Amory Houghton: “I cannot get into the architectural or the engineering problems here. I remember in 1939, I am old enough to remember…”

“I cannot get into the architectural or the engineering problems here. I remember in 1939, I am old enough to remember that, that they had the same arguments as far as the Jefferson Memorial. It would be ruining the tidal basin and everything like that. I do not believe that for a minute, and it has not proved to be so. I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in May of 1944. I was proud of that. There are an awful lot of us who are still around, a dwindling number, who want to see something. We have the Vietnam Memorial, we have the Korean Memorial, but we do not a World War II memorial. Frankly, there are hundreds of thousands of people who believe this and who have contributed: fraternal organizations, foundations, corporations. I have a VFW post, number 524, in my little town of Corning, which is about 12,500 people, which has raised more money than any other small VFW post in the whole country. They really believe in this. There are people out there, not intellectualizing about this, but who have a piece of their skin in this issue. They want to have something done. I would like to have something done, and I would like to have something done before I die.”