The monument’s goal is to balance the accessible imagery of the flag panel with the emotive and ineffable experience inside the tower and in so doing honoring a diverse constituency of individuals who made the sacrifice to serve and who come to recall those that paid the ultimate price for doing so. The celebratory aspect of the monument experience is embodied in the Flag Panel, an abstract but  identifiable flag carefully accented with blue tile and red concrete stain. The panel itself is flag-shaped and utilizes a structural flag panel to allow a cantilever creating an open gateway effect that is anchored in the lake. It acts a gateway across a symbolic river and is designed to evoke a sense of pride, a sense of the physical manifestation of service, duty to country and survival. The tower that is placed directly in the path of the Flag panel gateway is deliberately ambiguous in its form, contrasting with the simple analogy of the flag panel. Its verticality obviously counter poses the horizontal boundary defining gateway of the flag panel. The tower is comprised of wall panels huddled together on the island site. They sit within a pentagon-shaped form which along with the five huddled wall panels symbolizing the five branches of the military. Each panel is 50 feet tall, ten feet for each branch, and the base width of each is driven by the relative size of enrollment in each branch; thus the Army panel is the widest at the bottom. Throughout the day a sunbeam traverses over the internal faces of the panels, awakening with light the names of the fallen inscribed on the internal panel faces.