Off the Record Tours

26/04/2024

George Marshall is the most important American you’ve never heard of.

He is the model of selfless public service. He’s 5-star army general. Organizes victory in WWII, saves Europe from famine and communism after the war, and serves as both secretary of State and Defense,

A Pennsylvania native he attended the Virginia Military Institute. After graduation he joined the Army.
In the peacetime there were few promotions. He spent nine years as a lieutenant.

Marshall was always politically neutral. He never joined a party, never voted. When asked about his political affiliation he often said his father had been a Democrat, his mother a Republican, whereas he was an Episcopalian.

When Army Chief-of-Staff, Marshall wanted nothing more than to command the invasion of France. But he believed it was the president's decision to make and he refused to lobby for the job. FDR chose Ike. He told Marshall "I didn't feel I could sleep at ease if you were out of Washington."

As secretary of State, he designed what became known as the Marshall Plan. It helped Europe rebuild after the war's destruction. He received the 1953 Nobel Peace Prize for his post-war work, even though he was a soldier.

While entitled to an Armed Service Military Honors funeral, Marshall requested very simple proceedings. He lay in repose at Washington National Cathedral for 24 hours after which his body was taken to the Fort Myer chapel. There former President Truman, President Eisenhower about 200 invited guests attended a 22-minute burial service. There was no eulogy. It was the simplest service ever conducted for a man of his rank and prestige.

Marshal selected this spot for his grave. But his second wife had the last word on his headstone. It describes his deceased first wife as "wife" while his second wife is listed herself as "beloved wife."

Marshall was a very humble man. Despite being witness to major events of the last century, he never wrote his memoirs. He said to do that he would have to write about those no longer living, and they wouldn’t have the opportunity to comment on what he wrote. And he thought that wouldn’t be fair.

29/03/2024

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was born in DC in 1899 and grew up in a house which used to stand on what is now Ward Place NW in the West End neighborhood. Both his parents were musicians. And while he was given piano lessons, what he heard in a local pool hall most shaped his young interest in music.

He stared to play around town and was soon good enough to head to New York. In 1923 he formed his own band called the Washingtonians, of course. He landed a gig at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem. It would last five years and launch Ellington on a recording and a touring career that lasted the rest of his life.

Much of Ellington’s work was done with composer, arranger, and pianist Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn’s classical training and Ellington’s ability to use his band members to play off each other was a winning combination. He wrote more than 1,000 pieces of music, everything from popular jazz tunes to full suites, making him one of America’s greatest composers.

The Duke took his band across the ocean in the 1970s as a Jazz Ambassador on behalf of the State Department. This was a program designed to promote American values globally. He played in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia. Many of Ellington’s later albums were influenced by the music he heard on these trips.

On his 70th birthday Richard Nixon threw a black-tie party for Ellington at the White House. He presented him with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed on a civilian.

Washington’s memorial to Ellington is the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in the Georgetown neighborhood. Since 1974 it has brought innovation and discipline to training DC’s young artists in the spirit of Ellington.

14/03/2024

[Episcopal News Service] Washington National Cathedral is known as a house of prayer for all people. On March 12, it also became a house of prayer for all mascots – or, more immediately, mascots re…

09/02/2024

This statue of James Garfield welcome Capitol Hill visitors arriving by bus. If anyone remembers Garfield, they know him as the president who was assassinated and died eight months into his term. But why would a president with such a short tenure be remembered with a statue like this is such a prominent place? The answer is that there’s a lot more to Garfield than just his premature demise.

The first thing many noticed about Garfield was he had a large head. Fredrick Douglass called him a 3-storied headed man.

Garfield was a teacher, a soldier, a preacher, and a politician. Sometimes all at once.

He grew up poor in what was then called the Western Reserve which is near Cleveland, Ohio. Raised by his widowed mother, at 16 he worked on the Erie Canal handling the mules that pulled the barges. He worked his way through Williams College and was elected to the state senate.

Garfield joins the army when the Civil War breaks out and was appointed a general. And early on he realized that in many respects, the war was going to be the easy part. His time in the South let him see first-hand the insidious nature of White supremacy and repression in those states. Even before there was a thing called Reconstruction, Garfield knew it was going to be tough.

