Washington has always been studded with marble and bronze remembrances of heroes past, but now the District has a case of monumental excess. Some 80 new monuments are under consideration for the nation’s capital, and three new war memorials in the works-the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Vietnam Women’s Memorial and the Women in Military Service Memorial.
Even more monuments would be on the way except for a 1986 congressional standard: the honoree must be 25 years dead, the design must pass at least three commissions and the cost to taxpayers must be nil. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial was redesigned after the original proposal, a statue of a nurse holding a helmet, was derided by J. Carter Brown, head of the National Gallery of Art and the Fine Arts Commission. He said the nurse looked like she was about to “upchuck” into the helmet.
Construction of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, first authorized in 1955, begins this year. FDR wanted a memorial no larger than his desk, but he’s getting a monument at least 150 times that size. Frances Campbell, of the FDR memorial commission, shrugs off FDR’s apparent modesty: “Can you tell me anyone who said, ‘I want a large, impressive memorial’?” FDR would surely want his memorial to be distinguishable from the one proposed for the Yugoslav general who saved 500 American airmen in World War II. You know: Draza Mihailovic.
