1982 - Robert T. “Tom” Gibbs, local sculptor, earns honorable mention in the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Design Competition

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was a national competition held in 1981 to design a memorial to honor the veterans of the Vietnam War. The competition was open to all U.S. citizens and attracted more than 1,400 entries.

Maya Lin, a then 21-year-old architecture student at Yale University, submitted the winning design, which was selected from a group of finalists by a panel of judges that included architects, artists, and veterans. Her design featured two walls of black granite, each 246 feet long and 10 feet high, that came to a V-shape and were inscribed with the names of more than 58,000 soldiers who died or were missing in action during the Vietnam War.

Dubuque resident, Robert “Tom” Gibbs, a sculptor and professor (both Loras College and Clarke University), won an honorable mention for his design.

This blog entry was drafted by CHATGPT, fact-checked & edited by DubuqueArtCity