A Republican, he was elected to the House nine times. He was a great orator and served as a leader of his party. He was a supporter of the gold standard and supported a strong approach to Reconstruction of the South that protected former enslaved people.

He also published a proof of the Pythagorean theorem.

In Garfield’s time every government employee from the secretary of State to the postmaster in a small town in the middle of nowhere was a political appointment. That meant that politicians appointed government employees. This was called the spoils or patronage system, and it was rife with corruption.

Garfield doesn’t like the patronage system, but like every politician, he does uses it to his advantage. He and his fellow Republicans make several attempts to institute a civil service. And when he’s sworn in as president, he’s inundated with job seekers. It drives him crazy.

And one unsuccessful job seeker assassinates Garfield. Charles Guiteau, most likely suffering from schizophrenia, who is upset that he’s been turned down for government jobs, shoots Garfield at this DC train station, which is now the site of the National Gallery of Art. Garfield lingers for weeks before he dies.

Garfield got along with everyone in Washington. You’d never hear him speak disparagingly of someone. Even those he adamantly disagreed with. He admitted to a friend, “I’m not a good hater.”

The sculptor is John Quincy Adams Ward, who was a friend of Garfield. He also did the statue of Gen Thomas Scott in Scott Circle.

I like that when you arrive at the Hill you’re greeted by Garfield. He served nearly 20 years here. And you can’t but wonder how the post-war South would have been different had he lived. And it’s good to be reminded that there was a political leader who may have disagreed with you but was never disagreeable.

06/02/2024

All the memorials on the National Mall were erected for a reason and the German-American Friendship Garden is no different. Nothing is here by accident.

In 1988 at the end of his presidency, Ronald Reagan and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl dedicate the garden. The German American relationship went through a lot during Reagan’s time in the White House. Germans opposed, but nonetheless accepted, deployment of Pershing II missiles. Then there was the time Kohl roped Reagan into laying a wreath at a cemetery where SS soldiers were buried. That didn’t play well here. But Reagan wanted to show a strong German American alliance to the Soviet Union, and a garden across the street from the White House was one way to do that. A year later, the Berlin Wall comes down and two years after that East and West Germany reunite.

16/01/2024

About two dozen people showed up for the “Battle of Snowpenheimer” after a call out out by the Washington DC Snowball Fight Association (yes that's a real thing).

10/01/2024

The E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in DC where today an appeals court heard arguments about whether a former president is immune from criminal prosecution.

01/01/2024

Ike's putting green on the White House lawn

26/12/2023

For the first time since the Carter administration there is an ice rink on the White House lawn.

23/12/2023

The White House State Dining Room decorated for Christmas.

21/12/2023

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2023/national-cathedral-robot-stonemason/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_dmv7&wpsirc=nl_dmv7

Stonemasons at Washington National Cathedral are relying on a state-of-the-art robotic arm to help them carve intricate stone pieces that were damaged in a 2011 earthquake.

22/11/2023

At least one busy muncher has gnawed away at about 15 cherry trees near the Jefferson Memorial.

16/11/2023

The star is on the tree! Today National Park Service workers start decorating the White House Christmas tree.

31/10/2023

Interior of the Old Post Chapel on Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. The starting point for many burials at Arlington National Cemetery.

23/09/2023

Memorial being prepared for installation at the Department of State.

20/09/2023

The lobby of the Department of State has the flags of all the countries with which the US has diplomatic relations.

27/07/2023

A WHITE SUPREMACIST WELCOME TO WASHINGTON

The Connecticut Avenue gateway to Washington DC is second only to Memorial Bridge in its beauty. A broad treelined street leads to a large fountain that marks the border between Maryland and the District.

But the beauty of this entrance is spoiled by the fountain’s namesake – one of Congress’ leading segregationists, Francis Newlands. You see, memorials to white supremacist aren’t just the found in the south. They’re everywhere. Like this entrance to our nation’s capital.

Newlands who represented Nevada in Congress from 1898 to 1917. He’s best known for the creation of the Bureau of Land Reclamation which created dams and irrigation projects out west and being a member of the committee that investigated the Titanic sinking.

