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2008-08-29 Home Front: Culture Wars

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Posted by tu3031 2008-08-29 12:03|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 Make a new one, put the old one in a museum and call it a fucking day.
Those men laid to rest deserve more than a dick waving contest by bureaucrats. And as tu said, we don't care what it costs, just get it done right.

Posted by DarthVader 2008-08-29 12:47|| 2008-08-29 12:47|| Front Page Top

#2 Put a building around it, a roof over it, to stabilize temperature shifts and keep it out of the weather. Make the building a nice one, but plan on replacing it when it deteriorates.

Problem solved.

Posted by Fred 2008-08-29 14:26|| 2008-08-29 14:26|| Front Page Top

#3 They made it of marble? That was stupid. Marble is fine in a hot climate without acid rain, say pre-Industrial Revolution Rome. The idiots should have made it out of granite originally. Short term, enclose the thing. Then decide whether or not to replace it with something in the same design but an appropriate material. Or a different design -- 1932 isn't exactly antiquity, and it's a tomb, not a holy relic.

Posted by trailing wife">trailing wife 2008-08-29 15:05|| 2008-08-29 15:05|| Front Page Top

#4 "A replica is not the same thing as the original,"

I'm sure the 'elites' back in London thought the same thing when their American cousins took up the game.

America is a country of the future, not the past. Respect the past, but do not allow it to deny you a better future.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-08-29 15:08|| 2008-08-29 15:08|| Front Page Top

#5 The government found or borrowed the money to build THIS colossus. FIX IT and NOW!

Posted by Besoeker 2008-08-29 15:12|| 2008-08-29 15:12|| Front Page Top

#6 I thought this was settled over five years ago, but I obviously underestimated the foot dragging talents of the Washington Bureaucracy. Maybe they're waiting for the Yule Quarry to close again so they won't have to decide.

...(In 2002), John Haines, a retired Chevrolet dealer from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, was thumbing through his hometown newspaper when an article about a local business caught his attention.

Arlington National Cemetery's largest and most famous monument, the Tomb of the Unknowns, had developed extensive cracks after seven decades of exposure to harsh winters. At the government's request, Yule Marble Quarry in nearby Marble, Colorado, which had supplied the original white gold-veined marble for the sarcophagus, was searching for a 55-ton stone to replace the cracked one.

Haines, who never served in the military and has never even visited the cemetery, decided that he would like to pay for the new stone. It would, he said, honor those who "have given their lives for our freedom."

A large block of replacement marble has been quarried and $70,000 set aside to pay for it, Haines said recently. But even though the U.S. Army accepted his donation offer in 2002, it is not clear if the stone or his money will ever be used.

Things stalled, in part because a fundamental question has not yet been answered: Should the cracked stone be replaced?

Some argue that it is more respectful to let nature take its course on the tomb, which marks the graves of three never-identified soldiers from World Wars I and II and the Korean War. (An unknown soldier interred from the Vietnam War eventually was identified.)

Other issues, including a mandatory government bidding process and requirements imposed by the 1966 Historic Preservation Act, have turned what Haines thought would be a simple act of generosity into a source of frustration.

The final call is up to cemetery officials, who are deciding among four options: replace the stone, repair it, repair the tomb while procuring a replacement stone, or do nothing.

During July and August they have been accepting suggestions from the public on what should be done. So far, at least one organization and 249 individuals have offered comments.

Large cracks in the memorial, dedicated in November 1932, were first recorded in 1963. The horizontal fissures, then spanning a total of 34 feet, are now more than 10 feet longer and wrap all the way around the tomb's midsection. The lines cut through the shoulders of the three Greek figures (representing Valor, Victory and Peace) adorning the east wall of the block and run diagonally across the words inscribed on the west: "Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God."

Cemetery superintendent John Metzler said that hairline cracks probably formed when the marble was quarried -- at that time, quarry workers did not have the diamond-cut saws now in use -- and were deepened by the freezing and thawing of moisture over the decades.

A 1990 report by Oehrlein & Associates, a Washington architectural firm that specializes in historic preservation, concluded that the cracks will keep lengthening and widening, becoming continuous throughout the stone by 2010.

Because of the tomb's historic and cultural significance, the cemetery is required to seek comments from the public before making a decision.

While searching for the above information I ran across these links which may be of interest to some of you:
Source

The Quartermaster Review Jan-Feb 1932
Details of the construction of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
AFTER a period of over two years, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is now in its final stage of completion, and is rapidly approaching the form in which it will endure through the ages. Maybe.
Tomb of the Unknowns

Posted by GK 2008-08-29 17:04|| 2008-08-29 17:04|| Front Page Top

#7 National Historic Site requirements trigger Sec'ty of Interior Section 106 regs (from one who sadly knows). These are not project-stops, just uber-hurdles that have to be overcome while listening (or pretending...) to everyone from concerned intelligent citizen to fricken' street trash, I mean "urban activists". Good luck

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2008-08-29 18:22|| 2008-08-29 18:22|| Front Page Top

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