[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 124 (Friday, July 28, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1558-E1559]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


         THE SPIRIT OF VERMONT AND THE NEW KOREAN WAR MEMORIAL

                                 ______


                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, July 28, 1995
  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, this week the new memorial on The Mall to 
the brave Americans who fought in the Korean war was dedicated. It is 
long overdue that we have lasting tribute in our Nation's Capital to 
the near 1.5 million Americans from Vermont and all across our Nation 
who answered the call to stop North Korean aggression in the 1950's.
  I hope there will be many occasions when Vermonters will be able to 
visit this powerful work of art and to honor those who fought and those 
who died in the Korean conflict.
  I also want to call to the attention of my colleagues that Frank 
Gaylord of Barre, VT, who saw extensive combat action in World War II 
as a member of the 17th Airborne Division, 513th Parachute Infantry 
Regiment, is the sculptor of the column of 19 poncho-swathed soldiers 
featured in the Korean War Memorial.
  Frank Gaylord has been a professional sculptor for 44 years, having 
received his bachelor of fine arts degree from Temple University in 
1950. He returned to Vermont where he has worked in his own sculpture 
studio in Barre, VT for 38 years.
  He has been chosen to create sculpture for municipalities, States, 
and educational institutions throughout the United States and Canada, 
including statues of Pope John Paul II, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge 
from Vermont, and Martin Luther King, Jr. He is equally comfortable 
designing sculpture using granite, marble, resin, or metal as a medium.
  Frank Gaylord's latest composition at the Korean War Memorial is a 
moving reminder to all of us of the power of art. The Washington Post, 
in applauding his work, affirms that Gaylord's soldiers stand 
unpretentiously for the common soldiers of all wars.
  I am proud that one of Vermont's native sons has bestowed this gift 
upon all of us, especially our Nation's deserving Korean war veterans.
  I also ask that the text of a feature article about the Korean War 
Memorial that appeared on July 22, 1995, in the Washington Post be 
reprinted in the Congressional Record following this statement.
               [From the Washington Post, July 22, 1995]

 A March to Remember--Moving Monument to Korea Veterans Surpasses the 
                     Tortured History of Its Design

                          (By Benjamin Forgey)