Newlands was an avowed white supremacist. He wrote that African Americans were “a race of children” that posed a threat to the country and that they should be resettle in the Caribbean. He believed that Asian immigration would take over the west coast and he wrote in the New York Times that “I believe this should be a white man’s country and that we should frankly express our determination that it shall be.” To that end he proposed a White Plank in the 1912 Democratic convention platform that would repeal the 15th Amendment and restrict immigration to only whites. He is the only Democratic senator to vote against Lous Brandis, the first Jewish nominee to the Supreme Court.

Newlands doesn’t make much headway in spreading his hatred legislatively. But he does get to put it into practice elsewhere. In the 1880s he forms the Chevy Chase Land Company and buys up nearly 2,000 acres of farmland and creates the DC neighborhood of Chevy Chase and the adjoining town of Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Newlands does not put any restrictions on who can live in these neighborhoods. He’s more cleaver than that. Instead, he requires that any construction must be detached single-family houses costing no less than $3,000. This requirement makes building a house here out of reach to all but the wealthiest. In 1906 when a Black developer want to build a subdivision in Chevy Chase for African Americans, the Land Company blocks it in court saying the developer was committing fraud by planning to “sell lots to Negros.” And by the 1920s segregation was hard-wired into the neighborhood with covenants in Chevy Chase deeds preventing the sale of houses to Blacks and Jews.

Newlands dies in 1917 when what little heart he had failed. Mrs. Newlands thought so much of her dear husband she spends $12,000 to build this fountain in his memory in 1938.

Today Chevy Chase, Maryland is home to such illustrious folks like talking head George Will, Federal Reserve Bank chairman Jerome Powell, and Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh. In fact, Mrs. Kavanaugh used to work as the town’s manager.

The Chevy Chase Land Company is still in business and Newlands’ segregationists’ legacy continues. The requirement of building only single-family houses is still a well-used zoning method to keep this and neighborhoods around the country segregated to this day.

In 2020 neighbors asked the US Park Service to remove the fountain’s plaque commemorating Newlands. To date there has been no action.

11/07/2023

LGBTQ HERO AT CONGRESSIONAL CEMETERY

Soon after moving to Capitol Hill, I visited Congressional Cemetery. It was quite run down back then. And I came across this gravestone. It reads, "When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."

It's the grave of Leonard Matlovich. Matlovich was born on an Air Force base and was the son of an Air Force sergeant. When he was 19, he joined -- the Air Force. He volunteered to go Vietnam where he served three tours of duty. While there he was seriously wounded when stepping on a land mind. His decorations included the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and the Air Force Commendation Medal.

Matlovich was gay. He could have returned home continued his successful Air Force career in a closeted manner. But he saw the injustice of that. Instead, he wanted to be a test case for what the military would do to a member with an exemplary record who told his superior that he was gay.

Matlovich surely know what would happen next. He was discharged, albeit honorably. Matlovich sued for reinstatement and ultimately won. But believing the Air Force would find some way to harass him, he settled for a cash settlement.

After his discharge Matlovich traveled, opened a restaurant, sold cars, but came back to being an advocate for gay rights and HIV/AIDS education.

He died at age 44. He didn’t live to see LGB people serve openly in the military, gay marriage legalization, or the military lift the transgender ban. But he helped all that happen.

Interestingly, he’s buried close to J Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson. Hoover was director of the FBI for 48 years. He was obsessed with all things gay. Tolson was Hoover’s longtime colleague, friend, heir and, according to many, romantic partner. I’m sure Matlovich enjoyed the irony of being buried so close to Hoover and his special friend.

Matlovich carefully designed his marker. It’s made from stone like that of the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial. And it doesn’t include his name. Rather, he wanted it to be a memorial for all gay service members. Today, the US military is stronger because of Matlovich and all those this marker remembers.

13/06/2023

CHARLES PIERCE - PREVENTING UNKNOWN SOLDIERS

No one wants to be an unknown soldier. During the Civil War, that was a real fear. Soldiers worried that if killed their bodies would not be identified. Some would mark their clothing with their names or engrave their name on a piece of metal, or a pin paper name tags to their uniform. To give you an idea of why this was a real concern, consider the 17,000 Union troops buried in Vicksburg National Cemetery, nearly 13,000 of those graves are marked as unknown.

War will always be bloody and terrifying. But one man helped alleviate the fear of being lost after death.

