What would Ike want? His farm provides hints -- Oct. 22, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

At home on their farm in Pennsylvania, Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower and his wife Mamie, like millions of other Americans in the 1960s, ate their supper on TV trays, watching Walter Cronkite.

Ike painted in oils, practiced his golf swing and read. Mamie devotedly watched soap operas.

With nearly all the original furnishings still in place, their home tells us that the Eisenhowers had modest tastes and traditional values. There are many framed family photos and knickknacks Mamie collected. But there’s no glory wall of pictures of Ike with kings and potentates, no medals, no political paraphernalia.

Ike was a five-star general, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in World War II and a two-term president from 1953 to 1961, but he hated self-glorification and showing off.

  

The Eisenhowers donated their farm adjacent to the Gettysburg Battlefield to the National Park Service, which opened it to the public in 1980 as the Eisenhower National Historic Site, a fitting memorial to the 34^th president.

It should be obvious that a memorial to Eisenhower in the nation’s capital should also reflect his values, but nothing is simple in Washington. 

Congress approved a memorial in 1999, three decades after Ike’s death, and about $65 million of taxpayers’ money has been spent so far on a design, Eisenhower Memorial Commission staff and K Street offices, and other costs. The total pricetag is $142 million.

The first spade of dirt has still not been turned – fortunately. That means there’s still time to get the memorial right.

On the 125^th anniversary of Ike’s birth – he was born Oct. 14, 1890 – Congress should stand with critics, including the Eisenhower family, who find the memorial designed by celebrated architect Frank Gehry too grandiose and expensive.

“I think what the critics want is a memorial that’s reflective of Ike’s humility and modesty – and that is not Frank Gehry’s four-acre behemoth,” Bruce Cole, an art historian and a member of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission appointed by President Obama, said in an interview.

“I would like to see a fitting and proper memorial,” Cole said.

I agree, especially after visiting the Eisenhower Farm a few days ago.

Gehry’s latest design has a seven-story stainless steel screen or “tapestry” as a backdrop to two sets of bronze sculptures in front of huge stone blocks, topped by quotations. The location is an urban park adjacent to the Education Department and other federal office buildings at the foot of Capitol Hill, off the National Mall.

 

Because of the design controversy, Congress has not approved construction money for the memorial since 2012. The Senate Appropriations Committee, citing “significant unresolved issues,” approved just $1 million for the project for the next fiscal year, the same as last year. The House Appropriations Committee zeroed out all funding and urged a “reset,” a new design that meets the approval of the Eisenhower family.

Ike’s son John S. D. Eisenhower asked in 2012 that the commission scrap the Gehry design and build instead on Eisenhower Square, “a green, open space with a simple statue in the middle, and quotations.” He died in 2013, and Ike’s grandchildren have been lobbying Congress for a more respectful memorial.

Former Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, 92, who was wounded in World War II, said last month that he will raise $150 million in private funds to build the memorial.

“This is not being built for the grandchildren,” Dole told The New York Times. “The voice that hasn’t been listened to is us guys for whom Ike was our hero, and we’d like to be around for the dedication.”

Only about one million World War II vets are still with us and fewer Americans every year remember Ike. Last year, 58,240 people visited the Eisenhower Farm, down from 182,387 visitors in 1981.

Dole raised $170 million for the World War II Memorial, but Eisenhower Commission member Cole predicts that “it’s going to be extremely difficult to raise money for the Gehry design, which has been so controversial and toxic since it was unveiled.”

The Eisenhower Memorial should be appropriate for Ike, restrained and dignified. It’s time for a reset.

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Ike deserves better -- Aug. 7, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

While controversy rages about how to memorialize Dwight D. Eisenhower, bells chime on Capitol Hill in a lasting, impressive memorial to Robert A. Taft, a man few Americans probably remember.

That’s not a knock on Taft. The Republican from Ohio served in the Senate from 1939 until his death in 1953. He is honored a block north and west of the U.S. Capitol on Constitution Avenue with a 10-foot bronze statue and a simple, 100-foot marble carillon. You can hear the beautiful bells chime on Capitol Hill on the hour and quarter hours. 

But it is a sign of our peculiarly dysfunctional Washington that Ike – the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in World War II, the man who ended Taft’s presidential ambitions in the 1952 GOP primaries and served two terms as president -- has been “memorialized” so far by costly bickering and ego wars.

In the case of Taft, who was Senate majority leader, Congress authorized the memorial in 1955, and public subscriptions from around the country totaling more than a million dollars paid for it.

President Eisenhower dedicated the memorial in 1959, six years after Taft’s death, and former President Herbert Hoover said, "When these great bells ring out, it will be a summons to integrity and courage." 

In the case of Eisenhower, who died in 1968, Congress authorized a memorial in 1999 and a commission to study the “nature, design, construction and location” of the memorial. The commission has a full-time executive staff of nine, six part-time or contract workers and offices on K Street.

Taxpayers have spent $41 million, but after 14 years, there is no memorial, no acceptable design, not even a date for a ground-breaking ceremony, according to a scathing July 25 report by the majority (Republican) staff of the House Natural Resources Committee that called the memorial a “five-star folly.”

And the meter is running. Even before the commission picked a site or a design, its staff estimated that the memorial would cost $100 million and take up to six years to design and construct. 

The commission chose world-famous architect Frank Gehry and a four-acre site on Independence Avenue SW, across from the Air and Space Museum and adjacent to the Education Department.

