The most important thing I thought was the acknowledgement of a loss. We have to face it. If we can’t face death, then we’ll never overcome it. So as opposed to pretending it never happened, you have to look it straight in the eye. Then you can turn around and walk back out into the light. So I wanted something that would be honest about the war, not say anything political. Now, I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I made a judgment, which is very different from civil rights, because I read everything I could on the civil rights era. With the Vietnam War I really felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was. That I had to make any political statement. I needed to, because there were people on that wall who were for it. There were people on that wall who were against it. I wanted to offend neither of them. That was a huge goal. So I deliberately did not want to know anything about the politics behind the war.