The Monumental City II

In my first installment on the monuments of Washington DC, I distinguished between sites that played a direct role in history versus the ones that are far removed in time and place from the subject they honor. Ford's Theater of course represents the former. It is a site preserved for eternity, just as it was that dreadful night when Abraham Lincoln was shot in his box seat above stage left.

An example of the latter would be the Jefferson Memorial, a building built so long after its intended subject, that even the land it sits upon did not exist in Thomas Jefferson's time. The monument was dedicated in 1943 on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson's birth. To get a more immediate glimpse into the life of the founding father and third president of the United States, you needn't go far. The main building of the Library of Congress, named for Thomas Jefferson, contains the largest collection of Jefferson documents anywhere. On public display you can view a reconstruction of his expansive library. Or you could go down to Charlottesville, Virginia and its environs. There you will find written upon his tombstone (which he designed), his epitaph (which he wrote), noting the accomplishments of which he felt the proudest:

Here was buried 

Thomas Jefferson

Author of the Declaration of American Independence

of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom

Father of the University of Virginia 

Note the glaring omission.

Jefferson's monument in Washington makes up for that omission, as it sits directly across the National Mall from the White House, separated only by the Washington Monument, equidistant between the two. I don't believe there was ever a monument built in Washington DC that was not controversial for one thing or other and the Jefferson Memorial certainly is no exception. From the Japanese cherry trees that were sacrificed to make room for it, to its not so fashionable (for the time) classical revival architecture, to the out of context quotes on the walls intended to bring Jefferson in line with the administration in power when it was built, this monument never really got the respect, nor the visitors that the other big monuments in the city have enjoyed over the years. It doesn't help that it's a bit off the beaten path, you have to really want to go there to visit it. The one time I did make the trek to visit the great man in his marble mausoleum, frankly I was left a little cold, especially after visiting the Lincoln Memorial down the road apiece.

Fortunately you can appreciate it just as well if not more from a distance. An exquisite jewel box of a building, the Jefferson Monument perhaps is most famous for providing the backdrop in early April for the blossoming cherry trees that line the Tidal Basin. The building couldn't have a finer lineage. John Russell Pope, who built many of the neo-classical landmarks in Washington, designed it to resemble Jefferson's own Rotunda of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, which itself was inspired by the Pantheon in Rome, for my money one of the greatest buildings ever built. Not having to protect its contents from the elements, the Jefferson Monument is completely open, prompting the viewer from a distance to line up the gargantuan statue of Jefferson by Rudulph Evans within the "sights" of two of the monument's 54 columns of the Ionic order, as I did in the photograph above.

The Jefferson monument is the first familiar building to greet visitors to the city when they arrive by the Metro from the National Airport as the train crosses the Potomac. It completes the quartet of landmark buildings, including  the US Capitol, the White House and the Lincoln Memorial, that radiate around the spindle of the Washington Monument with the National Mall as the east-west axis. It fits in so well with the rigid style and geometry of the city, it would be difficult to imagine Washington DC without it. Furthermore, despite its limited value as a place of historical significance, architecturally speaking, it's simply one of the most beautiful buildings in town.

As they say, if it didn't already exist, someone would have to invent it.

Until fairly recently, except for cherry blossom time, the Memorial was one of the only attractions in West Potomac Park, other than the lovely park itself that surrounds the Tidal Basin, an artificial body of water that serves to regulate the flow of the mighty Potomac. Since 1997, three monuments to great Americans have been unveiled around the Tidal Basin.

The "Stone of Hope"

The most recent of these is the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial which was dedicated in October of 2011. As monuments go, this one is most in the spirit of Mount Rushmore, that is to say, a heroic image hewn out of a block of stone. I touched on it briefly in my first Washington monument post, and in another piece devoted to Dr. King here. But I hadn't actually set eyes on the monument until my most recent trip to Washington last week.

