I took it as more of a semi-finalist kind of list. There is no mention of how the names were selected. A final list will be greatly cut down, 50 would most likely be the high end with some room to add more statues over the years. Some of the names like WFB, Alex Trebek and others are ridiculous.
There's a lot in that sentence. Appellate judges should be elderly lawyers who have the rules of statutory construction and the grand scheme of the common law memorized and ingrained and issue terse opinions on arcane legal issues and correction of trial court errors. Then nobody cares who the judges are.
I actually attended an oral argument as a tourist at the Supreme Court when Rehnquist was chief judge, and all you had to do was wait in line and pass through a metal detector. I took a wrong turn looking for the restroom and ended up in an alcove where all the clerks sat during oral argument. I excused myself and backed out; nobody batted an eye.
Actually I'd put Judge Learned Hand in the hero's garden, who looks exactly how God would have made appellate judges. And Scalia and Thomas (not dead yet) for pointing out most constitutional law jurisprudence is made up out of whole cloth.
Learned Hand, sitting by designation because too many Supreme Court Justices were recused, wrote the most evil opinion in the history of American jurisprudence.
I thought discussing the precise procedural posture was getting into the weeds. The government brought an antitrust claim against ALCOA. The claim was dismissed and should have gone to the Supreme Court, but six Justices recused themselves because they owned ALCOA stock. Congress passed a special statute allowing the Second Circuit to make the final decision. Judge Hand wrote the opinion in favor of the government. For many years, antitrust lawyers considered it to be the de facto equivalent of a Supreme Court case, and it was often cited approvingly — before Judge Bork and the antitrust revolution.
I stand by my earlier comment: it is the most evil decision in the history of the American judiciary.
It is a politically correct and cowardly list. Just at a quick glance, half of the 2020 list are unimportant people like Sojourner Truth, a big-mouthed leftist black feminist.
Interestingly there are no Southern generals on the list or John Wayne. Too controversial. Too hell with this silly garden.
I fear nobody who fought for the Confederacy will be on the list. Lee. Stonewall Jackson. Jeb Stuart. James Longstreet. Even Clark Gable, for portraying a Southerner.
Why should a loser be on the list? No matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on, and where you stand regarding uncomfortable truths about race.. why should a loser who literally fought for a hopeless cause be honored by the country he wished to secede from?
Matty is largely forgotten, as is Grover Cleveland Alexander except of course for hardcore baseball history aficionados. For example, I'm not sure if Steve is familiar with the fact that Matthewson pitched 3 complete game shutouts in a single week, during the 1905 WS vs PHI AL.
Before Babe Ruth, perhaps NYC's greatest MLB player was Christy Matthewson. Actually there's no perhaps about it.
But if we have to include the greatest ever to have played in MLB, that would crowd out names from other fields. So Babe Ruth and perhaps Cobb and Walter Johnson are sufficient.
And to be all PC, include Mays and Aaron so no one gets all butthurt.
In the entertainment field of the 2nd half of the 20th century, there wasn't a more relevant force than Elvis. He changed everything.
"Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the 20th century... He introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything--music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution--the Sixties come from it."
--Leonard Bernstein, 1966 ( TIME Magazine)
Perhaps many if not most all of Steve's favorite musicians when he was growing up owe directly or indirectly some debt to Elvis, and they wouldn't have been ashamed to say so themselves.
Funny that Sacajawea is on the list. I don't much care for David Frum but when Sacajawea was put on the silver dollar twenty-five years ago he called her "Squaw-Slave" which is about what she was. If you need to make the American-Indian quota, why not Geronimo, Jim Thorpe, Chief Bender or Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell.
Jim Thorpe over Cy Young. Light on scientists. Oppenheimer would be a controversial choice. Feynman wouldn’t been bad, I might prefer the lesser known Joshua Gibbs or Joesph Henry.
Among philosophers of cultural impace you could do worse than William James
I believe in Harper Lee's second and last novel, Atticus Finch is a supporter of segregation in the 50s. But I never read it. The truth is that almost all white Southerners supported segregation until the 1970s.
You can support segregation and be sad about black children being killed. You brought up Atlanta. I bet there are very few whites in the Atlanta public schools. Most of those white children would attend no further than elementary schools. At the higher grades, the black boys would beat up the white boys and take liberties with the white girls. And virtually all whites living in Atlanta are liberals.
He was one of the big money man for Adolf. As well as gifting him his writings that made it into Mein Kampf. On the other hand, where would USA be in industrial production, including war-time industrial production without Ford?
The idea for the assembly line came from the meat industry and if Ford hadn't done it, someone else would have very shortly. It's something that would have evolved naturally as demand for cars ramped up.
This is why the great men model of science breaks down. With inventions we must consider how big a step something was with how long the necessary components had been available before someone put them together. But there is also how great was the insight.
