Category Archives: The Daily Harold

By Harold

Five memorials, all within walking distance. I read something that is extremely relevant today, reflect on something I’ve never thought about before, and see a cute dog statue. Here are the highlights:

The Jefferson Memorial actually gave me a bit of inspiration. This was one of the four quotes on the panels surrounding his statue:

“… laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

I’m not as smart as a Supreme Court justice, so I’m obviously missing something because this seems to directly contradict what Antonin Scalia believes, which is that the Constitution should not be a living organism. And how about the people who are so concerned about the original intent of the founders? Because it seems Jefferson’s intends for us to think for ourselves, and not depend entirely on what he was thinking 200 years ago.

The FDR Memorial was the largest of the memorials. It has four expansive rooms, one for each of his terms in office, and a “prologue room” that consists of a statue of Roosevelt in his wheelchair. I thought this was ironic considering Roosevelt took great pains during his career to hide the wheelchair, and now it’s the first image of him that you see, and literally 1/4 of the brochure is details about his illness.

The highlights are definitely the appearance of a dog in Room 3 (“his beloved dog Fala” according to the brochure) and Room 4, which “honors the life and legacy of FDR” with… a giant water feature. I’m not sure how effective that is in conveying the spirit of a great man, but I love water features and this is the only memorial that has one. In fact, I missed out on a great many symbols, like the “grassy berm” between Rooms 2 and 3 that represents World War II. I would have went with a gun, or a soldier. But I like that this memorial is actually a series of statues and features, which separates it from the others.

The Lincoln Memorial was the oldest memorial — Lincoln’s son was able to attend the dedication in 1922 — and by far the most crowded. Like Jefferson, the memorial doesn’t give any biographical information or any indication of his greatness, it just uses his own words.

The statue is flanked by the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address. At just 278 words, the Gettysburg speech is probably the most powerful per word in history. I’d never read the Inaugural speech, although I recognized the phrase “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” I’m also happy to say his hope for a “just and lasting peace” came true.

My final stops were the Vietnam Veterans and Korean War Veterans Memorials. Both feature a black granite wall with etchings, although the Korean has anonymous faces and images while Vietnam has names.

In 15 years of school (and another 10 years out of school), I really don’t think I spent any time learning about or thinking about the Korean War, despite the fact that 1.5 million Americans were involved and many veterans are still alive. Maybe because it happened just five years after WWII, and the Vietnam War was more polarizing, so we just skipped over the Korean War? At least now I’ll remember the 19 grey statues of a patrol squad in ponchos.

The Vietnam Memorial was clearly the most simple and also the most powerful. It’s hard not to tear up when you see someone etching a name from the wall onto a piece of paper, and you think about the loss of that soldier and how many people it must have affected. And then multiply that by more than 58,256.

From there it’s easy to draw other conclusions, but the monument was purposely non-political so I will be too. But it was fitting to go from the larger-than-life statues of great presidents that prescribed rights and freedoms, and finish at the anonymous faces in Korea and the lines of names in Vietnam that helped preserve them.