I must say, little surprised me seeing it in person, it pretty much looks just as it does in the pictures. Entering from the north, the visitor passes between two enormous stone monoliths, labeled "The Mountain(s) of Despair", toward a third rock labelled "The Stone of Hope." The names were inspired by a line from King's famous speech at the 1963 March on Washington: "...out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope." Dr. King's likeness standing thirty feet high, is found on the Tidal Basin side of the Stone of Hope. He gazes to his right off into the distance toward the south, arms folded with a rolled up piece of paper in his left hand, perhaps the "I Have a Dream" speech. Extending in a semi-circle off each Mount of Despair are two granite walls into which are carved quotations from the civil rights leader. A stream of water separates the visitor from the wall.

A quote carved into the Stone of Hope originally read: "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness." Like the quotes on the Jefferson Memorial, this one was taken out of context. Here is the original quote from Dr. King, spoken shortly before his assassination in 1968:

If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.

Critics, including the poet Maya Angelou, claimed the abbreviated version misrepresented King making him look arrogant. Unlike the quotes misrepresenting Jefferson on his own memorial, the original inscription was sandblasted off the stone, which as you can see by the clear slab off Dr, King's left shoulder in these photographs, has been left blank, for now.

If most of the classic Washington DC monuments can trace their influence back to ancient Greece and Rome, the King Monument appears to go farther back, to ancient Egypt. Whether the effect is intentional or not, the two rear stones placed behind the head stone suggest lion haunches, making the whole ensemble when viewed at the proper angle, a little reminiscent of the Great Sphinx at Giza.

The King monument is certainly a powerful tribute to the slain civil rights leader. His image carved in stone by the artist Lei Yixin, has already attained iconic status, at least judging from the number of images of it found on tee shirts worn at the 2013 March on Washington. It is an appropriate heroic monument dedicated to one of the few truly heroic figures of our lifetime, well my lifetime at least.

But I've said it before and I'll say it again, no monument to Martin Luther King, no matter how stately or well executed, will ever be a more powerful and moving experience of the man than standing in his footsteps on the Lincoln Memorial a short walk away, on the spot where he delivered his great speech at the 1963 March On Washington. There, looking out toward the National Mall with the Washington Monument and the US Capitol off in the distance, in the center of the top step leading into our nation's greatest shrine are inscribed the words: "I Have a Dream." Quite often you will find a rose placed near this simple tribute to Dr. King.

No explanation is given, none is necessary.

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, only a couple hundred yards to the west of the King monument, couldn't be more different. Instead of finding a heroic figure cut from a piece of rock, you are greeted by a fragile looking figure wearing a wrinkled suit, and sitting in a wheelchair. The sculpture by Robert Graham of the 32nd president at the entrance to his monument was not part of the original design. The centerpiece of the design is a massive statue of the seated president toward the back of the monument, (see the photograph below), his cape covering up what is presumably a wheelchair. FDR who contracted polio in 1921 and was left paralyzed, famously went to great lengths to keep his affliction from the public. This caused a great debate as to how to portray him in his memorial in a much different time. Even people with strong ties to disability issues disagreed about the proper way to portray FDR, some fearing that showing him in a wheelchair would imply he was a hero simply because of his disability. However the sentiments of those who felt it important to show the president as he actually was, won out, and the Graham statue was unveiled in 1991, four years after the monument opened. On the wall behind the statue are inscribed these words of Eleanor Roosevelt:

Franklin's illness gave him strength and courage he had not had before. He had to think out the fundamentals of living and learn the greatest of all lessons -- infinite patience and never-ending persistence.

The Roosevelt monument designed by Lawrence Halprin, sits on a sprawling seven acre site divided into four sections, each section representing one of the president's four terms in office. Water is a recurring theme in the monument. From a single drop representing the Great Depression to a torrent representing World War II, each section uses a water feature to symbolize the distinct nature of the term it represents. The symbolic arrangement of stones, along with quotes from FDR were also carefully thought out to bring home the point. Topping it all off, each section features works of art relating to the theme of each term, created by a number of artists:

• George Segal contributed three free standing works to the memorial all dealing with the Depression: The Fireside Chat, The Rural Couple, and The Bread Line.
• Leonard Baskin created a bas-relief of Roosevelt's funeral cortege.
• The stone carvings of FDR's and Eleanor Roosevelt's words were executed by John Benson.
• The above mentioned sculpture of a seated Roosevelt with the cape is the work of Neil Estern who also gave us the free standing sculpture of Eleanor Roosevelt, who deserves, and probably one day will get a monument of her own.
• In addition to the statue of FDR in a wheelchair, Robert Graham also created a bas-relief of the president waving to the crowd during his first inaugural. Perhaps the most evocative work in the memorial, Graham's thirty foot long relief entitled Social Programs, is comprised of square panels subdivided into smaller squares each one depicting a different program. These panels are repeated in negative form on columns in the center of the section devoted to the Great Depression.  

The Bread Line, by George Segal

Social Programs, by Robert Graham

Roosevelt with his dog Fala, by Neil Estern, the original centerpiece
of the FDR Memorial

Given the choice between the two neighboring monuments, I'd have to say I prefer the FDR memorial to Dr. King's. The artwork in the FDR tribute is more diverse and compelling. Lawrence Halprin wisely chose to keep his creation in a park setting, leaving many of the established trees on the site, adding to its beauty, as well as shading the visitor from the brutal Washington summer sun. While it's a complex, some would say overly fussy tribute to its subject, the FDR monument doesn't command an overburdening feeling of reverence, as its somewhat bombastic neighbor to the east does. The sight of children playing in and around the rocks and waterfalls only adds to the experience as opposed to the King memorial where I saw a woman admonishing two parents whose young kids were splashing in the water, behaving like, well, like kids. And as I grow older, I have come to truly appreciate the addition of benches, where I can sit down and take it all in.

Besides the other, arguably superior monuments that already existed in Washington prior to the building of the Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Memorials, there is another monument to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the city, one that conformed exactly to his wishes. It is a simple marble slab measuring about four by six feet wide and three feet high that sits in front of the National Archives Building. Roosevelt told his friend, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Felix Frankfurter, that he would like a monument to himself measuring no bigger than the size of his desk, and sitting in front of the National Archives building. In 1966, that's exactly what he got.

In my previous posts on the monuments of Washington including this one on a proposed memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower, I've noted the trend since the success of the Vietnam Verterans Memorial, to build ever bigger, more complex monuments. One that has bucked the trend is the third recent monument built in West Potomac Park, the George Mason Memorial, dedicated to one of the lesser known founding fathers of this country. Situated near the monument to his fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson,the Mason monument also resides in a park setting. A simple reflecting pool sits before a pergola under which is a bench where a statue of the subject sits cross legged, inviting you the visitor to join him. Faye B. Harwell designed the site and Wendy M. Ross created the sculpture. Stone tablets inscribed with Mason's words sit on either side of the bench. It's an utterly charming monument in marked contrast to its rather pompous neighbors.

Unfortunately it's unlikely that the George Mason Memorial will set a trend for more modest, thoughtful Washington DC monuments, as the ones on the drawing board seem ever more ambitious. As long as the "they have theirs, now I want mine" element runs through Washington, we can expect bigger, more extravagant creations to be built in our nation's capital.

Judging from the latest monuments built in Washington, what the new monuments probably won't be, is more powerful, moving or edifying. Designers could take a cue from the successful monuments of the past, and from the poet Robert Browning whose poem, Andrea del Sarto, called the Faultless Painter, contains the axiom, later adopted by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: "less is more."

On my recent visit to Washington I had revelations of two of the monuments I wrote about in my previous posts that will stay with me for a long time. As I entered the portion of the National Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial where the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington was taking place, a gentleman who I'd say was in his mid to upper seventies walking beside me had a look of deep concentration on his face. Assuming he was trying to listen to the events taking place broadcast over the distant loudspeakers, I asked him if he could make out who was speaking at the time. Without breaking his glance ahead and slightly to his left, the man said to me: "No, I'm just staring in amazement at that monument over there, it looks like something Hitler would have built." He was looking at the National World War II Memorial, opened in 2002. Although I never made the connection, the man had a point. The pillars, triumphal arches, and water fountains of that monument seem to speak to the glory of war, and little about reflection and loss. Something similar could have indeed come out of the sketchbooks of Albert Speer, the official architect of the Third Reich.