Einstein came up with the theory first and had those other guys help him with the math. I'm not super deep on special relativity (but deeper than normal) and I am not convinced that having the math available automatically makes one stumble upon the theory.
It's fairer to say that given the known problems (like why the speed of light always measures the same) it is likely someone else would have eventually said --well let's treat that speed as constant and see what the implications are. But that could have taken 20 more years.
I understand that you are writing this on behalf of antisemites but since I was going to write it anyway I'll drop it here...fuck Henry Ford.
I have an extremely high bar for problematicness and he's the only one I can think of who clears it. For a garden of heroes? No way. If we have him we should also have the founder of the KKK
The heroism of an inventor should be partially judged by the obviousness of the invention. I forget who came up with the standard but you consider how long all the components needed for the invention were available before someone put them together. The real inventor of the assembly line is whoever came up with the meat disassembly line. Without checking I'd guess that one evolved rather than was invented by a guy.
Nathan Bedford Forrest just might qualify. Anyway, QED, a hero's garden in such a highly pluralistic society as the US is kind of a fool's errand. Different founding mythos, different religions, different history, different ancestry. Different everything. Nobody can agree on what constitutes a heroic American just like nobody can agree on anything else.
A personal litmus test I have for "getting" America is the ability to watch Birth Of a Nation, and then explain dispassionately explain what nation D.W. Griffith portrayed as having been birthed. No idea how many people would pass the test but my impression is few, and fewer every year, so I am completely indifferent to an American Hero's Garden.
It would be amusing to have public debate on such a garden. Some on the far left might try to opt out on the basis of "Trump, obviously" but for undecided voter types that would just look like they think America has no unblemished achievements. So people on the right would suggest mostly white men who did great things and the left would be a combination of the first black woman to discover a species of newt and some actual left wing heroes who would almost all be vulnerable to ticky-tac accusations of problematitude.
Kind of related, I once suggested to a conservative Brit that they ought to wind down their toothless, expensive monarchy. He said no, because then the government would have to write up a republican constitution and it would be a thousand pages long, divvy up power among a million obsolete functionaries, and contain every single "right" the liberals could dream up.
"Nathan Bedford Forrest just might qualify" as what, a hero for the garden? What was the nature of his heroism. A quick read on the guy suggests he was a horrible war criminal.
Brilliant self taught cavalry officer who killed Yankees and turncoats and led the resistance to Reconstruction. One man's war criminal is another man's freedom fighter.
War crimes are defined by the victors. The Truman administration killed 250,000 civilians in one day and nobody hung for it.
But Henry Ford is The Guy who is associated most with mass production and putting the working class in their own cars. That's just huge in American and world history.
No Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, Ty Cobb or Ted Williams. Hmm. Cobb's off because he was "racist" like 99 % of Americans of his time. You would have thought Williams might have made it as a Hispanic quota.
Alex Trebeck????????????????????????? A game show host. Who next? Bill Cullen? Art Fleming? Gene Rayburn? Soupy Sales?
Aaron and Mays weren't dead yet in 2020. I'd go with DiMaggio, Cobb, and Williams over Cy Young. I'd say Williams as the current folk hero of the three. He wasn't terribly popular when he was playing, but now people really like him.
He missed three years of baseball during WWII doing the usual baseball star stuff, including learning to be a fighter pilot (which was highly dangerous by itself). But then in his mid 30s he gets called back and sent into jet fighter combat over Korea as John Glenn's wingman. It would be like Steph Curry getting pulled out of the NBA and sent to bomb Iran. Ted was pretty baffled by why he was getting drafted, but he served.
Williams was so adept at piloting that he spent most of the war teaching young pilots. If memory serves, Williams missed 43,44,45 and 52 because of war. That's probably 125 homers right there.
When I was young, we’d have a Christmas party every year and some of the old retirees would show up. One landed in the first wave at Guadalcanal, one was on the USS Franklin, and one had flown with the RCAF before we got into the war. He joined the Army Air Corps as soon as we got into the war. He was also recalled to fly jets in Korea. He had no idea that Ted Williams had a similar experience.
Robert E. Lee, engineer. His engineering pretty much made Des Moines. He did a lot of work around St. Louis to make the Mississippi navigable. Robert Goddard, originator of the rocket. Eli Whitney, originator of the cotton gin but instrumental in the concept of interchangeable parts. Cyrus McCormick and the reaper. All men more important than Alex Trebeck.
I second Goddard as the father of the liquid fueled rocket. He had a lab in and conducted his early experiments near Roswell, NM, where there is a high school named after him, the Goddard Rockets. There are two military rockets in front of the school and a tile space mural on the wall next to the main entrance.
I went to Robert Goddard Junior High School in Seabrook, MD, a half-mile from NASA. As for Robert Goddard, scientist, he was funded by one of the Guggenheim's at the suggestion of Charles Lindbergh.
