According to "The Wall-USA", the Vietnam Veterans Memorial organization was originally founded by "Jan Scruggs, who served in Vietnam (in the 199th Infantry Brigade light) from 1969 -1970 as an infantry corporal.” Being a wounded war veteran himself, once he returned to the United States, Scruggs began studying post-traumatic stress disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder, and wanted to create a memorial to those who had fallen to make the transition easier for other veterans. Needing a place for the memorial, Scruggs lobbied for land near the Rose Gardens, and on July 1, 1980, President Jimmy Carter granted him 2 acres. . Instead of using government funds for the memorial, Scruggs and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund raised nearly nine million dollars from "...businesses, foundations, unions, veterans and civic organizations and more than 275,000 individual Americans." The Wall-USA"). Once they had enough money to create the memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial group had to determine what design they would use, so they held an open competition in which applicants submitted their ideas to be judged anonymously. The only rules of the contest were "...the memorial should contain the names of every American who died in Vietnam or was missing in action, make no political statement about the war, be in harmony with its surroundings, and be contemplative in character." (Greenspan). The submitted projects were anonymous to eliminate any bias against a candidate due to their nationality. Additionally, the designs were to be judged by an eight-judge panel of various sculptors, structural architects, landscape developers and landscape architects. Although more than 1,400 projects were submitted, including projects by professional architects and designers, the jury chose number 1026, the project of 20-year-old Maya Lin. Received the winning project