services, make improvements to community school buildings, and host engagements focusing on women’s health and violence prevention.

The Mercy, carrying 900 personnel from the United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and East Timor, is scheduled to be in Arawa through July 3 and then move on to Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. The ship, which has already completed a visit to Fiji, will also make stops in the Philippines and Vietnam.

The hospital ship is being supported by USNS Millinocket — part of the U.S. Military Sealift Command — which arrived last week in Micronesia

Master-at-Arms Chief Rodrigo Celones dances with a Papua New Guinea girl Sunday during Pacific Partnership 2015 in Arawa, Papua New Guinea. for a two-week mission.

Now in its 10th year, Pacific Partnership has provided medical care to approximately 270,000 people and veterinary services to more than 38,000 animals, according to a Navy statement. More than 180 infrastructure development projects have been completed during the missions, the statement said.

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