There is one place in America that encapsulates a compressed
representation of its history. It is
also a place that most Americans may find remotely distant because where it is geographically
also makes it seem so far away in time. It is the Mt. Rushmore Monument and just
a few miles away to the west of it is the on-going work-in-progress that is the
Chief Crazy Horse Memorial, which is as equally deserving a place in the
collective consciousness of America. Every
citizen of this country should and must visit the two places because even if
only for one brief moment one can be reminded of what this country is all
about, so that in a small individual way one may spread to the citizens of the
world America’s lofty but honorable ideals, the nobility of its purpose and the
goodness of its people because despite some of this nation’s mistakes it has each time admitted and owned
up to them and proceeded to make right the wrongs committed – from within and deep from the conscience of
its people. Both monuments speak to
that.
South Dakota, particularly the National Park where the
monuments are located, seems so far removed from much of the country unless one
is from Montana or Nebraska and the other neighboring States. Indeed it is, if we go by population density,
or more assuredly by the meager electoral votes these states wield. One look at
the U.S. map quickly shows the sparsity of roads in those States when compared to
the thickly intertwining, spaghetti-like Interstates, major and minor highways
and roadways concentrated in the East Coasts, through all of the lower States
in the South all the way to the West Coast. In fact, Interstate 29 from Council
Bluffs, Iowa extending northward towards Canada is touched by just three Interstates
going westerly – I-80, I-90 and I-94 slicing through the three States of
Nebraska, South, and North Dakota.
Even the county and farm roads are far between but it is in
places like these, rural farmlands from anyplace in the U.S., where the original
ideals of America are still clearly and visibly defined and where the blessings
of the land are quite remarkably evident from “spacious skies … amber waves of grain” and grazing pastures as far
as the eyes can see. From a Rodgers and
Hammerstein song, I do see indeed, perhaps in a slightly different way, what it
was they meant with the line, “… as corny as Kansas in August”. Late summer has corn fields already browning
in Kansas and Iowa but still green from Wisconsin all the way across Minnesota
to the Dakotas. In Mitchell, S. Dakota,
a basketball gymnasium, the only one in the world the locals claim, is called
The Corn Palace. Its façade and interior
walls are plastered with huge artworks made from thousands of corn on the cob –
the corniest basketball stadium I have ever seen. We were told the artworks inside
are replaced every ten years or so but the façade gets a makeover every
year. Understandably, the local birds
like to feast on those corns on the outside.
Coming from Houston, TX, first winding our way up to Wausau,
WI, then proceeding to South Dakota and back, was a road trip that needed to be
made. It was not how my wife and I felt
at first but when we got there and looking up at those two monuments gave us a
perspective so glaringly far away from the national political dysfunctions;
instead, it brought us closer to truly understanding what this country is all
about. We found out too that to go there
one must really want to go there – purposely - because it is not something one might
just set as a “Via Point” on his or her GPS navigation device; unless someone is
just driving westerly or easterly between Seattle and Cleveland along
I-90. Flying would have been quicker but
driving through the different States and communities showed us the America that
I wish everyone would take the time to do.
Theodore Roosevelt,
26th President, one of the four faces on Mt. Rushmore, on March 1912
said this:
We, here in America, hold in our hands the hopes of the world, the fate
of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the
light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of
men.
That was said a hundred and two years ago and two years
after that it became even more relevant in 1914 at the start of WWI and once
again in 1941 when America was called upon into another war because it just cannot
let go from its hands the “hopes of the world”.
This nation paid dearly for what it believed in and today (2014) President
Roosevelt’s words still reverberate at an even more crucial time because the
“golden hopes of men” must prevail over the dark gathering forces from many
places waiting at every opportunity to wage horror and violence towards those
who embrace freedom.
While it is important to note that for the over two hundred plus
years of this Republic’s history the State of the Union had gone through so
many challenges, today and the generations to come will determine whether this
“nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure.” President Lincoln said that just a mere eighty
one years from the birth of the nation.
“Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us,
to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
--- Abraham Lincoln,
February 27, 1860
Previous to those spoken words by the 16th
President, George Washington in the
very first ever U.S. Presidential Inaugural Address in 1789 said the following:
“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the
Republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as
finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American
people”.
Thomas Jefferson,
the third President whose face is next to George Washington at Mt. Rushmore
represents all the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, on July 4,
1776, and this country must constantly remind itself of what those words meant. From time to time one must read the
Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.
The Monuments of Four Great Men that jut out of the granite
mountain top symbolize the pivotal moments in the Nation’s history. Their combined service was just for a fifth
of the time the country had been a nation but they occurred during the first
120 formative and crucial years of the Republic (1789-1909). However, all throughout this nation’s history,
it had had its share of very dark moments.
But, unlike other nations and empires that had ruled for many times the
age of this country and over much wider expanses of conquered lands, America in
real and relative terms moved quickly to first acknowledge and admit, correct the
wrongs and assuage the spirits of the affected and the oppressed.
When asked, “Where are your lands now?”
“My lands are where my dead lie buried”
---- Chief Crazy Horse, 1877
The healing could very well go on for some time and the Chief
Crazy Horse Memorial is the painstaking and slow epitome of that process. It is being done without Federal
assistance but with private funding and endowments only. Every citizen and foreign visitors who come
contribute to the building of the Memorial which may take a few decades more to
complete (began in 1948) but it will be.
The “light of high resolve” will forever shine – an even brighter
example, more than it has ever been, to the rest of the world and for every
American to be very proud of.
I know you will check the sites and photos on the Internet and
read the fascinating stories about the building of the Monuments but until you
have visited the place, you will only have a partial understanding and appreciation
of how this community of many States came into being.
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| When completed the horse will be twenty stories high from the fore legs to the top of its head, while the Chief's head would be about sixty feet tall. |
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| 1/34 scale model of Chief Crazy Horse. There is no photograph of him, so the sculptor did it based on composite descriptions from those who actually knew the Chief. |
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| Quite a variety of different colored corn was used (no artificial coloring). |
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