Henry Leland got Cadillac and Lincoln going, introduced the electric starter and mass-produced V8, and solidified precision machining and interchangeable parts for autos.
No Patsy Cline? No Loretta Lynn? No Willa Cather? Willa Cather is a two-fer. Woman. Lesbian. Just bragging, but Patsy Cline and Willa Cather grew up in Gore, VA ten miles from my house when they were toddlers.
Although I do not support Trump's silly park, if it need be built, it shouldn't be built in Washington DC which is overloaded with monuments. It should be built in Detroit. The federal government could just buy four or six blocks of rubble and make it into Trump's park.
Where’s James Knox Polk? During his presidency territory that today comprises California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada was added and territorial disputes with Great Britain were settled that included what today are Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The border with Mexico dispute extended Texas from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande. Yes, the U.S. fought a war against Mexico that Polk provoked by placing troops in the disputed territory but that territory was recognized as the legitimate boundary by the Treaties of Velasco which ended the Texas War of Independence. Mexico later rejected those treaties because they were signed by Santa Ana under “duress” but aren’t most treaties that ended wars signed under duress by the losing nations?
Polk owned slaves but so did a number of others who are listed.
von Neumann is already on the list, but I would definitely include Oppenheimer, Teller, Fermi and Ulam. Not Feynman. After all, heroes alludes to conflict, and what conflict was Feynman involved in at the main point of his adult life?
Amongst the film types: Griffith, Chaplin, John Ford, Kubrick and Wilder.
I also think one can't not include Lindbergh. In terms of affinity/contribution to Nazi-ism, Henry Ford was much worse, and he's on the list...
Lindbergh also reported on the weakness of the British air force. His analysis of what the Brits needed to become competitive with the Germans was the main reason why Roosevelt authorized the export of "green gas" -- 100 octane aviation gasoline, the only source for which in the world was the Standard Oil refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to the British. Without the increase in horsepower that fuel allowed, the Brits would have stood no chance in the air against the Luftwaffe.
Lindbergh didn't fight with other allies. He was hired as a technical consultant by aviation companies. Working for Chance-Vought, he flew with the Marines' VF-24 in the Pacific, flying combat missions and advising pilots on how to get the most out of their F4Us. He proved to them that that airplane could lift a 4,000lb bomb load.
Working for Lockheed, he flew with the Army Air Force's 475th FG in the Pacific, and taught the pilots how to extend the P-38's range by hundreds of miles. He also taught them deflection shooting, which the Army, unlike the Navy, did not do. While flying combat missions, he shot down a Japanese plane. When word of that got out, he was yanked away from the squadron by 5th Air Force's Gen. George Kenney, and sent home. But first Kenney shook his hand, slapped him on the back and bought him dinner.
While working for Consolidated-Vultee, Lindbergh determined that the B-24 lacked sufficient lateral stability and advised that it needed an increase in vertical stabilizer area, but the Army rejected the suggestion because it would have caused several weeks delay in production to make the change. When the Navy bought their version of the B-24, the PB4Y-2, they specified it have the "Lindbergh tail," thus eliminated the problem that plagued all pilots trying to fly tight formations in the B-24 or keep it from "hunting" at high altitudes.
Lindbergh did not need to fly combat missions. As a technical advisor and a civilian, he was neither required or expected to do that. Some of his combat missions with the 475th were quite harrowing, such as joining three other pilots to fly hundreds of miles over the ocean, navigating only by compass and clock, to Truck island to dare the Japs to come up and fight and then battling the swarm of Zeros that rose up to take them on, with no chance of reinforcement and no hope of getting home or rescued if their airplane were damaged, let alone if they were shot down, then successfully breaking off the combat when fuel ran low and flying home those hundreds of miles.
Talk about heroes, talk about warriors, talk about extraordinary skill and daring.... Wow.
I'm proud to say that my great grandfather met and became friends with Lindbergh in 1929 when Lindbergh visited the USS Saratoga (CV-3) off Panama at the completion of Fleet Problem IX while he, my great grandfather, was flying the Martin T4M-1 with Torpedo Squadron VT-2B (as it was then designated), and had just successfully participated in the surprise "bombing" of the Panama Canal.
Yes, the Lindberghs pioneered many of the air routes we use today, Charles as pilot and Anne as navigator and radio operator. She wrote a couple of excellent books about their adventures, "North to the Orient" about pioneering the great circle route to Asia, and "Listen! The Wind" about the South Atlantic routes. That title comes from one of my favorite little snippets of a poem, the one by Humbert Wolfe that goes:
"Listen! The wind is rising
And the air is wild with leaves.
We have had our summer evenings,
Now for October eves!"
It always comes to mind when the seasons change.