Then after the event on the Mall, I had the rare opportunity to pass by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial while it was closed to the public, due to the festivities.

On a normal day, hundreds, sometimes thousands of people would be standing in front of the wall at any given moment, searching for the name of a loved one, or simply taking in the magnitude of the sea of names representing American soldiers who lost their lives during the Vietnam War. 

Without all the visitors, the interaction between the Frederick Hart sculpture The Three Soldiers, seen on the right of the photograph above, and Maya Lin's Wall on the left is even more striking. Once I thought the interaction of the visitors with the Wall was the only source of its power. But the other day with the monument empty, it took on a new dimension. Like Robert Graham's portrait of FDR in a wheelchair, the statue of the three soldiers was not part of the original design, but added after people objected to the fact that only the dead were commemorated in Lin's monument. 

I believe that as is the case with the wheelchair-bound FDR, the Hart sculpture has become an essential element of its monument, adding the necessary touch of humanity to the work. In the case of the Vietnam Memorial, seeing the three soldiers gazing into the void of the black wall cut into the earth, perhaps looking for the names of their fallen comrades, or even their own names on that wall, is a chilling, yet poignant experience. 

As with seeing the words "I Have a Dream" carved into the top step of the Lincoln Memorial, no explanation is given, none is necessary.

In their footsteps

Call me a geek but there are few things more spine tingling to me than standing on the spot of a momentous historic event. On the top step leading up to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC there is a plaque that reads: "I Have a Dream." This was the spot where Martin Luther King delivered his most famous speech to the world and the throngs assembled on the Washington Mall during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. I've mentioned before that I can't imagine the experience of the gargantuan new Martin Luther King Memorial not too far away could possibly match the experience of being on that spot in front of this country's most hallowed memorial, literally standing in Dr. King's footsteps.

As our nation's capital, Washington has seen more than its share of famous and infamous speeches. One site has seen more than any other: the steps leading to the East Portico of the Capitol Building, the traditional site of presidential inaugurations. It was there in 1865, when Abraham Lincoln, seeking to heal the wounds of the deadliest conflict in our nation's history, delivered perhaps his and this country's greatest speech. On those same steps in 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his first address as president to the American people, reassuring them during the dark, early days of the Great Depression. John F. Kennedy stood there in 1961 inspiring a nation and the world toward a greater good.

Those same steps also saw the solemnest of processions as the bodies of Presidents Lincoln, Kennedy and several others (but not Roosevelt's) were carried over them as they were brought to lie in state inside the Capitol Rotunda.

The U.S. Capitol steps

Walking up those thirty four steps, standing in front of our most important building upon one of the most significant spots in this nation's history, was always a highlight during my trips to Washington. Unfortunately since 9/11, unless you have special credentials or are willing to take the chance of dodging security, you can't walk up those stairs or enter the Capitol Building from the East Portico anymore, one of the sad reminders of our troubled time.

My own city of Chicago has quite a few spots of distinction, some of them marking events of national and even worldwide significance. Chicago was a particularly important city for two of the presidents mentioned above:

As a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln argued many cases here. In perhaps his most important case, in 1857 he represented the interests that built a railroad bridge that spanned the Mississippi River at Rock Island, Illinois. That bridge was the first to cross the Great River. Its construction was contentious as riverboat companies argued that bridges posed an impediment to the navigation of the river. Their true concern was the inevitable fact that railroads would one day put them out of business. Just days after the Rock Island bridge opened, the steamboat, Effie Afton crashed into one of the bridge's piers, caught fire, and destroyed much of the bridge along with it. In the ensuing lawsuit, the defendants represented by Lincoln, hinted the boat intentionally rammed the bridge. Much more of course was at stake than awarding damages to the boat owners, and Lincoln argued that the very progress of the nation would be impeded if bridges were not allowed to span navigable waters. The case was dismissed as a result of a hung jury, which ended up a victory for the railroad interests and ultimately for Chicago as the tracks coming off the Rock Island bridge led directly here, making this city the rail hub of the United States. Meanwhile the glory days of old St. Louis whose fortunes were tied to the riverboats, would soon be behind it.

