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Lucas Century engraving the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. [Courtesy WINK News]
Lucas Century today.
Episode 2479 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about Lucas Century and how he helped make the Vietnam Memorial Wall a reality. The featured story appeared on WINK-TV in Fort Myers, Florida and was titled Sanibel man etched 100 names into the Capitol’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. It was written by Matthew Seaver and reported by Amy Galo.
Lucas Century is a glass artist who performed a great service for our country. Back in the early 1980’s the Vietnam Veteran Memorial Fund led by Jan Scruggs was in the process of creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Things were going fine until they were faced with the challenge of posting the names of the 50,000 plus fallen Vietnam Veterans on the Wall. The contractor reported the job would take three years and three million dollars. That was undoable for the VVMF. They needed it to be done sooner and for less of an investment.
Enter Lucas Century – when he heard about the proposed Memorial, he contacted Maya Lin and offered his services as a glass artist who specialized in etching. She liked what she heard from Lucas. She passed on a recommendation to the contractor to consider Lucas’s process for the installation of the names of the fallen on the Wall.
Lucas was called in and he showed how the job could be done. His advice was followed and as a consequence, the job was completed in three months at a reduce cost of $275,000. He also devised an efficient process for adding additional names when the circumstances required it. Lucas has personally etched 100 names on the Wall which was appropriated considering his last name.
Listen to episode 2479 and discover more about Lucas Century and how he helped make the Vietnam Memorial Wall a reality.
