Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall designer Maya Lin was a 21-year-old Yale student when her proposal for the black stone monument won the largest design competition in American history.
While most people know about the Wall, not everyone knows about the architect behind it. Here are five facts about Lin.
1. She was born in Athens, Ohio, several years after her parents fled China due to its Communist takeover in 1949. Both of her parents later became professors at Ohio University.
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2. While the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall is her most well known work, Lin has also created the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Women’s Table at Yale University.
3. When Lin won the architecture competition, politicians and veterans alike criticized her design, with one veteran calling it a "black gash of shame."
4. After the installation of her Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, Lin went back to school in 1983 to Harvard University, but left before finishing to work for a Boston architect. Later on, Lin finished her masters in architecture at Yale in 1986.
5. Lin originally submitted her design as part of a class project, and it reportedly only earned her a B+ from her professor,
according to Mental Floss. However Lin’s design also beat her teachers, who submitted ideas to the contest. The contest to decide the design for the memorial itself drew more than 1,400.
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