Thinking about memorials

        Just as predictions of the future are far more accurate reflections of the time in which they are made — the hopes and fears of the moment — than they are any kind of augury of what is to come, so monuments embody the era of their creation in a way that rivals the events they are supposed to commemorate.
     This came home to me when I noticed that the cornerstone for the Jefferson Memorial was set by Franklin Roosevelt in 1939. Suddenly all the warnings about tyranny flashed in stark relief; this marble temple isn't about protecting the rights of 18th century Virginia planters, but about steeling our noodle national spine against Hitler.
      That is most clearly seen in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, a vast garden of large stones and waterfalls. I remember the controversy when it was built — disability rights advocates complained that FDR's wheelchair was largely obscured by his Navy cape, while his partisans countered that he would not want to be portrayed that way, defined by a disability he struggled to hide. 

       I wrote a column, which I'll have to dig up, pointing out that the wheelchair wasn't exactly a state secret — H.L. Mencken wrote in 1932 that the man was too much of a cripple to be president. And FDR himself mentioned his condition, in a speech before Congress no less, when he apologized for not standing because of the steel braces on his legs.

    (Our gossip columnist, Irv Kupcinet weighed in, that when he was a boy, he didn't know FDR had polio and I, with the cruelty of youth, observed that when Kup was young, FDR didn't have polio, having contracted it in 1921, when Kup was 9). 
     You can also see his hands arranged where his omnipresent cigarette should have been — I was tempted to buy a pack and tuck one in, and certainly wouldn't be the first.

Vietnam Memorial's trio of soldiers.

     The memorial was dedicated in 1997, with an additional statue of FDR, clearly in his wheelchair, added as a sop to activists in 2001, the way a statue trio of soldiers was tacked onto Maya Lin's Vietnam Memorial for those who couldn't bear to have the disaster commemorated with a pure marble scar in the earth. 

     I was prompted to check when the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed — 1990 — as the FDR Memorial is a tribute to accommodating people with disabilities as much as it recounts his three and a twelfth terms in office. No stairs, little bronze models of the statues for blind people to feel, plus bas relief pillars and walls, with the story in icon form. And Braille. And recorded messages. 
     This isn't a complaint, mind you. I'm a big tent kind of guy — curb cuts benefit us all — and  have many friends and neighbors who struggle with various physical challenges. As will I someday. And you, and everybody else, sooner or later. I think it's cool that Northbrook's Prairie Grass Cafe has periodic low "sensory-friendly" dining hours so people on the autistic spectrum can enjoy a restaurant meal without over-stimulation. That's both kindness and good business.

World War II Memorial

    Of course once you start assessing monuments as creations of their time, the tendency is to keep going. At first it's easy to dismiss the widely scorned World War II Memorial — the Washington Post called it a "hodgepodge of cliche and Soviet-style pomposity" with "the emotional impact of a slab of granite" though I settled on "horrendous" — as a product of our cretinous president, George W. Bush, since it was unveiled in 2004. 

     But that's unfair, since it was years in the planning, and Bill Clinton was president while the mortuary plaza of wreaths, headstones, stars, and an aviary worth of eagles was being designed. I can only suggest that Clinton had better things to do than micromanage monuments. Though he did break a string of eight consecutive presidents who wore a uniform in World War II (nudging LBJ into the fold since he suited up as a congressman riding along on a bombing mission). So maybe the president famous for caring didn't care too much when it came to this.

Martin Luther King Memorial

      I'd mentioned my monument theory to my wife, and at the Martin Luther King Memorial, she asked what it said about its time of creation — the first decade of the 21 century. The best I could come up with, on the spot, was that by the 2000s it was all too clear that civil rights had been only a partial achievement, a work in progress, and you can see that in the way King emerges halfway from his stone of hope, itself freshly quarried from the "mountain of despair" directly behind him. We aren't finished.
     The Lincoln Memorial was unveiled in 1922, a few years before the Klan was boldly marching up Pennsylvania Avenue (the centennial is next month for those who want to bake a cake). It certainly doesn't reflect Lincoln's era in the way a more contemporary monument does — if you've ever gone inside the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument at Public Square in downtown Cleveland, dedicated in 1894, it feels as if you've stepped into the 1860s. 
      The Marine warfighting manual refers to the "fog of battle," and lately I've recast that phrase into "the fog of the present." It's very hard to see outside our current moment, especially forward into the future, but even back into the past. We're too biased by how we are now. Monuments help us look backward, to a limited degree. Although I have to use this opportunity to put a plug in for the FDR Memorial, if only for one of the better sculptures of a dog on public display.
    "These Republic leaders have not been content with attacks on me or my wife or my sons," I announced, in my best imitation of Roosevelt's plumy, patrician voice, "they now include my little dog Fala." He'd been accused of sending a Navy destroyer to retrieve his beloved Scottish terrier. 
     My wife smiled, indulgently, and said nothing.