Anne also wrote about the struggles in her marriage in later years. But men being as they are, and he being so famous, I suppose what happened was inevitable. She handled things better and was more philosophical about them than I would have been (Now where did I put my Lady Smith? You got some 'splainin' to do, Chuckie. Heh.), but none of that affects the significance of Charles' accomplishments as an aviation pioneer or the importance of his efforts to prevent another European war or, once it had started, to keep us out of it. The things he said in those days are still relevant today.
We have a photo of my great-grandmother with Mabel Normand, Mary Pickford and Anne Morrow (before she married Charles Lindbergh) at some social function at Pickfair back in the Twenties. The architect who originally designed that house, A.H. Cogswell, was employed by one of my relatives to design a number of upscale houses for his properties in Los Angeles. Cogswell designed many of the lovely Swiss Chalet-style Craftsman homes that were once a hallmark of L.A.
Normand, in case you haven't heard of her, was one of the most influential early movie pioneers. She made her name with the starring role as the daughter in D.W. Griffith's 1911 "The Awakening." She teamed with Mack Sennett to create the Keystone Kops, inventing the car chase. She also invented the pie-in-the-face routine, smashing a cream pie into Fatty Arbuckle's face in 1913. She was also the first woman to get a pie in the face.
She made Charlie Chaplin a star, training him in acting, inventing his tramp character in 1914, and writing, directing and starring as his leading lady in his early films. For a time she had her own studio at 4319 Effie St. in East Hollywood, which my great-great grandfather footed the bill for, some $100,000 in 1915 dollars. The building is still there and, I believe, still used as a film studio.
If any Hollywood types should be on the American Heroes list, it should be her. She deserves it, certainly more than Lauren Bacall. Lauren Bacall? Give me a break. "You know how to whistle don't you? You just...." Yes, dear, I know all about that.
The 100 octane fuel was the US airpower's not-so-secret sauce. Even if the Axis had stolen the US's aircraft designs, they couldn't have used them because they lacked the US's avgas supply. US aircraft technology was essentially immune to espionage during the war.
Lindbergh did report to the US government his opinion of the Nazi Air Force. He was doing his country a favor. His personal life was unusual to say the least. He had families with at least two German women. Because his sister-in-law had heart problems, he funded heart research. An interesting tidbit about Lindbergh is that he greeted all the nutcases that came to his Connecticut estate rather than having bodyguards take care of them. Many of the lunatics claimed to be Lindbergh's baby grown up. He was apparently very patient with these people.
You are right, barnabus, on the film giants. You are wrong about Lindbergh, who was not an anti-Semite. Lindbergh was politically naive. He was also the son of one of the few congressmen who voted against America's Declaration of War against Germany in 1917. Swedish-Americans tended to be very isolationist and anti-war a century ago.
Who has never heard of a contraversial hero? The easiest way out would be to include all the controversial ones, and add a one page summary why this or that hero is controversial.
I took it as more of a semi-finalist kind of list. There is no mention of how the names were selected. A final list will be greatly cut down, 50 would most likely be the high end with some room to add more statues over the years. Some of the names like WFB, Alex Trebek and others are ridiculous.
Why not Johnny Weismuller and Shirley Temple.
I wouldn't automatically exclude them. If entertainers are going to be included, they would rank high among that group.
There's a lot in that sentence. Appellate judges should be elderly lawyers who have the rules of statutory construction and the grand scheme of the common law memorized and ingrained and issue terse opinions on arcane legal issues and correction of trial court errors. Then nobody cares who the judges are.
I actually attended an oral argument as a tourist at the Supreme Court when Rehnquist was chief judge, and all you had to do was wait in line and pass through a metal detector. I took a wrong turn looking for the restroom and ended up in an alcove where all the clerks sat during oral argument. I excused myself and backed out; nobody batted an eye.
Actually I'd put Judge Learned Hand in the hero's garden, who looks exactly how God would have made appellate judges. And Scalia and Thomas (not dead yet) for pointing out most constitutional law jurisprudence is made up out of whole cloth.
Learned Hand, sitting by designation because too many Supreme Court Justices were recused, wrote the most evil opinion in the history of American jurisprudence.
Hand wrote approximately 4,000 opinions but never sat on SCOTUS even by designation. Which opinion are you referring to?
I thought discussing the precise procedural posture was getting into the weeds. The government brought an antitrust claim against ALCOA. The claim was dismissed and should have gone to the Supreme Court, but six Justices recused themselves because they owned ALCOA stock. Congress passed a special statute allowing the Second Circuit to make the final decision. Judge Hand wrote the opinion in favor of the government. For many years, antitrust lawyers considered it to be the de facto equivalent of a Supreme Court case, and it was often cited approvingly — before Judge Bork and the antitrust revolution.
I stand by my earlier comment: it is the most evil decision in the history of the American judiciary.
It is a politically correct and cowardly list. Just at a quick glance, half of the 2020 list are unimportant people like Sojourner Truth, a big-mouthed leftist black feminist.