The Rev. Charles C. Pierce was an Episcopal clergyman. Born in New Jersey he joined the army as a chaplain and served in posts out west. In 1899 he was sent to Manila. The Philippine–American War was in full swing as Filipinos fought for their independence from the United States. As a clergyperson, Pierce was familiar with death and all that it entails. Someone in the Army thought this would be the experience needed to head of the Office of Identification and Army Morgue. And this is where Pierce found his calling - identifying and burying war dead.

And he did a good job of it. In Manila he established a process of collecting information about the soldier’s place of death, physical characteristics, the nature of the wounds, and any other information that might provide a clue. He then began digging up bodies that were buried for weeks or months old and comparing the remains with the collected information to determine identities. It was the beginning of modern identification procedures.

And one of the recommendations he makes is that each soldier have half-dollar size metal ID medallion with his name, rank, and regiment attached to a cord that went around the neck.

The Army likes this idea and in 1906, orders that a medallion be worn by all soldiers. Before World War I the Army says make that two tags, one that would stay with the dead body and the other would go to the Graves Registration unit. Around this time someone came up the name dog tags for these ID tags and the term stuck. Service members still wear them today.

Satisfied with a job well done, in 1908 Pierce retires from the Army and enters parish ministry. But as America enters World War I, Pierce is recalled to active duty, promoted to major in the Quartermaster Corps he is responsible for the Graves Registration Service.

This is a messy job. You must face the full effects of the slaughter that is war up close. Pierce and his team create the policies and paperwork. They find, identify, casket, and ship remains. He must acquire land, deal with the French, create temporary burial plots, and who knows what else. But the Graves Registration Service identifies 97% of remains. A previously unimaginable feat that earns the praise of General Pershing.

After the war, now Colonel Pierce, has an even more unpleasant job. Bodies were often buried were they fell. Pierce’s team must locate these graves, move the bodies to smaller, temporary cemeteries. He continues this work in 1919 when he returns to the States to head the Quartermaster General’s Cemetery Division. Congress decided that the families could choose to have the bodies buried in Europe or returned to the United States. Now Pierce must deal with the sensitive problems of moving remains to a permanent resting place.

In 1921, Pierce and his wife traveled to France with members of the National Fine Arts Commission to oversee the development of the U.S. cemeteries. While there both became ill. They died within three weeks of each other. They are buried at Arlington.

30/05/2023

OK, I know baseball can be a slow game. But the one going on here behind the Federal Reserve Bank must be the slowest.

Who’s on first? I don’t know. But there is a pitcher, batter, and catcher. And an umpire, who’s definitely blind.

The best part about this game is there’s never been rain delay.

The sculptor John Dreyfuss made these in 1988 and he put these bronze pieces in game-correct positions.

You can watch the game anytime. It’s in Edward Kelly Park in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood at 21st Street and Virginia Avenue NW.

21/04/2023

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT BREAKS THE FIRST LADY MOLD

As strange as it seems and as wrong as it is, there are only three outdoor sculptures of women in Washington, DC. One of them is Eleanor Roosevelt at the Franklin D Roosevelt Memorial.

Eleanor is Franklin’s wife and 5th cousin. I know, sounds creepy but it’s OK.

Eleanor Roosevelt is a fascinating person on so many levels but today I want to focus on how she transforms the role of first lady from hostess to statesperson.

Eleanor is Franklin’s eyes and ears. FDR knows Eleanor will bring him the truth that other might not or would rather sugar coat.

During the Depression she hits the road, she’s first First Lady to cross the country by air, seeing how New Deal programs are working.

After Pearl Harbor is bombed, the first official America hears from is Eleanor. She already had a radio address scheduled for that night. Franklin’s famous “day of infamy” speech won’t be until the next day. But just hours after the attack she acknowledges the fear families across the country face. She knows the fear firsthand as one of her sons is stationed on a ship somewhere in the Pacific.

During the war Eleanor takes to the skies again, visiting troops all over the world.

Eleanor had a regular newspaper column. Her My Day column ran six days a week from 1936 to 1962. In it she discussed issues including civil rights, women's rights, Prohibition, New Deal programs, the World War II home front, and other issues and stories that she came across in her travels.

