One thing about memorials that always bothers me is that the designers seldom think about the future. When their masterpiece is "installed", the designer's efforts are fully funded, the event is still fresh in the minds of everyone, and some very noble assumptions are made as to how it is all going to work.

Fifteen or twenty years, or even half a century down the road, the world is a very different place. What was once a noble and burning intention on the part of "the people" may then be anything but, and it often shows.

Some examples, these scattered around the eastern half of the United States:

• One of the memorials at Gettysburg on the fields of the first day of the battle, originally provided with an "eternal flame" fueled by natural gas, was retrofitted during the Carter administration so as to use an "energy efficient" low voltage lamp, the better to save our nation's precious energy. (This was carefully explained on an aluminum sign at the monument - how thoughtful that was!) However, by the 1980's, the monument had neither a burning real flame nor a working lamp. (It has since been returned to a "real flame", and was burning the last time that I visited the place.)

• In Vincennes IN, there are two monuments of the Civil War era (erected in the late 1800's), both of which have fallen into serious disrepair. The first is near a college campus there - a wonderful limestone open rotunda that has lost all four of its huge Parrott siege pieces and bronze plaques, leaving the visitor to wonder just what the hell it is there for in the first place. The second, on the lawn of the old courthouse, is a massive statuary grouping with bronze sculptures of Union soldiers and sailors, surrounded by Union fieldpieces, and incorporating a series of bronze and glass display cases in the base. The last time that I saw it, it was indifferently lit at night, and the display cases were filled with the last, tattered remains of field gear from World War I - a double whammy, all in the same place.

• Two displays of regimental colors from the American Civil War exist in two widely separated locations: Springfield IL and Montpelier VT. In both cases, the flags are poorly displayed and even more poorly conserved. (IL is at least trying to do something, although it's too late for the three regimental colors from the Mexican War also displayed in their spectacular memorial hall; VT has the flags from their state troops stuffed in two wooden display cases in full sunlight, without any control of temperature or humidity.)

• Until very recently, the huge World War I memorial in Kansas City MO was a dilapidated mess. (The KC area infantry regiment was decimated in World War I, and the multi-million dollar monument was paid for inside of a year in the early 1920's - and those are 1920 dollars, mind you.) Bronze Coolidge era lighting fixtures were no match for modern vandalism and soaring copper prices, and the "monumental" proportions of the site (it is _really_ impressive when seen from either the air or the ground) did not disguise the crumbling . The limestone façade of the monument was falling apart, and it was not clear in my bricklayer's mind that the thing could be saved. (Happily, I was proved wrong, and the reborn facility, which is now known as the National Museum of World War I, is a stunning "installation", no matter how you view it.

I worry whenever I see a new and cutting edge memorial of any kind, as I always tend to view them not as what they are now, but as what they are going to become in ten years. The massive Centotaph for JFK up in Dallas has been rebuilt in the last ten years, but much of what they did was done "on the cheap". Who on earth plans for electrical lighting for a public building (one that is not normally occupied or guarded) that includes plastic conduit and junction boxes? Yet, that's what they did back in the 1990's, and it's already beaten all to hell, with most of the lighting fixtures inoperative.

Push comes to shove, iffen you're going to build a lasting monument to anything, it ought to at least be built to the standards of the Pyramids (and even they were heavily vandalized over the years, with original limestone jacket (a remnant of which can be seen at the top of one of them) looted for later public buildings in the Cairo area). Putting up tinny aluminum plates with the memorial text on them doesn't cut it, and plastic electrical conduit doesn't even belong inside of the visitor's center, much less out in the weather.

The people who designed the Civil War memorials and the Kansas City memorial to World War I were up close and personal to national tragedies that were far, far more profound than our recent experiences with terror. And, they tended to build for the ages, using bronze and stone in place of their "plastics" (wood and stucco). Yet, even these efforts suffered the fate of the Pyramids, and have gotten tattered around the edges over the years since they were dedicated.

The small segment of America that experienced the horrors (however briefly) of World War I felt the same way. Their efforts too have fallen by the wayside over the years, although the new Kansas City museum colocated on their site shows that someone's trying to turn back the clock.

But, we moderns shouldn't assume that ABS plastic and low voltage lighting will have any more permanence than it does in day to day life. Loose gravel that migrates into water "features" and (on any monument of any kind) visual effects that rely on artificial lighting to make them "work" are both mistakes, and twenty years along someone else will be pointing out (on some gas plasma communications service, no doubt) about how shabby the place looks.

But, there is hope.

In the memorial plaza area of Saint Louis located just to the west of the Soldier Memorial is a limestone monument erected (I think) by the American Legion. It was put up after World War I (most of the Missouri Army National Guard units were particularly beat up during the Meuse Argonne during that war), and it too had an "eternal flame" installed in the top, this in a bronze torch above the inscription on the front.

When I lived and worked there, I studied it while out walking at lunch time (as I did the other, more substantial monuments erected in the area), and I noted that the "eternal flame" was anything but, having been dark at least from 1971 through 1975. The plantings around it were all stripped bare, and the grass in the area was thin at best.

Not so last year. Perhaps as part of the general "let's worry about the veterans" movement over the past fifteen years, it now has been re-fueled and re-lit, provided with new landscaping, and with a more robust lighting system (from what I could see from the car).

Mind you, still probably not one in a thousand who passes by knows just what the hell it's there for, but the important thing is that _someone_ cares. Even though there are no doughboys left to appreciate it, those who appreciate their sacrifice (as I hope you do mine in RVN) have noticed.

What you wrote makes a lot of good sense. My home town recently built a memorial for the WW2 men and women who served overseas. They built the memorial out of plywood, 2X4s and paint. It was lit with a cheap halogen landscape light. Obviously it was a horrible sight just two years later. An embarrassment to the community and an insult for those who served.

Fortunately now there is a granite memorial in a more suitable place near the entrance to the towns park. With brass inscription plates and permanent lighting.

Thinking for the future makes very good sense, and hopefully you will take your concerns and your quality writing and try to convince others that simply throwing something up on the cheap to get something done is not only disrespectful to those it is intended to honor but also to those who will view it in the future.