Interestingly there are no Southern generals on the list or John Wayne. Too controversial. Too hell with this silly garden.
John Wayne is on the list.
Yes. I missed it.
Robert E. Lee should've made the list.
I fear nobody who fought for the Confederacy will be on the list. Lee. Stonewall Jackson. Jeb Stuart. James Longstreet. Even Clark Gable, for portraying a Southerner.
Lee was also a Mexican War hero.
Lee was probably the most vital officer in the Mexican War.
Why should a loser be on the list? No matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on, and where you stand regarding uncomfortable truths about race.. why should a loser who literally fought for a hopeless cause be honored by the country he wished to secede from?
Lee also helped to win the Mexican War, which greatly increased the US's territory.
So in that sense, he can be honored as a winner.
You beat me to it...Also two Southerners of cultural importance not on the list: William Faulkner and Hank Williams, Sr.
Elvis made the list.
By the way, everybody on the list had to be dead as of 2020, so recent pro athletes seem to be restricted to Kobe Bryant.
I could do without dead ball era pitcher Cy Young.
Agreed re: Cy Young. Walter Johnson and Ty Cobb would be better choices.
Christy Matthewson as well.
Matty is largely forgotten, as is Grover Cleveland Alexander except of course for hardcore baseball history aficionados. For example, I'm not sure if Steve is familiar with the fact that Matthewson pitched 3 complete game shutouts in a single week, during the 1905 WS vs PHI AL.
Before Babe Ruth, perhaps NYC's greatest MLB player was Christy Matthewson. Actually there's no perhaps about it.
But if we have to include the greatest ever to have played in MLB, that would crowd out names from other fields. So Babe Ruth and perhaps Cobb and Walter Johnson are sufficient.
And to be all PC, include Mays and Aaron so no one gets all butthurt.
Matthewson's performance in the 1905 World Series is one of the greatest baseball performances in the history of the sport.
Hank Williams, the Hillbilly Shakespeare, and arguably the father of modern country music, should be added, as should Bob Dylan.
Yeah, with Hank Williams everybody who is a serious country music fan would agree on him.
Dylan isn't dead yet.
Williams, yes. Dylan, yes. Cash, yes. Willie Nelson, eventually. Merle Haggard should be on the list. John Fogarty, yes. Hall and Oates, hell no!
Elvis. Come on.
Did Elvis make the list? He'd better have.
I agree. Although not a songwriter, Presley revolutionized popular music in post-war America and the world.
In the entertainment field of the 2nd half of the 20th century, there wasn't a more relevant force than Elvis. He changed everything.
"Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the 20th century... He introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything--music, language, clothes, it's a whole new social revolution--the Sixties come from it."
--Leonard Bernstein, 1966 ( TIME Magazine)
Perhaps many if not most all of Steve's favorite musicians when he was growing up owe directly or indirectly some debt to Elvis, and they wouldn't have been ashamed to say so themselves.
The great narcissist, John Lennon, was quick to acknowledge that there wouldn't be a Beatles without Chuck Berry.
Elvis is on the list.
Hooray
If you are going to do mild affirmative action, Charley Pride.
Funny that Sacajawea is on the list. I don't much care for David Frum but when Sacajawea was put on the silver dollar twenty-five years ago he called her "Squaw-Slave" which is about what she was. If you need to make the American-Indian quota, why not Geronimo, Jim Thorpe, Chief Bender or Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell.
Jim Thorpe over Cy Young. Light on scientists. Oppenheimer would be a controversial choice. Feynman wouldn’t been bad, I might prefer the lesser known Joshua Gibbs or Joesph Henry.
Among philosophers of cultural impace you could do worse than William James
Yes. I would add C. Walton Lillehei, the chief originator of open-heart surgery which has saved millions of lives, including my oldest child.
It's "Josiah" Gibbs, but yes: the man Einstein called "the greatest mind in American history" should obviously be on the list.
Thanks. Phone typing is brutal dor me. Gibbs work also influenced mathematics, psychology, and sociology.
As the great John Derbyshire said, “if the republic survives, there will be statues to Jared Taylor in town squares across the land”.
William Faulkner is not on the list. Yet Harper Lee is with a grand total of two novels. A coward or an ignorant fool came up with this list.
I believe in Harper Lee's second and last novel, Atticus Finch is a supporter of segregation in the 50s. But I never read it. The truth is that almost all white Southerners supported segregation until the 1970s.
You can support segregation and be sad about black children being killed. You brought up Atlanta. I bet there are very few whites in the Atlanta public schools. Most of those white children would attend no further than elementary schools. At the higher grades, the black boys would beat up the white boys and take liberties with the white girls. And virtually all whites living in Atlanta are liberals.
Henry Ford will be scrapped if this enterprise goes to fruition. He was an anti-Semite.
