Maison Française director, Shanny Peer, with Arn Chorn-Pond, genocide survivor and founder of Cambodian Living Arts, playing the flute.

Cambodian monks joined the gathering

The artist, Leang Seckon. "By adding beauty to this object of war, I hope to transform it into an instrument of peace and healing," Seckon said [of his work].

John Rowan, National President of Vietnam Veterans of America

Following the gathering on the lawn next to Buell Hall, the parachute skirt was carried in a procession around the Columbia campus.

The parachute, which fell to earth in Seckon's village during the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, has been repurposed into a sculpture, Flowering Parachute Skirt, and decorated with flowers cut from sarongs from his home village as well as from fabrics given by the Cambodian-American community in the Bronx – turning it into the skirt of a fantastical soldier figure.