Rocky,
I'm SO glad that you got to the chance to go to the WWII Memorial again!!
Here's an article on the Battle Of The Bulge veteran and mail carrier Roger Durbin 
who first proposed it:
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/a...5240355/-1/NEWS
Also - from the book "Their Last Battle: The Fight for a National World War II Memorial" by Nicolaus Mills:
"In telling the story of the National World War II Memorial, it is essential... to look at the big picture. At the same time, it is crucial to remember that this big picture is composed of numerous small pictures, often no more than snapshots, and that these small pictures contain a life of their own. Their importance was driven home to me time and again when I did interviews with the men and women working on the National World War II Memorial, but at no point so deeply as on a spring day in 2002 when I walked through a muddy memorial site with Jim McCloskey, the general superintendent for the project. As we got near the spot where the northern arch of the National Memorial was going to be built, McCloskey asked me to turn off my tape recorder, and he began telling me about the WWII veteran who had come by his trailer earlier in the week.
"He wanted me to bury his dog tags in the foundation," McCloskey said. "He was the 3rd vet who asked me this year, and I didn't tell him, like I didn't tell the others, that it was against government rules. I just took the dog tags and said I'd bury them under one of the arches." McCloskey, who had started out in the construction business 40 years earlier as a carpenter's apprentice, was not impressed with his own willingness to break the rules. What impressed him was the significance that the memorial had taken on for the vet, who had spent 2 days driving on his own just to get to Washington.
In succeeding years, when the significance of the National World War II Memorial in American life is debated, I do not imagine those buried dog tags will figure in many discussions. Jim McCloskey, who died of an aneurysm before the Memorial was completed, was not much of a talker, and he did not think it was his business to ask the veteran his name, or find out if the veteran had any family. Still those dog tags at the bottom of the Memorial do speak to us, and what they say about the National World War II Memorial and it's ability to reach across generations does matter..."
m2
