Solving Problems, in Bronze

So far, eight of the panels have been installed. The other 16 are at the foundry in Chester, Pa., where Kaskey says he hopes they will be cast in time for the memorial's official dedication May 29.

Born in 1943, in the midst of World War II, Kaskey says he was conceived in Camp Lee in Petersburg, Va., and not long after, his father went off to fight the war in Europe. "I didn't know him. I was 2 or 3 years old when he came home, and he just kind of scared me," he recalls.

His father died two years ago and never saw Kaskey's work on the memorial. Asked if it's hard to build a monument to soldiers like his father, but one that his father will never see, Kaskey pauses for a rare quiet moment, then answers, "Yeah."

Kaskey grew up in Pittsburgh and in high school decided to be a painter, "but I didn't really have the talent for it, and my parents wouldn't really send me to college for that. That was the end of the '50s, and Sputnik, and everyone was supposed to become an engineer."

So Kaskey compromised and majored in architecture at Carnegie Mellon, where he graduated in six years. One of those years was spent living in Rome on a fellowship, where he "bummed around, drew, ate well," an experience that "really got me going, looking at the past as a source, without trying to copy it."

After getting a master's degree in architecture from Yale, he moved with his wife to Glover Park and started teaching at the University of Maryland. By 1975, after passing "all those generals in the roundabouts" of Washington and classical friezes on the sides of buildings, he decided that sculpting people and animals -- beings, instead of geometries -- was "the only interesting problem on tap." It was, he says, "one of those things you have to find out if you can do."

As the morning in the studio wears on, Giannetti walks in to say hello and marvel at an article in the newspaper that morning, which mentioned the emotional reaction of World War II veterans who saw the memorial on the day it opened to the public.

"That's really amazing," Giannetti tells Kaskey. "That these guys would cry. That shows somebody did something right."

"The test will be 25 years from now," Kaskey answers, "when everybody's dead who participated." He means, he explains later, did the veterans cry because they had finally gained recognition? Or were people "moved because of how you did it? And it's too soon to tell."