She is also the first First Lady to hold weekly press conferences. Held in the White House Red Room, they were open only to women reporters. She said that “Unless women reporters could find something new to write about the chances were that some of them would lose their jobs in a very short time.” Eleanor held 348 of them in twelve years. She avoided politics, leaving that for Franklin. One of the big scoops she provided reports was that beer would be served in the White House once Prohibition ended. Since no newspaper or press service could afford to ignore these conferences, they greatly enhanced the status of the women reporters who covered them.

Eleanor’s last White House press conference occurred a few hours before FDR died. Just before it ended, she discussed an organizational meeting to be held in San Francisco to form the United Nations. By the year’s end, FDR’s successor, Harry Truman, appointed Eleanor as a United States representative to the first UN meeting.

There she chairs the committee that creates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is a foundational document in the history of human and civil rights, one that is very much alive today. It’s the first time the world agrees that there are basic rights everyone has regardless "nationality, where they live, gender, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, or language. The Declaration is considered a milestone for what’s called universalist language which makes no reference to a particular culture, political system, or religion.

Think about what Eleanor had to do here – she had to get the Americans, the Soviets, the French, and all the other UN countries to agree to these 30 points. When it came time to vote – no country opposed it.

Eleanor was also a kingmaker in democratic politics. Anyone who wanted the democratic nomination for president, had to go through her.

She dies in 1962 at age 78. President John F. Kennedy ordered all United States flags lowered to half-staff throughout the world in tribute to this remarkable woman.

17/03/2023

Watch out on your left, these Marvel superheroes (or villains) may be coming to D.C. soon.

09/03/2023

The water is on at the World War II Memorial!

28/02/2023

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL WAR MEMORIAL

U Street: It’s the heart of the African American experience in Washington, DC. Making it a fitting site for the African American Civil War Memorial.

And let us be clear about this – The Civil War was about one thing and one thing only: Slavery. It wasn’t about states’ rights, taxation, or tariffs. It was about slavery. And let’s be clear about one other thing. While enslaved people may have been forced to work for the rebel army, none ever joined the rebel army and fought for its cause.

Over 200,000 African American soldiers and sailors served in the Army and Navy during the Civil War. Their service is remembered here. helped to end the war and free over four million enslaved people.

There were 175 regiments of United States Colored Troops. First recruited in 1863, they constituted around one-tenth of the Army. They fought val and disproved the claims of African American inferiority and laid the groundwork for the fight for civil rights, voting rights, and freedom rights that continue to this day.

On this wall are the names of 209,145 soldiers of the United States Colored Troops, 7,000 white officers, and 2,145 Hispanic surnames. Although their names are not listed, this place also honors approximately 20,000 Civil War era sailors. The Navy was not segregated so those names are harder to find.

Ed Hamilton is the sculptor. Inscribed on the base: 'Civil War to Civil Rights and Beyond.

So come down to U Street. Eat over at Ben’s Chili Bowl, check out the wonderful murals, but come here to remember those who fought for their freedom and fought to free all of us from America’s original sin.

23/02/2023

Visitors will be able to walk among the birds in three aviaries

19/02/2023

FAMOUS AUTHORS BURIED AT ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

Previously we explore famous actors buried here at Arlington National Cemetery. Now let’s look at some famous authors.

“In an old house in Paris all covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines.” Those lines, read to so many children, are from the beloved Madelaine books written by Ludwig Bemelmans.

Born in 1898 in what is now Italy, Bemelmans was a rather incorrigible child. After getting into trouble one too many times, he was given the choice of going to reform school or immigrating to America where his father was. He chooses America.

When he arrived, he spent several years working as a waiter. In 1917, he joined the army but was not sent to Europe because of his German origins. He was promoted to second lieutenant and wrote a book about army life. He tried his hand at drawing and writing with no success until 1939 when he published his first Madelaine book. It was such a great hit he didn’t write another one until 1953.

If you want to see something other than Madelaine and her friends, go to Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. His mural Central Park is his only artwork on display to the public. He was 64 when he dies. He buried at Arlington. Amongst many straight lines.

The New York Times called Dashiell Hammett "the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction. Hammett actually worked as a private detective for a while, giving him ideas that made him one of the finest mystery writers ever. He created such well known charters as Sam Spade in the "Maltese Falcon" and Nick and Nora Charles from the "Thin Man." Both books were made into movies.

