The controversy over the Vietnam memorial is forgotten. What is represents never should.

Maybe it was 1983 or 1984. I’m not sure.

My brother and I both happened to be in Washington, D.C., attending different business seminars.

We met for dinner one evening at a restaurant along the Potomac and, as we ate and laughed, snow began to fall. Slowly at first, then more heavily.

By the time we finished and left the restaurant it was dark, there were 2 inches on the ground and Washington was paralyzed. Cars were sliding and taxis were spinning their wheels.

My brother and I said goodnight and headed in different directions.

My stay in Washington was brief, and the days were filled with seminars. But I had a few hours, and I was curious about a widely reviled monument that had been erected near the Lincoln Memorial.

The slash in the grass. The black scar. The embarrassment that the college girl and a bunch of idiot artists and architects had foisted upon the land.

That’s right, an embarrassment widely derided by politicians and veterans of all wars. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was so obviously inappropriate and ugly that money was now being raised to build a second, more traditional, monument nearby. Perhaps something that glorified war, like the Iwo Jima Memorial over in Arlington. That’s the way wars are supposed to be remembered, said the critics.

I hopped in a taxi and told the driver where I wanted to go, and he looked at me like I was crazy. In the snow? On a night like this?

I realized that I certainly wasn’t dressed for the visit as I hiked across the grass to the memorial in the wet, heavy snow. Just a sportcoat and loafers.

The ground around the memorial was white by now, and the black granite glistened through the falling snow. It suddenly dawned on me that I was the only person in the park at that moment, and I wondered just how safe I’d be in the heart of Washington. But, apparently, even the muggers were immobilized by the snow.

I walked from an end of the wall to the center. If you’ve never been there, it’s a long walk and, in the center, the wall towers overhead, 10 feet high.

I was born in 1954, one year before the U.S. military got involved in Vietnam by sending advisers to train the South Vietnamese Army. And I was a junior in college when the war really ended in 1975, with the chaotic evacuation of the American Embassy in Saigon and the collapse of the country.

I had spent the first two decades of my life immersed in this war. It was a constant presence in our lives, whether on TV, on the pages of Life magazine, or in the friends and relatives who were serving…or devising ways to avoid serving. At times, the U.S. was often losing 200 or 300 lives per week in Vietnam.

This week, I’ve had a sad feeling of again being immersed in war. There are the real wars in Iran and Afghanistan. Then there’s the replica of the Vietnam War Memorial in Lewiston this week. And there has been Ken Burns’ endlessly promoted World War II epic on TV, which I’ve been unable to bring myself to watch.

Too much war.

Although I had passed through the Vietnam era, the bitter reality of that war really didn’t hit me until that snowy night in Washington as I stood alone before the thousands of names on that black wall.

Most of them were just kids when they died, most slightly older than I was at the time, but others only unfortunate enough to receive a lower draft numbers than I.

My God, I remember thinking, as the snow fell and I gazed upon that seemingly endless procession of names. My eyes welled with tears and I was choked with emotion.

My God. How did we do this? For what end? 58,000 names. 58,000 mothers and fathers. Countless sisters and brothers. All that pain. 58,000 young men who could have had lives like mine, who would have been starting careers, marriages and families.

All gone… except for memories and this mute, elegant wall.

Today, the wall controversy is forgotten. Three million people a year visit the the memorial in Washington. It has become an emotional touchstone for a generation.

As the 25th anniversary of the wall approaches, I have only two thoughts:

First, that the wall should remind us that art and artists serve a purpose, and that we should cherish and attempt to understand their visions even when they at first seem misguided. Today, nobody talks about bulldozing Maya Lin’s wall. Instead, replicas travel the land.

Second, we must never stop asking a single question: Why does this keep happening? World War II, Korea, Vietnam and now Afghanistan and Iraq, a new generation and a new war. My God. Can’t we stop this carnage?

And why is it our country always seems so ready – even eager – to wade into the blood and sacrifice our young? Are our current conflicts worth the price being paid by our soldiers and their families? In 15 years, will we be working on a new monument to 50 or 60 thousand more war dead.

I’m sorry, but I’m avoiding the wall this week. And I’m avoiding Ken Burns and his World War II movie.

The heart is already too heavy with memories of war, and the one at hand.