WASHINGTON — President Dwight Eisenhower’s family wants a memorial in the nation’s capital redesigned, saying the current plans overemphasize his humble Kansas roots and neglect his accomplishments in World War II and the White House.
Architect Frank Gehry has proposed a park framed by large metal tapestries with images of Eisenhower’s boyhood home in Abilene, Kan.
In the park, a statue of “Ike” as a boy would seem to marvel at what would become of his life, leading the Allied forces and becoming president. Additional elements would depict him as general and president.
Gehry’s idea echoed Eisenhower’s speech when he returned to Kansas after the war and spoke of a “barefoot boy” who achieved fame in Europe. He came home “to say the proudest thing I can claim is that I am from Abilene.”
Anne Eisenhower, one of the president’s granddaughters, sent a formal objection to the National Capital Planning Commission on Tuesday.
“What one has to say is he’s missed the message here,” she told The Associated Press. “The mandate is to honor Eisenhower, and . . . it is being done in such a small scale in relation to the memorial that it is dwarfed.”
Images of Eisenhower as a general addressing troops before D-Day and as president studying the globe would be represented in stone in “heroic scale,” said project architect Daniel Feil.
The project commission plans to seek approval in March and hopes to break ground this year.
