Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Baltimore plans to celebrate the New Year by building a "Millennium Resolution Sculpture" that's designed to give city residents and others an opportunity to express their hopes and dreams for 2000 and beyond."

Herb FestivalDiscover herbs -- from basil to tarragon, rosemary, lavender, thyme and more -- Saturday at the Baltimore Herb Festival at Leakin Park, Windsor Mill Road. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., you can learn to cook with herbs, select plants for your own herb garden, sample herbed food, take wild herb walks, listen to music and attend herb lectures. Admission is $4. Call 410-448-1281.'Chicago'"Chicago," the winner of six Tony Awards, including 1997 Best Musical Revival, returns to the Morris A. Mechanic Theatre, Hopkins Plaza, for one week, Tuesday through June 6. The musical tells the story of Roxie Hart, a nightclub dancer who kills her lover, then dupes the public and media by hiring Chicago's shrewdest lawyer, who ultimately twists her crime into celebrity headlines and gets her acquitted.

MEMORIAL Day. I am allowed to go with my friend Joseph, his older sister and mother and father, a World War I veteran and member of the American Legion, to the cemetery. The drums beat and the men march in the middle of the street while Joseph, never Joe, and I follow quickly by the side. We carry small flags, not the large ones that are being ruffled by the brisk New England wind. We wear jackets and ties, and shoes are shined for this is a special day, a holy day.The monsignor is there to say a few words and lead the prayers.

They scrub at sunrise, before thousands of tourists arrive.They scrub as a tribute, cleaning dirt away from the 58,000 chiseled names and polishing the black granite surface of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.They scrub because if war claimed their lives, these volunteers would want someone to care for their memory, too.For seven years, on the first Sunday of each month, the men and women of the 89th Maintenance Squadron have come to the wall in Washington from Andrews Air Force Base in Prince George's County to help protect one of the nation's most famous landmarks.

Fifty-three years after her husband disappeared over the TC Himalayas, Doris Ramos Stepanovich dedicated a headstone yesterday to the memory of U.S. Army Air Corps 1st Lt. Frank Miguel Ramos Jr."It makes it all the more real to see a plaque with Frank's name on it, lying in the ground," Stepanovich said as she laid flowers on the stone of her husband. "He's never had a funeral and I'm afraid he never may, but this was just beautiful."Stepanovich was among the three Maryland families that dedicated bronze markers at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium to relatives missing in action -- one of many services held in the Baltimore area to honor Americans who died in combat.

THE FRANKLIN DELANO Roosevelt Memorial has been hugely popular since its unveiling three months ago. A million people so far have come to frolic in its waterfalls and pools. They pose alongside the larger-than-life bronze figures of FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt and even the presidential dog, Fala. They run their fingers along the panels of Braille and sculpted faces in one of the four "rooms" that comprise the memorial.A question remains whether to make more of FDR's physical limitations from polio.

WASHINGTON -- Early evening and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is overrun with children. They're everywhere, running, shouting, laughing, playing tag, armies of them in yellow hats or blue T-shirts.There will be no poignant moment today with Jan Scruggs, the Vietnam veteran who made the memorial a reality. Yesterday would have been perfect. Thousands of Hmong and Lao veterans of the 'secret war' in Laos were here with their families. The old soldiers wore jungle camouflage fatigues. Some came in flight suits.

STANDING TALL may be fine praise for a police officer but it's not necessarily true for the design of a memorial to officers killed in the line of duty. The towering black monolith honoring Baltimore County policemen that has stood at the intersection of Joppa Road and Goucher Boulevard in Towson for 20 years is a good example.Inaccessible, inappropriate, unattractive these are some of the adjectives frequently applied to the monument that was erected in 1975. Flanked by U.S. and Maryland flags, the massive structure is imposing, yet its purpose as a memorial is largely ignored by cars whizzing by the busy intersection.

WASHINGTON -- Sitting in a wheelchair beside the black wall of names, Robert Plato wept openly yesterday as he prepared to rejoin his comrades who fell so long ago in Vietnam."

Like a sturdy sentinel, the black granite slab stands beside the Baltimore County Court House, screened from passing traffic by trees and plants that form what Capt. Arthur N. Rogers III, a disabled Vietnam veteran, calls "an open-air room where people can reflect."The rectangular stone, or stele, is 6 feet tall. One side bears 141 names -- with another to be added -- of countians who died in the Vietnam War. The other side reads, "Vietnam Veterans Memorial, dedicated to the citizens of Baltimore County who served their country in Southeast Asia, 1957-1975."