He was one of the big money man for Adolf. As well as gifting him his writings that made it into Mein Kampf. On the other hand, where would USA be in industrial production, including war-time industrial production without Ford?
The idea for the assembly line came from the meat industry and if Ford hadn't done it, someone else would have very shortly. It's something that would have evolved naturally as demand for cars ramped up.
Sure. Given enough time, David Hilbert and Henri Poincare' would have stumbled across Einstein's General Relativity too.
This is why the great men model of science breaks down. With inventions we must consider how big a step something was with how long the necessary components had been available before someone put them together. But there is also how great was the insight.
Einstein came up with the theory first and had those other guys help him with the math. I'm not super deep on special relativity (but deeper than normal) and I am not convinced that having the math available automatically makes one stumble upon the theory.
It's fairer to say that given the known problems (like why the speed of light always measures the same) it is likely someone else would have eventually said --well let's treat that speed as constant and see what the implications are. But that could have taken 20 more years.
Ford's grandson, Henry II, was instrumental in turning Ford into a giant military factory during World War Two.
I understand that you are writing this on behalf of antisemites but since I was going to write it anyway I'll drop it here...fuck Henry Ford.
I have an extremely high bar for problematicness and he's the only one I can think of who clears it. For a garden of heroes? No way. If we have him we should also have the founder of the KKK
I have no use for Henry Ford personally. But he was revolutionary in his auto production. His auto company thrives today.
The problem with a list like this is that everybody has their prejudices.
"thrives today" is a bit over the top. Survives is the better verb.
The heroism of an inventor should be partially judged by the obviousness of the invention. I forget who came up with the standard but you consider how long all the components needed for the invention were available before someone put them together. The real inventor of the assembly line is whoever came up with the meat disassembly line. Without checking I'd guess that one evolved rather than was invented by a guy.
Vision is important. The McDonald brothers had the production process, but Ray Kroc had the vision. Then Harry Sonneborn supplied the business model.
You've got to let your stars be stars. If the McDonald brothers had given Kroc free rein and a bigger stake he'd have made them billionaires.
Nathan Bedford Forrest just might qualify. Anyway, QED, a hero's garden in such a highly pluralistic society as the US is kind of a fool's errand. Different founding mythos, different religions, different history, different ancestry. Different everything. Nobody can agree on what constitutes a heroic American just like nobody can agree on anything else.
A personal litmus test I have for "getting" America is the ability to watch Birth Of a Nation, and then explain dispassionately explain what nation D.W. Griffith portrayed as having been birthed. No idea how many people would pass the test but my impression is few, and fewer every year, so I am completely indifferent to an American Hero's Garden.
It would be amusing to have public debate on such a garden. Some on the far left might try to opt out on the basis of "Trump, obviously" but for undecided voter types that would just look like they think America has no unblemished achievements. So people on the right would suggest mostly white men who did great things and the left would be a combination of the first black woman to discover a species of newt and some actual left wing heroes who would almost all be vulnerable to ticky-tac accusations of problematitude.
Kind of related, I once suggested to a conservative Brit that they ought to wind down their toothless, expensive monarchy. He said no, because then the government would have to write up a republican constitution and it would be a thousand pages long, divvy up power among a million obsolete functionaries, and contain every single "right" the liberals could dream up.
"Nathan Bedford Forrest just might qualify" as what, a hero for the garden? What was the nature of his heroism. A quick read on the guy suggests he was a horrible war criminal.
Brilliant self taught cavalry officer who killed Yankees and turncoats and led the resistance to Reconstruction. One man's war criminal is another man's freedom fighter.
War crimes are defined by the victors. The Truman administration killed 250,000 civilians in one day and nobody hung for it.
I agree that Forrest won't make this ridiculous garden but he is considered one of the greatest small-unit commanders of the Civil War.
But Henry Ford is The Guy who is associated most with mass production and putting the working class in their own cars. That's just huge in American and world history.
No Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, Ty Cobb or Ted Williams. Hmm. Cobb's off because he was "racist" like 99 % of Americans of his time. You would have thought Williams might have made it as a Hispanic quota.
Alex Trebeck????????????????????????? A game show host. Who next? Bill Cullen? Art Fleming? Gene Rayburn? Soupy Sales?
Aaron and Mays weren't dead yet in 2020. I'd go with DiMaggio, Cobb, and Williams over Cy Young. I'd say Williams as the current folk hero of the three. He wasn't terribly popular when he was playing, but now people really like him.
Williams was a great fisherman as well.
He missed three years of baseball during WWII doing the usual baseball star stuff, including learning to be a fighter pilot (which was highly dangerous by itself). But then in his mid 30s he gets called back and sent into jet fighter combat over Korea as John Glenn's wingman. It would be like Steph Curry getting pulled out of the NBA and sent to bomb Iran. Ted was pretty baffled by why he was getting drafted, but he served.