That case, Hurd vs. Rock Island Bridge Company, was argued in the Circuit Court of the United States for Northern Illinois which at the time met in the ramshackle Salon (later less than affectionately known as the Saloon) Building which stood at the southeast corner of Clark and Lake. The courts would later move into their new digs, the combined Court House and City Hall Building, designed by John van Osdel. After his assassination, Lincoln's body laid in state in that building (now the site of the Chicago City Hall/Cook County Building) during his long final journey home to Springfield. The Courthouse building was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. A fragment of that building stands today in front of the old Academy of Science Building at Clark Street and Armitage.

In 1960, Senator John Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon while campaigning for president, squared off in the first ever series of televised debates, the first of which took place in Chicago at the CBS studio at 630 North McClurg Court. In that debate, Nixon who had been ill, refused makeup and appeared disheveled and uncomfortable, while a well rested and made up Kennedy appeared confident and prepared. The majority of people who listened to the debate on the radio chose Nixon as the winner but those who saw it on TV overwhelmingly picked Kennedy. Historians credit that moment, a victory of style over substance, as a turning point in American politics. Chicago played a pivotal role in the final result of that election as its voters (some of them allegedly casting their votes from beyond the grave), gave Kennedy victory in Illinois which was the state that put him over the top in a very close election. The building where the debate took place, a former horse stable, was torn down in 2009 and its site remains one of the many vacant lots in the Streeterville neighborhood.

As far as I know, there are no historical markers commemorating these events, the places and events have simply been absorbed into the flow of life in the city, like drops of water in a river.

The Haymarket Memorial by Mary Brogger, unveiled in 2004.

One site in Chicago was commemorated, un-commemorated, then re-commemorated. It is the site of an event that would set in motion one of the most dramatic periods in Chicago history, the labor riot in the former Haymarket district just west of the Loop. Eight police officers were killed on the fateful evening of May 4th, 1886, as were many protesters. For years a statue of a police officer, his right arm raised as if to say either: "stop thief" or "hello compadre" stood at the site. For years that monument was the victim of poor placement, vehicular accidents or protesters who saw the police more as instigators of the riot rather than victims. Poor Officer Friendly had been moved, run into, defaced and blown up so many times that he was eventually relocated to the safety of Police Headquarters where he remains today. The site of the riot, Desplaines Street between Lake and Randolph Streets remained unmarked and virtually unnoticed for decades because of the contrasting sensitivities involved. Eventually the Police seeing themselves as a part of the labor movement, lightened up about building a new monument that seemed to express the event from a more complete perspective. My first experience of the site was during a tour led by Chicago's official cultural historian Tim Samuelson, who reenacted the throwing of the bomb that set off the riot by tossing a muffin onto the empty street. That could be the explanation why to this day, whenever I think of the Haymarket Riot, I get hungry.

There are loads of historical markers around Chicago commemorating events, people, or inventions. Inside the Fire Academy on Canal and DeKoven Streets,  you can find a plaque marking the spot of the O'Leary barn where the Great Fire began on October 7th, 1871. Almost five miles to the north at Fullerton and Lakeview Avenues is another marker commemorating the northern boundary of the fire where it died out two days later. The haunts of important Chicagoans of the past are popular locations of markers. During our regular walks from our old home to Humbolt Park, my son and I would pass a marker in front of a CHA housing project pointing out the site where once stood the home of Frank Baum, the author of the Wizard of Oz.

Many years ago viewing a plaque on a building in the Loop made me aware of something I had always taken for granted, Standard Time. Before the age of railroads, unless you were a sailor and navigated using Greenwich Mean Time, you set your clock by the sun. Consequently, high noon in Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City all came at different times, and no one was any the worse for wear. It was the railroads and their necessity of accurate timetables that led to the invention of a system where time was measured consistently everywhere. Within a given zone, twenty four of them encompassing the globe, the time would be the same. The United States (the contiguous 48 states) was so large it required four different time zones. The system of standard time that we use today was adopted you guessed it, right here in Chicago on October 11, 1883 inside the Great Pacific Hotel which stood on Jackson Street between Clark and LaSalle Streets.