       When the Korean War Veterans Memorial is dedicated next 
     Thursday--the 42nd anniversary of the armistice ending the 
     war--veterans and their families will be celebrating an honor 
     long overdue.
       They can also celebrate a work of beauty and power. Given 
     the tortured history of the memorial's design, this seems 
     almost a miracle. But there it is. Situated on proud symbolic 
     turf southeast of the monument to Lincoln, in equipoise with 
     the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to Lincoln's north, the Korean 
     memorial is a worthy addition to the national Mall.
       Despite some big flaws, our newest memorial is incredibly 
     moving. And what could have been its most glaring weakness--a 
     column of realistically sculpted soldiers in combat 
     formation--turned out to be its major strength. Unheralded 
     sculptor Frank Gaylord of Barre, Vt., created 19 figures that 
     are convincing individually and as a group.
       It is a case of art rendering argument superfluous. There 
     were obvious dangers in the concept of a memorial featuring a 
     column of battle-ready soldiers. If excessively realistic, 
     they could be off-putting. If strung out in too orderly a 
     row, they could be deadeningly static. And yet, if 
     inordinately animated, they could be seen as glorifying war. 
     Indeed, in one of Gaylord's early versions, they came 
     perilously close to doing just that.
       But in the end, none of this happened. Placed dynamically 
     on a triangular field of low juniper shrubs and cast in 
     stainless steel at a scale slightly larger than life, these 
     gray, wary troopers unself-consciously invite the empathy of 
     all viewers, veteran and non-veteran alike.
       The sculptures and triangular ``field of service'' are one 
     of three major elements in the memorial. With an American 
     flag at its point, the field gently ascends to a shallow, 
     circular ``pool of remembrance'' framed by a double row of
      braided linden trees. There also is a memorial wall.'' Made 
     of huge slabs of polished black granite, each etched with 
     shadowy faces of support troops--nurses, chaplains, supply 
     clerks, truck drivers and so on--the 164-foot wall forms a 
     subtly dramatic background for the statues. High on the 
     eastern end of the wall, where it juts into the pool of 
     water, is a terse inscription. Freedom is not free.
       The memorial was designed by Cooper Lecky Architects of 
     Washington--although, in an important sense, the firm acted 
     like the leader of a collaborative team. Important 
     contributions were made by Gaylord and Louis Nelson, the New 
     York graphic designer of the memorial wall, and also by the 
     Korean War Veterans Memorial Advisory Board and the reviewing 
     agencies, especially the Commission of Fine Arts.
       Not to be forgotten are the four architects from 
     Pennsylvania State University who won the design competition 
     back in the spring of 1989--John Paul Lucas, Veronica Burns 
     Lucas, Don Alvaro Leon and Eliza Pennypacker Oberholtzer. 
     This team dropped out after it became apparent that its 
     original design would have to be altered significantly to 
     pass muster with the advisory board, reviewing agencies and 
     others. The team sued, and lost, in federal court.
       Key elements of the competition design remain in the final 
     product--particularly the central idea of a column of 
     soldiers moving toward a goal. But the finished product is a 
     big improvement over the initial scheme. It's smaller and 
     more accomodating--not only was the number of soldiers cut in 
     half (the original called for 38 figures), but also a vast 
     open plaza was eliminated in favor of the contemplative, 
     shaded pool. It's easier to get into and out of--the clarity 
     of its circulation pattern is outstanding. Its landscaping is 
     more natural--among other things, the original called for a 
     grove of plane trees to be clipped ``torturously,'' as a 
     symbol of war. The symbolism of the memorial is now simple 
     and clear.
       Still, Cooper-Lecky and the advisory board went through 
     many versions, and many heartbreaks, on the way to getting a 
     design approved--and the finished memorial shows the strain 
     of the long, contentious process. It cannot be said that this 
     memorial possesses the artistic grandeur and solemnity of the 
     Lincoln Memorial. It does not have the aesthetic unity of 
     Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans wall. It is not quite so 
     compelling a combination of the noble and the everyday as 
     Henry Merwin Shrady's Grant Memorial at the other end of the 
     Mall. But this is to put the new memorial in elevated 
     company--together with the Washington Monument, these are our 
     finest expressions
      of memorial art. To say that the Korean War memorial even 
     comes close is a tribute.
       Without question, its worst feature is a sequence of 
     parallel strips of polished black granite in the ``field of 
     service.'' Unattractive and unneeded, they threaten to reduce 
     the soldiers' advance to the metaphorical level of a football 
     game. And on one side of the field, they end in obtrusive, 
     triangular blocks of granite, put there to discourage 
     visitors from walking onto the granite ribbons. The junipers 
     may in time cover the strips--at least, one can hope--but 
     these bumps, unfortunately, will remain bumps.
       The wall gets a mixed review. A clever if somewhat 
     shameless adaptation of Maya Lin's idea--with faces rather 
     than names etched in--it honors support troops, who always 
     outnumber those on the front lines. It is beautifully made. 
     The heads are real ones from photographs in Korean War 
     archives, digitally altered so that the light source is 
     always coming from the direction of the flag. The etching is 
     wonderfully subtle: The faces seem to float in a reflective 
     gray mist. The wall tugs the heartstrings, for sure, but it's 
     also a bit obvious, a bit much. It has the feel of a 
     superfluous theatrical trick.
       Fortunately, the wall does not interfere too much with the 
     sculpture, which from the beginning has been the primary 
     focus of this memorial, It was an extraordinary challenge, 
     one of the great figurative commissions of the late 20th 
     century, and Gaylord came through. To walk down from the 
     Lincoln Memorial and catch a first, apparitional glimpse of 
     the soldiers, as they stalk from under the tree cover, is 
     quite a thrill. Even from a distance and from the back, the 
     gray figures are compelling.
       And, as choreographed on that field, they become more 
     compelling the closer you get until, with a certain shock, 
     you find yourself standing almost within touching distance of 
     the first figure: a soldier who involves you in the movement 
     of the patrol by turning his head sharply and signaling--
     Beware!--with the palm of his left hand. He is a startling, 
     daring figure and, with his taut face and that universal 
     gesture of caution, he announces the beginning of a tense 
     drama.
       It is an old device, familiar in baroque painting and 
     sculpture, to involve the viewer directly in the action by 
     posture, gesture, facial expression. Gaylord adapted it 
     masterfully here: The figures look through you or over your 
     shoulders, enveloping the space beyond the memorial with 
     their eyes. The air fairly crackles with the vitality of 
     danger. The soldiers communicate tersely among themselves, 
     too--in shouted commands or gestures and glances.
       The most critical contact, though, may be that first one, 
     between the visitor and that initial soldier. His mouth is 
     open--you can almost hear him hissing an urgent command. You 
     slow down, and then you behold the field before you. There is 
     fatigue and alertness everywhere you look. Each figure and 
     each face is as charged as the next. Appropriately, the gray 
     metal surfaces are not polished and shined. Gaylord's rough 
     treatment of the matte surfaces adds to the nervous intensity 
     of the piece

[[Page E 1559]]

       It is quite a feat to give such figures such a feeling of 
     movement--they're only walking, after all, and they're 
     carrying heavy burdens. But Gaylord performed that feat, 19 
     times--he proved himself a master of contrapposto, another 
     time-honored sculptural technique. Underneath the gray 
     ponchos and the weight of the stuff on their backs, these 
     figures twist from hip to shoulder and neck. Some shift 
     dramatically, some just enough, so that the ensemble takes on 
     an extraordinary animation. Every gesture seems perfectly 
     calculated to reinforce the irony. These ghostly soldiers in 
     their wind blown ponchos seem intensely real.
       Dedicated to the concepts of service, duty and patriotism, 
     the new memorial stands in sharp contrast to its companion 
     across the Reflecting Pool. But the Korean and Vietnam 
     memorials make a complementary, not a contradictory, pair. In 
     honoring the sacrifices of soldiers in Vietnam, Lin's great 
     V-shaped wall invokes a cycle of life and death, and 
     physically reaches out to the Mall's symbols of union and 
     democracy.
       The Korean War Veterans Memorial is more straightforward, 
     and speaks directly of a specific time and place. Yet it 
     attains an unmistakable universality of its own. Gaylord's 
     soldiers (and Marines and airmen) served in Korea, yes. But 
     they also stand unpretentiously for the common soldiers of 
     all wars.