Hammett joins the Army in 1918. He served in the Motor Ambulance Corps but spent most of World War I in the hospital. He signs up again after Pearl Harbor, and at age 48, worked as a cryptanalyst in the Aleutian Islands.

He was a strong antifascist in the 1930s and was a supporter of progressive causes all his life. Hammett was blacklisted as a suspected Communist during the Cold War, and he served six months in jail for refusing to divulge the names of those who helped fund an activist group.

Years of heavy drinking and smoking worsened the tuberculosis he contracted in World War I and the emphysema he developed in WWII. The last four years of his life he was cared for by his partner the playwright Lillian Hellman. He dies at 66 years of age.

There’s another great mystery writer here. Mary Roberts Rinehart is sometimes called the "American Agatha Christie.” In her mystery the "Door" she comes up with the "the butler did it" plot device.

She was born in what is now Pittsburgh during the country’s centennial. She was left-handed at a time when that was considered a deficiency and was taught to use her right hand instead. She studied at the Pittsburgh Training School for Nurses and worked at a Pittsburgh hospital. She described the experience as "all the tragedy of the world under one roof."

When the stock market crashed in 1903, Rinehart and her husband, a physician, lost everything. To earn money, she started writing. After success with short stories, she wrote her first novel "The Circular Staircase" in 1907. It sold 1 and a quarter million copies and made her famous. She went on to be a war correspondent for The Saturday Evening Post at the Belgian front during World War I and interviewed Albert I of Belgium, Winston Churchill, and Queen Mary of England.

Rinehart suffered from breast cancer and had a mastectomy. She wrote about the experience in the Ladies' Home Journal. She encouraged women to have breast examinations, and this was at a time when such matters were not openly discussed.

Rinehart had a summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine. In 1947, her chef of 25 years fired a gun at her and then attempted to slash her with knives. She wasn’t injured but this sounds like the makings of a great mystery novel.

At the time of her death in 1958 at age 83, her books had sold over 10 million copies. Her husband was an army officer and she’s buried with him here at Arlington.

19/01/2023

It seems you can’t throw a rock in Washington without hitting a statue of some sort. There are so many ideas, events, and people, (actually mostly white men) that we want to memorialize.

But the work of one person seems to show up from one end of town to the other: It’s Minnesota’s James Earl Fraser. At the Supreme Court is one of my favorites – a statute holding a statue. It’s the Contemplation of Justice. She sits next to the Authority of Law.

Drive downtown you can see what I think is Fraser’s best DC work: The south pediment of the National Archives. The old guy in the center represents the Recorder of the Archives. He’s on a throne that’s sitting on some rams. And above it all is a frieze of papyrus plants – these represent the sources of parchment and paper – the stuff documents were made of before pdf files. On the steps you see his Heritage and Guardianship. Which look rather a lot like the statues sitting in front of the Supreme Court.

If we go over to the front of the Treasury Department, we see Fraser’s Alexander Hamilton. Before Hamilton was a big Broadway star, he was the first treasury secretary. And at the north entrance we see his rendition of Albert Gallatin, the second and longest serving treasury secretary.

Not far, over on the Ellipse is this 18-foot flaming sword held by a right hand. The sword is symbolically stopping the German advance on Paris and it’s a memorial to the more than 17 thousand soldiers of the US army’s Second Division that died in World War I.

But wait, there’s more! By the Lincoln Memorial you’ll find the memorial to the man who invented the screw propeller, John Ericsson.

A few hundred feet away at the entrance to Rock Creek Parkway is Fraser’s huge Arts of Peace. This statue was cast and gilded in Naples and were a gift to the United States from Italy as a gesture of thanks for our help in their economic recovery following the devastation of World War II.

And if we cross the Potomac River to Arlington National Cemetery, we find two more of Fraser’s works: The grave marker of William Howard Taft, the only person to serve both as president and supreme court chief justice. And the sarcophagus of Robert Todd Lincoln, President Lincoln’s only child to survive into adulthood. He also served as secretary of war.

Fraser also designed the Navy Cross, the buffalo nickel. In the 1920s he served on the US Commission of Fine Arts, an agency that has incredible influence on design and aesthetics of Washington. This plus this tremendous collection of statues makes his contribution to the city truly monumental.