Gehry’s firm has received $11 million in fees and is due an additional $3.3 million, the report said, but it has yet to deliver a design that meets the approval of the Eisenhower family or requirements of the Commemorative Works Act, a 1986 law that sets standards for memorials, or various commissions.

The family wants a memorial that’s “simple, sustainable and affordable,” Susan Eisenhower, Ike’s granddaughter, told Congress in 2013.

The most contentious design elements are 80-foot tall columns with huge stainless steel tapestries that would be woven and welded to show landscapes of Kansas, where Ike spent his boyhood. The Eisenhower family and others worry that about durability and the potential for snow, ice and trash to be caught in the scrim.

The group Right by Ike: Project for a New Eisenhower Memorial, says it’s time for Gehry to step aside and for the process to start over. The congressional staff oversight report made no recommendations, and the committee has not taken a vote.

Congress has pulled the plug on construction appropriations and is funding only commission salary and expenses, about $2 million in 2013 and $1 million this year. A bill in Congress would dissolve the commission and appoint new members.

In response to the report, memorial commission chairman Rocco Siciliano likened the current controversy to the uproar over the Vietnam Veterans Memorial more than 30 years ago. Many vets disliked Maya Lin’s design and insisted on construction of a separate statue with flag nearby, ‘’yet it is now the most visited memorial in Washington,” he said. The earlier controversy is largely forgotten.

“It is unfortunate that history appears to be repeating itself with the Natural Resources Committee staff unfairly and inaccurately attacking Frank Gehry, the commissioners and staff,” Siciliano said.

Gehry, in a statement to The New York Times, said he has worked on the design pro bono and regrets seeing the project “engulfed by the political process.”

Another historical note: Robert Taft’s father, William Howard Taft, was the first president to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His family paid for the 14-foot memorial there.  

It may be time for the Eisenhower family to take over planning and fund-raising for a memorial that is indeed “simple, sustainable and affordable.” Ike deserves better than this.

 ©2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Ike and the monumental headache -- July 12, 2012 column

By MARSHA MERCER

On Veterans Day 1954, President Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower and his family -- brothers, wife, son and grandchildren -- gathered in Abilene, Kan., for the dedication of the Eisenhower boyhood home and museum.

Ike emphasized that the museum would focus on promoting good citizenship. Nothing else, he stressed, “could ever have induced the Eisenhower brothers to attach their name to something which inescapably would have certain elements, let us say, of self-glorification, except that this project was presented as something for the future good of America.“

Speaking with “humble pride” for the six generations of his family buried nearby and for generations yet to come, he said, “I am privileged to dedicate this shrine to the future citizens of a great and glorious America.”

His remarks are relevant because they provide a sense of how the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in World War II and the two-term president, from 1953 to 1961, would want to be remembered. And that’s a matter of great 21st century debate.

Time and again over the years, Eisenhower chose to downplay his own personal triumphs, which were many, and to celebrate instead the shared effort of the nation and its future good. He had no use for “talking Generals” or for the cult of personality that most politicians cultivate. 

Ike’s granddaughter Susan Eisenhower, who was 2 years old that November day in Abilene, now leads the family fight against the proposed design of the Eisenhower Memorial in Washington.

In 1999, three decades after Eisenhower’s death, Congress authorized construction of a permanent national monument equal in caliber to the Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR presidential memorials. Like those, though, the execution of the Eisenhower memorial has been fraught with disputes and delays.

Competing visions of how to commemorate Ike have pit world-class architect Frank Gehry against the Eisenhower family and an array of traditionalists. The Interior secretary has told the Eisenhower Memorial Commission to keep working on the design, and a House appropriations subcommittee last month pulled the plug on nearly $60 million in funding for construction of the memorial starting in fiscal 2013.

The memorial is to be located on four acres adjacent to the Education Department and other federal office buildings at the foot of Capitol Hill, off the National Mall. To partly shield the view of office buildings and create a square, Gehry envisions stainless steel mesh screens eight stories high.

The Toronto-born Gehry, 83, a star architect with a portfolio of internationally acclaimed structures, is known for his use of unconventional materials. He wrapped his own California home in corrugated metal and chain-link fences, infuriating the neighbors but winning a big architectural award.

His Eisenhower design, which beat out other contenders in a national competition, is Gehry’s first memorial and will be his first project in Washington.

Susan Eisenhower, testifying before a congressional panel in March, denounced the screens – Gehry calls them tapestries – for evoking memories of the Iron Curtain or chain-link fences around concentration camps. And she predicted practical difficulties.

“It is easy to imagine that 80-foot metal mesh curtains would require constant maintenance. Any high wind would assure that everything from leaves to trash could easily get caught in the metal gaps. It is hard to imagine that the National Park Service would be equipped to handle the constant cleaning, especially at the higher reaches,” she said. She and other critics also objected to the depiction of Eisenhower as only a barefoot boy in Kansas, dreaming of his future.

When it comes to choosing how we remember America and Americans past, conflict is more the rule than the exception.

The Washington Monument -- plagued by political battles, lack of money and the Civil War -- was under construction, off and on, for 36 years. Critics worried that the Jefferson Memorial’s Parthenon design would compete with the Lincoln Memorial. The FDR Memorial was built after nearly half a century of debate.

Gehry produced a design revision in May that keeps the young Ike and the screens but adds sculptures of Eisenhower later in life, along with limestone blocks with quotations.

Better but not enough change, the family and other critics said. They want a simpler, scaled back, less expensive memorial that reflects the values Eisenhower held dear.

They’re right. Drop the gigantic, ultra-modern screens and let the memorial honor Ike and the future good of America.

©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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