Md. native's status on memorial to change Operators of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington say they are updating the monument to reflect the changed status of a Middletown native. The Pentagon identified the remains of Air Force Senior Master Sgt. James Caniford last year. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund is changing a symbol beside his name from a cross to a diamond to show he is dead instead of missing. Caniford is among five veterans to get such an update this year. Caniford's father, James Caniford, told The Frederick News-Post that he and his wife plan to travel from their Fort Myers, Fla., home to Washington this Memorial Day, when a ceremony will be held at the wall.

After nearly 15 years in limbo, the songs of an unlikely partnership - between a conservative Vietnam veteran and a liberal musician - are finally finding an audience. If you go Lea Jones and FNG perform at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial's 25th anniversary concert at noon Saturday on the National Mall in Washington. Free. Go to VVA.org.

The Sun's recent coverage of Veterans Day events brought especially pointed responses from readers. Many people reacted to the stories and photographs within the context of the continuing war in Iraq and the continuing questions about the Bush administration's justifications for invasion. The Sun's coverage of an early Veterans Day event - the Nov. 5 commemoration aboard the oldest remaining Liberty ship, the SS John W. Brown - was praised by readers. But on the actual day of memorial, Nov. 11, some were unhappy with The Sun's efforts.

Honor U.S. war veterans Friday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The annual Veterans Day event, taking place at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, features a wreath-laying ceremony at the tomb and memorial service in the amphitheater. President Bush is scheduled to lay the wreath. Throughout the ceremony, a military band will perform patriotic music. In addition to the Arlington National Cemetery event, there will be Veterans Day commemorations in Washington at the World War II Memorial at 8 a.m., at the Vietnam Women's Memorial at 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., at the African American Civil War Memorial at 11 a.m., at the U.S. Navy Memorial at 1 p.m. and at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at 1 p.m. Veterans Day is celebrated on Nov. 11, the date that World War I ended in 1918.

HEDGESVILLE, W.Va. - It has been 33 years. He'd be 54 now, if you can believe it. Sharon Scott Williams can't. She manages a painful smile. For years, the blonde Baltimore native, 56, a self-described ex-hippie, couldn't say her brother's name without crying. He was only 22 when he died. She can do it now, but barely. As she tells his story in the kitchen of her new West Virginia home, her voice catches again and again. She has never known what to say about Paul Scott Jr. Not really.

At the height of the war in Vietnam, the names of American soldiers held captive or missing in action were engraved on metal bracelets as a remembrance of their suffering. Nearly 5 million of the bracelets, which bear a soldier's name, rank and date of loss, were sold in the early 1970s. Three decades later, many Americans still wonder about the servicemen named on the "POW-MIA" bracelets tucked away in dresser drawers or collecting dust in jewelry boxes. "It's amazing after this many years how people will break up when talking about the bracelets," says Ann Mills Griffin, executive director of the National League of Families, who still wears one to honor her brother, Navy Cmdr.

Many package tours are geared to seniors or the 18-to-35 crowd. Now, a company known for catering to senior travelers plans to offer a series of packages for family travel, designed primarily for parents with school-age children. Tauck World Discovery has launched Tauck Bridges, a subsidiary that will start with a dozen itineraries next summer, six in the United States and six overseas. Destination themes include the American West; Hawaii; Alaska; Williamsburg, Va., and Washington; heli-hiking in the Canadian Rockies; Costa Rica; London and Paris; Italy; France; and Kenya and Tanzania.

SINCE ITS DEDICATION in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has brought millions of visitors to The Mall in Washington to look for names, remember loved ones and reach a peaceful understanding of a traumatic chapter in national life. Controversially simple and unassuming when unveiled, the two polished black granite walls, bearing 58,226 names of U.S. service men and women who gave their lives in the Vietnam War, is one of the most solemn and successful memorials ever designed. The monument, not to the war but to those called upon by their nation to fight it, has helped to heal the wounds and scars from that war. It was a triumph for Jan C. Scruggs, the Vietnam War veteran who crusaded to have it built.

Today in history: March 26 In 1827, composer Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna. In 1875, poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco. In 1892, poet Walt Whitman died in Camden, N.J. In 1911, playwright Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Miss. In 1982, groundbreaking ceremonies took place in Washington, D.C., for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. One year ago: "American Beauty" won five Oscars, including best picture; its leading man, Kevin Spacey, won best actor, while Hilary Swank won the Oscar for best actress for "Boys Don't Cry."

MORE THAN 16 million men and women from the United States served in World War II. Close to 300,000 were killed in battles -- twice as many as died in all other foreign wars in this nation's history. Yet a half-century after the war was won, there's no memorial to the sacrifices made by those defending democracy in the 1940s against fascism and imperialism. Soon there will be, but the site picked and the design of the memorial have generated considerable controversy. Early next month, final approval is expected from the National Capital Planning Commission for a World War II monument at a prominent site between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.