Williams was so adept at piloting that he spent most of the war teaching young pilots. If memory serves, Williams missed 43,44,45 and 52 because of war. That's probably 125 homers right there.
When I was young, we’d have a Christmas party every year and some of the old retirees would show up. One landed in the first wave at Guadalcanal, one was on the USS Franklin, and one had flown with the RCAF before we got into the war. He joined the Army Air Corps as soon as we got into the war. He was also recalled to fly jets in Korea. He had no idea that Ted Williams had a similar experience.
The list has way too many entertainers and not enough scientists and engineers.
Robert E. Lee, engineer. His engineering pretty much made Des Moines. He did a lot of work around St. Louis to make the Mississippi navigable. Robert Goddard, originator of the rocket. Eli Whitney, originator of the cotton gin but instrumental in the concept of interchangeable parts. Cyrus McCormick and the reaper. All men more important than Alex Trebeck.
I second Goddard as the father of the liquid fueled rocket. He had a lab in and conducted his early experiments near Roswell, NM, where there is a high school named after him, the Goddard Rockets. There are two military rockets in front of the school and a tile space mural on the wall next to the main entrance.
I went to Robert Goddard Junior High School in Seabrook, MD, a half-mile from NASA. As for Robert Goddard, scientist, he was funded by one of the Guggenheim's at the suggestion of Charles Lindbergh.
Henry Leland got Cadillac and Lincoln going, introduced the electric starter and mass-produced V8, and solidified precision machining and interchangeable parts for autos.
You learn something every day at this site. Thanks for the information.
Daniel Boone, Nathaniel Greene, William Penn, *and* George Fox!? Good to see some Quaker representation. Sadly no Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon.
No Patsy Cline? No Loretta Lynn? No Willa Cather? Willa Cather is a two-fer. Woman. Lesbian. Just bragging, but Patsy Cline and Willa Cather grew up in Gore, VA ten miles from my house when they were toddlers.
Although I do not support Trump's silly park, if it need be built, it shouldn't be built in Washington DC which is overloaded with monuments. It should be built in Detroit. The federal government could just buy four or six blocks of rubble and make it into Trump's park.
Where’s James Knox Polk? During his presidency territory that today comprises California, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada was added and territorial disputes with Great Britain were settled that included what today are Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The border with Mexico dispute extended Texas from the Nueces River to the Rio Grande. Yes, the U.S. fought a war against Mexico that Polk provoked by placing troops in the disputed territory but that territory was recognized as the legitimate boundary by the Treaties of Velasco which ended the Texas War of Independence. Mexico later rejected those treaties because they were signed by Santa Ana under “duress” but aren’t most treaties that ended wars signed under duress by the losing nations?
Polk owned slaves but so did a number of others who are listed.
I would’ve liked Polk or Coolidge
I might make a No Presidents rule. Presidents are really famous in general.
I hope they are divided into career groups. Ben Franklin and his (wife?) Aretha sounds pretty silly
von Neumann is already on the list, but I would definitely include Oppenheimer, Teller, Fermi and Ulam. Not Feynman. After all, heroes alludes to conflict, and what conflict was Feynman involved in at the main point of his adult life?
Amongst the film types: Griffith, Chaplin, John Ford, Kubrick and Wilder.
I also think one can't not include Lindbergh. In terms of affinity/contribution to Nazi-ism, Henry Ford was much worse, and he's on the list...
Lindbergh also reported on the weakness of the British air force. His analysis of what the Brits needed to become competitive with the Germans was the main reason why Roosevelt authorized the export of "green gas" -- 100 octane aviation gasoline, the only source for which in the world was the Standard Oil refinery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to the British. Without the increase in horsepower that fuel allowed, the Brits would have stood no chance in the air against the Luftwaffe.
Lindbergh didn't fight with other allies. He was hired as a technical consultant by aviation companies. Working for Chance-Vought, he flew with the Marines' VF-24 in the Pacific, flying combat missions and advising pilots on how to get the most out of their F4Us. He proved to them that that airplane could lift a 4,000lb bomb load.
Working for Lockheed, he flew with the Army Air Force's 475th FG in the Pacific, and taught the pilots how to extend the P-38's range by hundreds of miles. He also taught them deflection shooting, which the Army, unlike the Navy, did not do. While flying combat missions, he shot down a Japanese plane. When word of that got out, he was yanked away from the squadron by 5th Air Force's Gen. George Kenney, and sent home. But first Kenney shook his hand, slapped him on the back and bought him dinner.
While working for Consolidated-Vultee, Lindbergh determined that the B-24 lacked sufficient lateral stability and advised that it needed an increase in vertical stabilizer area, but the Army rejected the suggestion because it would have caused several weeks delay in production to make the change. When the Navy bought their version of the B-24, the PB4Y-2, they specified it have the "Lindbergh tail," thus eliminated the problem that plagued all pilots trying to fly tight formations in the B-24 or keep it from "hunting" at high altitudes.