On the campus of the University of Chicago in Hyde Park sits by far the most sublime monument above the most sobering spot in Chicago. It is the 1967 Henry Moore sculpture titled Nuclear Energy. It stands above the site where the world's first self-sustaining nuclear reaction took place, marking the birth of the Atomic Age.


The other day my son and I visited a site that stands in marked contrast to any of the others above.
It could hardly be considered having any worldwide significance. In fact it can be argued that this place is not significant at all unless you measure its significance by the hours of enjoyment with a little misery thrown in, shared by countless Chicagoans.

The site now is a parking lot on the South Side at the northeast intersection of 35th Street and Shields Avenue. If that location alone doesn't give itself away, you may as well stop reading now as you likely won't care that this was once the location of beautiful Comiskey Park, for eighty years the home of the Chicago White Sox.

All that's left of the once great baseball palace across the street from the team's not so new baseball palace (named after a cell phone company) is a marble slab in the pentagonal shape of home plate inlaid into the pavement right on the spot so they say, of the original, along with two batter's boxes placed on either side. Foul lines extending the length of the long lost field are painted on the pavement so motorists can tell whether they are parked in fair or foul territory.

Babe Ruth in action at Comiskey Park, 1929.  The catcher is Moe Berg,
perhaps one of the most interesting men to have ever played the game. 

My boy walked into the left handed batter's box and said: "Just imagine, Babe Ruth stood here." Through all the trepidations over the past eleven years about my parenting skills, I realized that I had done at least one thing right.

Tongue tied and blown away by his unsolicited remark, I tried to add to the list of great left handed American League batters who stood on that spot, but all I could come up with at the moment was Ted Williams.

The names have been coming to me all week: Gehrig, Maris, Berra...

One of my cherished memories of the old ballpark came sometime in the early eighties, when the Yankees were in town. The White Sox were struggling to hold on to a lead late in the game when the Yankees loaded the bases with Reggie Jackson at the plate as pinch hitter. In comes White Sox reliever Kevin Hickey. Prior to coming up with the Sox, Hickey who grew up walking distance from Comiskey Park, was a star Chicago 16" softball center fielder with an incredible arm. In 1978 during an open tryout for the big league team, Hickey got a contract and made his big league debut in 1981. In a scene that could have been scripted for a bad tele-drama, with everyone in the house on their feet, the neighborhood boy came in and saved the day by striking out the future Hall of Fame slugger, standing in the very spot where my son stood the other day.

Of course not all the great American League lefties were Yankees; the guy who would take Ted Williams' place in left field at Fenway Park, Carl Yastrzemski, the last person to hit for the Triple Crown, also stood in that batter's box. His replacement, Jim Rice batted from the other side of the plate. Since my son didn't stand in the right handed batter's box that day, Rice and all the other great righties are a subject for another day.

The irascible Tiger, Ty Cobb, one of a handful of ballplayers who could legitimately challenge the Bambino for the title of "best ever", batted from that box when he was in Chicago for all but five years of his career.

The great Cool Papa Bell of whom Satchel Paige said: "was so fast he could flip the switch in the bedroom and be in bed before the lights went out", like Mickey Mantle, batted from both sides of that plate. He played ball before the Major Leagues became integrated but would play in Comiskey Park at least once every year during the annual Negro League All Star Game.

I still remember one of the greatest hitters of my time, Rod Carew, or "RRRRRod CaRewwwww" as Harry Caray used to call him, batting from that box as a Twin and later a California Angel, my heart sinking every time he came up to bat.

Oh yes, there were a few good White Sox players to bat from the left side: Larry Doby, the first African American to play in the American League batted from that left handed batter's box. Doby broke in with the Indians but was a member of the 1959 Sox team that won the American League pennant. He also had the distinction of being the second African American manager of a big league team, which happened to be the White Sox. A couple other members of that '59 "Go Go" White Sox team, Ted Kluszewski with his bulging biceps, and the great second baseman, Nellie Fox were lefties as well, as was one my all time favorite Sox players and the team's current first base coach, Harold Baines.

