Memorial overdue

There is no more inspiring vista in the nation’s capital than the view from the hill of the Washington Monument down the length of the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial. From the simple tower to the courage of those who formed this union to the neoclassical temple to the sacrifice made by those who preserved it, reflection refers to something much more than mere optical phenomena.

About midway up the right-hand bank of the rectangular Reflecting Pool is the kidney-shaped Rainbow Pool. This is the proposed location of a World War II memorial, a long-overdue tribute to the 16 million American men and women who more than a half-century ago helped saved democracy, to the 400,000 who gave their lives, to the 700,000 who were wounded.

It is also the site of a battle. Opponents of the $100-million privately funded project, led by the National Coalition to Save our Mall, say the World War II memorial would spoil the view, it would require those strolling down the right side of the Reflecting Pool to take a detour through the memorial, it would gobble up valuable public space.

The U.S. Commission on Fine Arts holds a final public hearing Thursday on architect Friedrich St. Florian’s somber design – a semicircle of pillars around the top of the Rainbow Pool with a plaza containing a field of 4,000 stars, one for every 100 killed. The National Capital Planning Commission meets Aug. 3, possibly to approve a November groundbreaking. The coalition is preparing a lawsuit.

The coalition contends that unreleased, deliberately buried National Park Service studies show that the proposed site is part of the historic grounds of the Lincoln Memorial. After five years of claiming that this project, the subject of innumerable public hearings and congressional debates, has been cloaked in secrecy, this is but the latest, and it is hoped the last, conspiracy theory.

The two pools were created shortly after the completion of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922 and the Park Service studies accurately note the connection in regards to planning and funding. To say that this precludes development around the Rainbow Pool, hundreds of yards away, ignores the aesthetics of the Lincoln Memorial. It also ignores the presence, on opposite shores of the Reflecting Pool and virtually at Mr. Lincoln’s feet, of the 1982 Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial and of the 1995 Korean War Memorial. To object to a tribute to World War II veterans on behalf of a president who himself paid the ultimate price for freedom is a stunning offense to his memory.

The objections to the World War II memorial certainly are not an intentional affront to those veterans, but they are based upon false assumptions. The National Mall is not a park for strolls and picnics, it is not one fully conceived, unchangeable work of art, it is not a museum frozen in time. It is a work in progress, a place where Americans can reflect as they view the evolving landscape of their history. Without a World War II memorial, it is a vista that remains incomplete.