Lindbergh did not need to fly combat missions. As a technical advisor and a civilian, he was neither required or expected to do that. Some of his combat missions with the 475th were quite harrowing, such as joining three other pilots to fly hundreds of miles over the ocean, navigating only by compass and clock, to Truck island to dare the Japs to come up and fight and then battling the swarm of Zeros that rose up to take them on, with no chance of reinforcement and no hope of getting home or rescued if their airplane were damaged, let alone if they were shot down, then successfully breaking off the combat when fuel ran low and flying home those hundreds of miles.
Talk about heroes, talk about warriors, talk about extraordinary skill and daring.... Wow.
I'm proud to say that my great grandfather met and became friends with Lindbergh in 1929 when Lindbergh visited the USS Saratoga (CV-3) off Panama at the completion of Fleet Problem IX while he, my great grandfather, was flying the Martin T4M-1 with Torpedo Squadron VT-2B (as it was then designated), and had just successfully participated in the surprise "bombing" of the Panama Canal.
Yes, the Lindberghs pioneered many of the air routes we use today, Charles as pilot and Anne as navigator and radio operator. She wrote a couple of excellent books about their adventures, "North to the Orient" about pioneering the great circle route to Asia, and "Listen! The Wind" about the South Atlantic routes. That title comes from one of my favorite little snippets of a poem, the one by Humbert Wolfe that goes:
"Listen! The wind is rising
And the air is wild with leaves.
We have had our summer evenings,
Now for October eves!"
It always comes to mind when the seasons change.
Anne also wrote about the struggles in her marriage in later years. But men being as they are, and he being so famous, I suppose what happened was inevitable. She handled things better and was more philosophical about them than I would have been (Now where did I put my Lady Smith? You got some 'splainin' to do, Chuckie. Heh.), but none of that affects the significance of Charles' accomplishments as an aviation pioneer or the importance of his efforts to prevent another European war or, once it had started, to keep us out of it. The things he said in those days are still relevant today.
We have a photo of my great-grandmother with Mabel Normand, Mary Pickford and Anne Morrow (before she married Charles Lindbergh) at some social function at Pickfair back in the Twenties. The architect who originally designed that house, A.H. Cogswell, was employed by one of my relatives to design a number of upscale houses for his properties in Los Angeles. Cogswell designed many of the lovely Swiss Chalet-style Craftsman homes that were once a hallmark of L.A.
Normand, in case you haven't heard of her, was one of the most influential early movie pioneers. She made her name with the starring role as the daughter in D.W. Griffith's 1911 "The Awakening." She teamed with Mack Sennett to create the Keystone Kops, inventing the car chase. She also invented the pie-in-the-face routine, smashing a cream pie into Fatty Arbuckle's face in 1913. She was also the first woman to get a pie in the face.
She made Charlie Chaplin a star, training him in acting, inventing his tramp character in 1914, and writing, directing and starring as his leading lady in his early films. For a time she had her own studio at 4319 Effie St. in East Hollywood, which my great-great grandfather footed the bill for, some $100,000 in 1915 dollars. The building is still there and, I believe, still used as a film studio.
If any Hollywood types should be on the American Heroes list, it should be her. She deserves it, certainly more than Lauren Bacall. Lauren Bacall? Give me a break. "You know how to whistle don't you? You just...." Yes, dear, I know all about that.
Well, I digress.
What you write is true. Flawed as he was, Lindbergh was a great man.
The 100 octane fuel was the US airpower's not-so-secret sauce. Even if the Axis had stolen the US's aircraft designs, they couldn't have used them because they lacked the US's avgas supply. US aircraft technology was essentially immune to espionage during the war.
I knew there were good reasons why I recoiled from Philip Roth's novel 'The Plot Against America'!
Lindbergh did report to the US government his opinion of the Nazi Air Force. He was doing his country a favor. His personal life was unusual to say the least. He had families with at least two German women. Because his sister-in-law had heart problems, he funded heart research. An interesting tidbit about Lindbergh is that he greeted all the nutcases that came to his Connecticut estate rather than having bodyguards take care of them. Many of the lunatics claimed to be Lindbergh's baby grown up. He was apparently very patient with these people.
Home life? Mr Musk trumps that easily.
You are right, barnabus, on the film giants. You are wrong about Lindbergh, who was not an anti-Semite. Lindbergh was politically naive. He was also the son of one of the few congressmen who voted against America's Declaration of War against Germany in 1917. Swedish-Americans tended to be very isolationist and anti-war a century ago.
Who has never heard of a contraversial hero? The easiest way out would be to include all the controversial ones, and add a one page summary why this or that hero is controversial.