But I save the best for last. Without question the greatest player to ever wear a White Sox uniform, the man whose style Babe Ruth emulated, and whose name and image would hang prominently in the hallowed shrine to baseball in Cooperstown, NY had it not been for his involvement from the fringes of the greatest scandal to ever rock baseball, Shoeless Joe Jackson batted from that box.

I get shivers just thinking about it.

My boy and I did what any American father and son would do given the chance to be in such a place, we played catch. Since a few hours before there had been a game across the street and were still cars lingering in the parking lot, we were prevented from tossing the ball around home plate. Still I paced off approximately 60 feet six inches, the distance from home plate to the pitcher's rubber, and stood where White Sox greats Ted Lyons, Early Wynn, Billy Pierce and all the other great and not so great American League pitchers between 1910 and 1990 applied their craft, while my son crouched behind home plate, the workplace of Moe Berg, Sherm Lollar and my other favorite ballplayer, Carlton Fisk, who contrary to fans of that other Sox team back east, will to me always be a member of the White Sox.

We then went out to left field where we played catch in earnest. He stood where Ron Kittle, another Chicago area boy and one of the handful of players to hit a home run over the roof of old Comiskey Park tentatively played his position in the early eighties. I stood in short left, where the great shortstops Luke Appling (who rumor has it, once lived in our building), and Luis Aparicio might have fielded a popup or two. On one toss my boy threw the ball at least ten feet wide of me. The ball rolled all the way from left field to deep right field where Harold Baines in his prime might have scooped it up, and thrown out a batter trying foolishly to turn a double into a triple.

The Last Game at Comiskey Park
 Photograph by Tom Harney

There are so many memories from that particular square block patch of land; if you close your eyes, you can almost hear the crack of the bat, the screaming fans, Bill Veeck's exploding scoreboard, and Nancy Faust playing Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye on the organ. If you squint you might be able to picture Armour Square Park just north of the old ballpark framed through the distinctive arches that were cut out of the left field facade. And with a little imagination, your mind's eye can conjure up all those larger than life players of the past, the legends still in their prime, warming up on that beautiful green diamond shaped field in Charles Comiskey's baseball palace on the South Side of Chicago.

My son, every bit the 21st Century boy, totally got it. I can't say this experience was as thrilling for him as it was for me, or that it even came close to walking around the field of the current ballpark across the street before a game this year and standing beside some genuine big leaguers. But for about one half hour on a beautiful late summer afternoon, for the two of us that parking lot became our own field of dreams.

---

Postsript:

Here is a site devoted to the Effie Afton incident, and here is a nice history of old Comiskey Park.

Here is a site with some tremendous historic photographs of the old ballpark.

The following is an incomplete list of players who hit home runs that cleared the roof of Comiskey Park:

• Babe Ruth
• Lou Gehrig
• Jimmy Foxx
• Hank Greenberg
• Ted Williams
• Mickey Mantle
• Bill Skowron
• Elston Howard
• Eddie Robinson
• Minnie Minoso
• Dave Nicholson
• Harmon Killebrew
• Dick Allen
• Ron Kittle
• Carlton Fisk
• Greg Luzinski

Finally, here is the incredible story of Kevin Hickey's life, unfortunately as told in his Sun Times obituary from earlier this  year.

His unfulfilled legacy

On the day the Martin Luther King National Memorial opened to the public, an unprecedented earthquake shook Washington D.C. If that were not enough, as we speak, Hurricane Irene is descending upon the East Coast, postponing the monument's official unveiling indefinitely. It seems the struggles that Martin Luther King endured during his short life have not eluded him in death.

Like the man it commemorates, the memorial has its detractors. The biggest gripe seems to be the choice of artist to conceive and realize the monument. Finding an explanation for why an American artist wasn't chosen to portray a great American hero isn't so difficult. The fact is, unless they specialize in kitsch, American artists don't do monumental very well anymore. We can make monumental pieces about trivial subjects, or understated works centered on larger than life themes. We're terrific with irony, but we haven't a clue these days on how to make a serious, monumental piece about a genuine hero. Perhaps it's simply because we don't believe in ourselves anymore.

