Last year, when I was in DC, I missed the opening of the World War II Memorial by only a few weeks. I had planned on this trip – if I had any free time at all – to see the new memorial in spite of everything else that DC has to offer. Fortunately, our meetings on Thursday ended early, and we were able to skip down to the National Mall to spend some time at this long overdue memorial to the men and women that served to liberate Europe and the Pacific:
My home state was well represented:
At the center of the memorial, with the Lincoln Monument in the background and facing the Capitol is a field of gold stars on a wall with the inscription “Here we mark the price of freedom”. Each store represents one thousand deaths. There are four thousand of them.
I wrote about my hometown and my family’s contributions to the Second World War last year in World War II: The Price of Freedom and a followup post.