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The Daily Signal
Remembering
World War I: Here’s the Design for the First National Memorial
Natalie Johnson
January 28, 2016
World War I is one of the most pivotal events in U.S. history,
leaving hundreds of thousands of American soldiers dead in a bloody
fight to preserve freedom and democracy.
Today, tourists who descend on the nation’s capital—littered with
statues and monuments of remembrance—find not a single national
memorial dedicated to Americans who served during the Great War.
“No war in our history needs more visibility or more awareness than
World War I because it’s actually one that many people don’t know much
about,” Libby O’Connell, chief historian for The History Channel, told
The Daily Signal.
“It really marked the beginning of the American century—there were
changes in technology, aviation, and the whole spirit of the U.S.”
More than two years after Congress tasked the World War I Centennial
Commission to establish a national commemoration site for World War I,
the jury on Tuesday unveiled the design of the new memorial.
The congressional commission unanimously chose a design called “The
Weight of Sacrifice,” submitted by 25-year-old architect Joe Weishaar
of Chicago and veteran sculptor Sabin Howard, 52, of New York, after
spending roughly eight months sifting through 350 entries. It was one
of five finalists.
O’Connell, who served as a commissioner, said the monument recognizes
all who were involved during the war—from the 5 million men and women
who signed up to serve on the U.S. home front to support the troops to
the nearly 117,000 U.S. servicemen who lost their lives.
America entered the war in April 1917, but the war had raged since June
1914. The conflict ended in November 1918.
“World War I represents a war where more men, more of our service
people, were lost than [the wars in] Korea and Vietnam combined,”
O’Connell said, adding:
All of those things serve to inspire us to take this time to
commemorate and honor the effects of World War I, the people who gave
their lives, and the effort across the country on a national basis.
The memorial designed by Weishaar and Howard will include transforming
Washington’s Pershing Park into an open commemoration nestled on
Pennsylvania Avenue, just blocks from the White House and with an open
view of the U.S. Capitol. The park already honors Gov. John J.
Pershing, who led U.S. forces to victory.
The memorial, expected to cost private donors up to $35 million, will
include an elevated lawn surrounded by three walls of remembrance
embedded with relief sculptures of servicemen and quotes from generals,
soldiers, and politicians woven throughout.
Each cubic foot will reflect one of the 116,516 American soldiers who
died. The commission plans to complete the memorial in November 2018 to
mark the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, the official end of the
war.
O’Connell lauded the selection for its “clean design” and various
entries for access, including a wheelchair ramp.
Ken Clarke, CEO of the Chicago-based Pritzker Military Museum and
Library, said a large reason it took so long to dedicate a national
monument is that at the time, Americans enlisted in regiments on a
local level, so memorials usually were placed in the hometowns of
soldiers who died.
“Wars were memorialized in a very different way in World War I,” Clarke
told The Daily Signal. “The memorials were done on a very local
level—it wasn’t really the style of the day to have a big monument in
Washington.”
Because the law bars federal funds from sustaining this project, Clarke
said, he and the commission rely on private donations.
His organization pledged $5 million to assist the commission and
committed to match another $2.5 million of outside donations.
Although “The Weight of Sacrifice” will mark Washington’s first
national memorial commemorating World War I, it is not the first
tribute in the nation’s capital honoring the war’s fallen men.
The Second Infantry Division Memorial, dedicated in 1936 by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt on Constitution Avenue near 17th Street NW,
honors those who were killed while serving in that Army division. It
was expanded in 1962 to include two wings memorializing servicemen
killed in World War II and the Korean War.
O’Connell said the new monument is important as both a remembrance of
the past and a dedication to the future.
“Our veterans coming home notice how we think and how we remember wars
of the past. They wonder, will we be recognized the way the World War I
veterans have been up to now? Which means not much at all in the
national consciousness,” she said.
O’Connell said Rebecca Wilson, an Iraq War veteran working with the
commission, came home from that conflict to see Washington’s locally
erected World War I pavilion overgrown with vines and “forgotten” in a
crook of the National Mall.
“She thought, ‘Is this what’s going to happen to me? Is this how my
service will be recognized as a place that’s neglected and
overlooked?’” O’Connell said, adding:
Now, she’s one of our key staff to make sure that’s not how we remember
World War I, that it’s not just left in a corner and neglected, Because
if a vet sees that, how do they know that that’s not going to be how
their service is remembered?
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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