When you need a monument to a larger than life figure, where better to go than China? Enter Lei Yixin, who cut his teeth creating massive likenesses of Mao Zedong in stone. To Lei's credit, with the exception of its impressive size, this memorial is no Chairman Martin. Lei's Dr. King stands defiant, yet contemplative, not as a demigod, but as a man who appears to have the weight of the world, or at least his people, upon his shoulders. I haven't seen it in person but from photographs the new monument seems to get the idea of the man and appears to be a powerful tribute.

Still it is not without bitter irony that the man who devoted his life to justice and economic equality for African American people, should have his memorial outsourced to China.

Regardless, the new monument brings Dr. King back into the public imagination where he belongs.

National tragedies normally have a way of bringing the public together. Not so with Martin Luther King's assassination, which ripped this country apart limb from limb. I don't think it is unreasonable to say that when Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, with him all hope of racial harmony and equality in this country, at least during my lifetime, was lost.

As I became re-acquainted last week with the "I Have a Dream" speech, one line particularly spoke out to me. Dr. King said early in the speech:

"One hundred years later...", (after the Emancipation Proclamation), "...the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land."

Perhaps for the first time in my life I put myself in the shoes of the people in the African American community who rioted in cities all over the country after King's murder. No longer do I feel that the violence, regrettable as it was, was not justified. With the image of people exiled in their own land in mind, I could understand why folks threw up their hands believing that this country had nothing left to offer. Martin Luther King preached non-violence in order to bring about justice for his people, and where did it get him? Dr. King did nothing more than confirm the rights guaranteed in our constitution. The only difference was he added the "for all" part that American children recite in school every day, preceded by the words liberty and justice. For that he went to jail in Birmingham. For that bricks were thrown at him in Chicago. For that he was killed in Memphis.

As a result, instead of an outpouring of love and sympathy, hearts were hardened all over America after April 4th, 1968.

On that terrible evening and in the days to follow, fires fueled by suffering, frustration, desperation and rage lit up the nighttime skies in cities all over America. Perhaps the more militant leaders of the black community were right, if there was ever going to be justice in this country, Dr. King's pacifist tactics would not work. All hope that the struggle for freedom and justice could be fought without violence, was over. The new leaders of the movement would no longer feel compelled to work with or appease white people. Why bother? Who could blame them?

For their part, white folks were scared. They saw the violence of those nights as the signal to leave town. Cities were hemorrhaging white people for years but this was the final straw. The whites who respected and heeded Dr. King's message while he was alive, and there were more of them that you'd imagine, would follow the lead of those that didn't, off to the suburbs and beyond.

The racial divide that Dr. King tried to close, was blown wide open, and has remained that way ever since.

But the greatest tragedy of Dr. King's death in my opinion, was the loss of hope and faith, the loss of the Dream.

It's our faith that teaches us to treat others as we would be treated. Hope for the future makes children understand that in order to make something of themselves they have to respect education and stay in school. Dr. King's Dream encouraged us to accept the fact that in order to build a better tomorrow, we need to sacrifice today.

Martin Luther King's death, the other assassinations of the era, the Vietnam War, Watergate, 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the current economic morass, have worn us down in ways we can't even comprehend. One thing is certain, they have filled us with doubt about ourselves and our institutions and have turned us into cynics.

Oscar Wilde told us that "a cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." Since dreams, hope and faith are not commodities we can put a price tag on, they have little value for us in today's society. That is, until they're gone.

I alluded above to the notion that we don't believe much in ourselves anymore. In fact, many of our brothers and sisters unfortunately believe in nothing at all. The recent riots in England clearly illustrate this, young kids not much older than my ten year old son, in the streets, breaking windows, setting fires and looting, for no apparent reason other than boredom. This doesn't portend well for our future.

If anything good comes of the Martin Luther King Memorial maybe it will be this, perhaps the attention it will receive will spread this message around the world:

Don't be afraid to dream.